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Naloxone, Fentanyl Test Strips Now Free from Health Department

Kits to help prevent and stop opioid overdoses are free in Shelby County until supplies run out. 

The Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) is distributing the kits at select sites (see below) on a first-come, first-served basis. The kits contain two doses of nasal-spray naloxone (known as Narcan by its brand name), 10 fentanyl test strips, and instructions for each. 

SCHD Health Officer Dr. Michelle Taylor said the kits are being distributed “to save lives.”

“From 2018 to 2020, overdoses killed more people in Shelby County than automobile accidents,” Taylor said in a statement. 

The program is a partnership with the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), which says naloxone is “a proven tool in the battle against drug abuse and overdose death.” 

“When too much of an opioid medication is taken, [the opioid] can slow breathing to a dangerously low rate,” reads the TDH web page on naloxone training. “When breathing slows too much, overdose death can occur. Naloxone can reverse this potentially fatal situation by allowing the person to breathe normally again.”

The state says naloxone is not “dangerous medicine.” But state law does require proper training to give the drug and be covered against civil lawsuits. In 2014, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a Good Samaritan Law that give civil immunity to those administering the drug to someone they “reasonably believe” to be overdosing on an opioid. 

To get the required training, the state offers an interactive online course here and a read-through version of the class here.  

After the review, trainees must pass an online quiz available here. Once complete, trainees can then add their name to a printable certificate found here

Regional Overdose Prevention Specialists (ROPS) offices are located throughout the state of Tennessee. They are the point of contact for most opioid overdose training and the distribution of naloxone. 

The state says more than 450,000 units of naloxone have been distributed through ROPS from October 2017 to March 2023. In that time, state officials have documented at least 60,000 lives saved with naloxone, a number that’s likely higher “because of stigma and other factors.” 

State Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) wanted to make naloxone even more widely available in this year’s legislative session. Her bill would have mandated that some bars (selling more than $500,000 worth of alcoholic beverages per year) keep naloxone on premises as a condition of keeping their liquor-by-the-drink license. 

The legislation was similar to New York City’s “Narcan Behind Every Bar” campaign. But Lamar’s bill was never fully reviewed and stalled in the committee system.  

Fentanyl test strips were illegal in Tennessee until last year. Possession of such strips were a Class A misdemeanor and distribution was a Class E felony. But lawmakers made them legal to fight opioid overdoses when Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill into law in March 2022.

To use the strips, small amounts of drugs are mixed with water. The strips are dipped into the solution for 15 seconds. Then, the strips produce colored bars to signal whether or not the sample contains fentanyl or if the test is inconclusive. 

In 2018, researchers found that some community groups across the country began to distribute fentanyl test strips. At the time, they found that most (81 percent) drug users who got the strips, used them. Some (43 percent) changed their drug-use behavior because of the strips and most (77 percent) said they were more aware of overdose safety by having the strips. 

Those kits with naloxone and the fentanyl test strips are available from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 

SCHD headquarters

 814 Jefferson Avenue

Cawthon Public Health Clinic

1000 Haynes, 38114

Hickory Hill Public Health Clinic

6590 Kirby Center Cove, 38118

Millington Public Health Clinic

8225 Highway 51 North, 38053

Shelby Crossing Public Health Clinic

6170 Macon Road, 38133

Southland Mall Public Health Clinic

1287 Southland Mall, 38116

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Shelby County Fills Fewer Opioid Prescriptions, Sees More Overdose Deaths


DEA

The opioid fentanyl can be 100 times more potent than morphine.

Though the number of opioid prescriptions filled each year in Tennessee and Shelby County has been decreasing since 2013, the number of opioid overdose deaths have not. 

The latest available data from the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) shows that of the 1,776 drug overdose deaths that occurred in the state in 2017, 1,268 of them were opioid related.

Nationwide, 30 Americans die every day from opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

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Opioids include prescription opioids such as hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine, and fentanyl, which can be 100 times more potent than morphine, as well as heroin and opium.

Shelby County saw a total of 207 drug overdose deaths in 2017. Of those, 159 were caused by an opioid. Nine more opioid-related deaths occurred that year than in 2016 and 66 more than in 2013. 


Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid often mixed with other illegal drugs and sold on the street, was by far the deadliest opioid in Shelby County in 2017. It led to 106 overdose deaths, while heroin led to 59 and opioid pain relievers led to 52.

Tennessee Department of Health

Fatal overdose data for Shelby County

Shelby County had the state’s third-highest number of opioid overdose deaths in 2017 behind Knox County, which had 196, and Davidson County, which had 184.

The TDH report also shows that in 2017, 66 percent of Tennesseans who died from an opioid overdose, filled a prescription included in the Tennessee Controlled Substance Monitoring Database within a year of their death.

Thirty-seven percent of Tennessee residents who died from an overdose that year filled a prescription for an opioid within two months of their death. This is a 20 percent decrease from the number who did so in 2013.

Just under 6.9 million opioid prescriptions were filled across the state in 2017. That’s a little over a million less than were filled in 2013. 

In Shelby County, which has a population of about 939,000 people, 607,512 opioid prescriptions were filled for pain in 2017. This number has steadily declined from 2013 when 718,103 opioid prescriptions were filled.

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D. Michael Dunavant, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said last week that many times those who end up addicted to heroin start with a dependence to prescription painkillers.

“Opioid misuse and abuse is an insidious epidemic, created in large part by the over-prescribing of potent opioids nationwide, and unfortunately, Tennessee and West Tennessee is at the center of that epidemic,” Dunavant said at a press conference last week as he detailed the indictment of sixteen medical professionals from Tennessee, including five from Memphis who allegedly illegally distributed of opioid prescriptions.

The five Memphis medical professionals — three doctors and two nurses — who were indicted along with 11 others from Jackson, Tennessee, were arrested in a sweep last week coordinated by U.S. Attorneys and the Department of Justice’s Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force (ARPO).

Together the medical professionals allegedly distributed more than 350,000 prescriptions for controlled substances, equaling about 32 million pills.