Following is testimony given by Emilie Gilde, Director of Tobacco Use and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. The statement was presented to the Business Regulation and Occupations Committee on behalf of Dr. Wen on February 1, 2017.

In this year’s General Assembly, our team here at BCHD is focusing our attention and advocacy efforts on policies and proposals that will improve the health of residents and reduce disparities in Baltimore and across the state.  

As the grim toll of opioid overdose deaths has risen steadily in Maryland and across the country, public health officials increasingly have urged that the anti-overdose medication Narcan, also known as naloxone, be made more widely available to addicts and their caregivers. 　The antidote, taken in the form of either a nasal spray or an injection, can quickly revive overdose victims after they've stopped breathing, and Baltimore officials credit it with preventing more than 800 people in the city alone from succumbing to fatal overdoses in recent years.

But with the drug's life-saving successes has also come a cruel dilemma in the form of rapidly spiraling price hikes　for even the generic version of the drug. The price of a common injectible version is up 500 percent in the last two years, and the price of the nasal spray Baltimore's health department uses is up more than 60 percent. That has health officials worried that rising costs will deny the the opportunity to exploit the drug's full life-saving potential by training as many people as possible in its use and distributing it not only to first responders and health professionals but also　to ordinary citizens — friends and family of drug users — who might be in a position to rescue an overdose victim.

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