A crowd quickly gathers here on one of West Baltimore’s many drug-infested street corners. But it isn’t heroin they’re seeking. It’s a heroin antidote known as naloxone, or Narcan.

Two city health department workers are holding up slim salmon-colored boxes and explaining that the medication inside can be used to stop someone from dying of a heroin overdose. Most onlookers nod solemnly in recognition. They’ve heard about the drug. They want to know more.

Nationwide, more than 150,000 people received naloxone kits from community outreach programs like Baltimore’s between 1996 and 2014, and more than 26,000 overdoses were reversed using those kits, according to a recent survey funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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