Cedar Rapids Today

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has reached an agreement with California-based Amphastar Pharmaceuticals to offer the life-saving drug naloxone at a discounted rate to local fire and police department staffers.

Along with other public agency workers, the drug that works to counteract opioid overdoses will be offered a $6 rebate per dose to any “public entity” in the state through October 2020. First launched two years ago, the original rebate program expired in early October 2019. 

Naloxone revives a person who is overdosing on heroin or prescription opioids. Through June 2019, public entities across Iowa had purchased 1,015 doses through the program at a cost of up to $40 per dose to total roughly $6,100 in rebates.

“The use of naloxone has saved many lives in Iowa,” Miller told the Oskaloosa Herald. “The opioid epidemic has had many costs, and one has been the impact to the budgets of Iowa’s first responders and public health care providers. We’re pleased that this rebate can reduce these costs.”

Across the country, opioids rate as the single leading cause of accidental deaths, accounting for almost 68 percent of the more than 70,000 deaths such deaths in the U.S. in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The Iowa Department of Public Health reports from 2000 to 2018, 2,051 people died of opioid-related deaths in the state. .