COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Opioid-reversal nasal spray has been available for easy, over-the-counter purchases since last fall. Some pharmacies make it more accessible than others.
- A report from Rice University found that 71% of Houston pharmacies kept Narcan behind the counter or were completely out of the product.
- In Bryan and College Station, 15ABC went to six different pharmacies. They all had the product in store but three of them kept it behind the pharmacy counter.
- Narcan sells for $44.99 but there are other generic brand options with a lower price. Some insurances also cover the nasal pray.
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Starting last fall, Narcan became available for easy, over the counter purchases. But how accessible is it really?
Walgreens, CVS, H-E-B, Target, Walmart, and Kroger in the BCS area all have Narcan in store, but some are easier to spot than others.
CVS has this section but instead of the Narcan box, they have these slips that you can take to the pharmacy counter for the actual spray.
"Realizing that the opioid crisis is huge, and how many people overdose even unintentionally on it, and having kids of my own that are a little bit older.”
Sherri Jerzyk says her decision was two-fold.
“When I took my elderly mom on a trip, she would take her medicine and then it’d be an hour or two she would say, 'Oh, I think it's time to take my pain medicine right now' and I'd be like, 'No you just got it not very long ago.' I realized how easy it will be for a senior citizen to accidentally take an overdose of opioids.”
Jerzyk says she has not had to restock since Narcan hit drugstore shelves in 2023. But if she needed to restock today, she would have to ask for it from behind the counter in Walgreens, CVS and Kroger. In H-E-B, Walmart and Target, she can just grab one off the shelf.
“This is one of the things that anybody could very simply carry a Narcan kit with them and possibly make a difference in somebody's life.”
Narcan is the brand name for the nasal spray but there are other generic brands with lower sticker prices and some are even covered by insurance.
According to Texas Health and Human Services, the state's drug overdose deaths increased more than 75% in five years, going from 9.4 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2017 to 15.8 deaths per 100,000 residents in 2021. Men are twice as likely to overdose as women.