The Baltimore City Health Department is fighting the opioid epidemic any way they can. Now they're using cell phones.

The health department gave Code in the Schools a grant for $4,500, under their TECHealth program, to create Bad Batch Alert.

"I think a lot of people we know have been affected by this problem," Michael LeGrand works with Baltimore City Public School students at Code in the Schools writing the language that makes the service work.

He personally has been affected by the opioid epidemic. His childhood friend Rachel Vicary was smart. She had a degree in Computer Science, and is a chess whiz. She was known in her New York borough as the local mechanic fixing motorcycles.

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The greatest outrage is directed at Evzio, a high-tech dispenser which "talks" a novice through reversing an overdose.

It cost $690 when it came out in 2014. Now the list price is $4,500 -- an increase of more than 500 percent.

Evzio delivers a dose of naloxone, which blocks the effects of heroin and opioid painkillers, jumpstarting the heart rate and breathing of someone who overdosed.

Cheaper configurations of naloxone exist. It's a generic drug that's been around since the early 1970s.

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The scale of America’s opioid epidemic is shocking.

It is the deadliest drug overdose crisis in US history. In 2016 alone, drug overdoses likely killed more Americans in one year than the entire Vietnam War. In 2015, drug overdoses topped annual deaths from car crashes, gun violence, and even HIV/AIDS during that epidemic’s peak in 1995. In total, more than 140 people are estimated to die from drug overdoses every day in the US. About two-thirds of these drug overdose deaths are linked to opioids.

Yet so far, there’s been a lack of policy action to end the opioid epidemic. Much of what has been done has focused on reducing the amount of prescription painkillers out there, yet the latest federal data shows prescriptions were still three times what they were in 1999. Other prevention efforts have focused on stopping heroin and fentanyl from entering the US, but they have so far failed to make a dent in the flow of these drugs.

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A commission created by President Donald Trump has asked him to declare a state of emergency over the nation’s opioid epidemic.

The recommendation, from a preliminary draft of the opioid commission’s report, comes in the midst of grueling statistics linked to the epidemic. In 2016 alone, drug overdoses likely killed more Americans in one year than the entire Vietnam War. In 2015, drug overdoses topped annual deaths from car crashes, gun violence, and even HIV/AIDS during that epidemic’s peak in 1995.

“With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks,” the report argues. “After September 11th, our President and our nation banded together to use every tool at our disposal to prevent any further American deaths. Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the Executive Branch even further to deal with this loss of life.”

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