Pierce County’s Narcan vending machines have finally arrived — not a moment too soon | Opinion

Narcan vending machines have arrived in Pierce County — at long last.

By next week three of them will have been deployed to places both urban and rural, part of an effort spearheaded by the Tacoma Needle Exchange to get naloxone into the hands of those who need it — and those who might find themselves in position to save a life.

It’s not a moment too soon.

The machines — which distribute the life-saving medication for free with the push of a button — were supposed to debut last October, as I wrote at the time. That didn’t happen for a variety of frustrating reasons, according to Tacoma Needle Exchange executive director Paul LaKosky. A process that was supposed to take six weeks stretched into a six-month ordeal, he told me Wednesday.

But with the shiny, new vending machines unboxed and waiting nearby at the needle exchange’s office at South 37th Street and Pacific Avenue, LaKosky — a longtime public health professional who has overseen Tacoma’s groundbreaking needle exchange program for nearly six years — said he couldn’t be more excited.

“It is a way to get a vital resource into a community at the lowest barrier possible. You just have to walk up and push a button and it comes out,” LaKosky said of the machines, which are stocked with naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, capable of reversing the effects of an opioid overdose.

“There are a lot of folks who don’t feel comfortable coming to a syringe exchange, for whatever reason,” LaKosky said. “But that shouldn’t be a barrier to them accessing live-saving naloxone.”

The plan, LaKosky said, is to deliver the machines to three Pierce County locations early next week.

The Recovery Cafe in Orting will receive one, as previously reported.

The Moore Library in Tacoma’s South End will get another, and a third will debut at Tacoma’s First United Methodist Church downtown.

LaKosky acknowledged that it wasn’t necessarily easy finding willing locations for all three naloxone vending machines. The goal was to find community partners that would help Tacoma Needle Exchange reach new populations and people who might not otherwise have access to the drug, he said, and some places were skeptical.

It was familiar territory for someone who’s worked in harm reduction for more than two decades, dating back to early 1990s New York and later Chicago. Despite local apprehensions — which is a near constant in addiction-related harm reduction work — naloxone vending machines are now a fixture across the country, from places like Philadelphia, San Diego and New York to Kentucky and Indiana.

“Part of it was just getting folks that were willing to accept the machine and the traffic it might bring,” LaKosky said of Tacoma Needle Exchange’s efforts to find local locations for the vending machines. “Initially people were very excited. But sometimes, lawyers or other things got involved.”

The timing couldn’t be more urgent, LaKosky argued — and it’s not hard to understand why. The vending machines were paid for through a $200,000 grant initiative funded by Beacon Health Options designed to combat a dramatic increase in overdoses and the rise of fentanyl, an epidemic that’s exacted a terrible toll nationally and locally.

As drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed throughout the United States, the same troubling trend has emerged in Pierce County, where there were nearly four times as many fentanyl-related deaths in 2021 as in 2019, according to Tacoma Pierce County Health Department data.

Opioid-related overdose is now the most common cause of accidental death in Pierce County, outnumbering traffic and firearm deaths, according to the stats.

There were more than 150 fentanyl-related deaths in 2021 alone.

“I have seen … the most rapid change in drug consumption patterns that I have ever seen in my 20-plus years of working in HIV and disease prevention. It is very difficult these days to even find heroin. Most folks have switched over to fentanyl, which for a lot of reasons is a lot more dangerous,” LaKosky told me last year. “We’re getting lots of calls late at night saying, ‘I need Narcan, and the syringe exchange is closed,’ or there are places where they need Narcan but we can’t always get out there and get it to them. So the vending machines will allow people to have a place where they can just go and get it, no questions asked.”

Kate Larsen, the director of Tacoma Public Library, said libraries and their staff see the toll of the opioid epidemic and the proliferation of fentanyl firsthand. It’s one of the reasons TPL was eager to partner with the Tacoma Needle Exchange to host a naloxone vending machine, she said.

In a statement provided to The News Tribune, TPL said it expects the Moore Library naloxone vending machine to be fully operational sometime this month.

Larsen also indicated that the library system would be partnering with the Tacoma Needle Exchange to offer additional addiction-related services, including free peer counseling in two TPL libraries through the end of the year.

“Public libraries across the nation continue to witness the effects of the rising opioid crisis every day, and Tacoma Public Library is no different. Naloxone is a harm reduction tool that can reverse an opioid overdose but it is not easy to obtain,” Larsen said. “We have the opportunity to expand our community’s access to this lifesaving (yet safe) opioid reversal drug through this partnership.”

At First United Methodist on Tacoma Avenue, the sentiment is similar. Nora Hacker, a lay leader at the church, said that hosting a vending machine feels like a chance to play “a small part in saving lives.”

“We believe in looking around at the needs of our neighbors and community and do what we can to meet those needs.,” Hacker said. “With the opiate crisis spreading through the country, including Tacoma, helping get this life-saving medicine into the hands of the people who need it is an easy choice.”

For LaKosky, saving lives is what it’s all about — and what it’s always been about.

Since his earliest days working on the front line of public health and addiction, the work has always been controversial, and it’s always been essential.

“We want to normalize the idea,” LaKosky said of the need to make naloxone widely available.

“Carrying naloxone is caring about your community,” he told me