FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 12.15.22: Prudent UW System Campuses Are Installing Opioid Overdose Kits

Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 33. Sunrise is 7:19 AM and sunset 4:21 PM for 9h 02m 44s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 58.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM

 On this day in 1791, the United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.


One hears so much about economics, in the thinnest way: the need for growth, the need for business subsidies, etc. All this is described as though economics were not a social science, as though nothing of social science or the humanities mattered. To look at a community’s economics properly is to think about its socio-economics, so much so that one should not need a compound term to describe these relationships. And yet, and yet, the prevalent, emaciated description of economics among local policymakers requires the addition of socio to remind how comprehensive should be its scope. (While socio-economics has a particular academic meaning, using the term generally at least corrects for a paltry grasp of human interaction.)

When people stop thinking narrowly about a business, or a few businesses, and start thinking comprehensively about interactions between people in the marketplace, their perspectives broaden. All those numbers involve human interactions. See The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Morality of Markets.

Universities want enrollment, but enrollment involves students, and students are people, and people have varied conditions and needs. Some of that enrollment, of students, who are people, may sadly involve struggles with addiction. Rich Kremer reports Growing number of UW System campuses installing opioid overdose kits (‘Six universities placing Nalox-ZONE boxes in dormitories, recreation centers and health offices’):

As opioid deaths surge in Wisconsin, a growing number of universities are making the overdose reversal drug naloxone publicly available in dormitories and other campus buildings. 

This fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-La Crosse, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Parkside installed opioid overdose rescue kits called “Nalox-ZONE” boxes aimed at preventing opioid overdose deaths. They join UW-Oshkosh, which installed the boxes in late 2021

The Nalox-ZONE boxes look similar and are often located near Automated External Defibrillator, or AED, boxes in residence halls and recreation centers. They include a nasal spray bottle of naloxone, also known as Narcan, along with an emergency breathing device used while administering CPR. 

“We have not had any overdose deaths on campus,” UW-La Crosse Police Chief Allen Hill told Wisconsin Public Radio. “But, here in the Coulee Region, we’re seeing an increase in opioid overdoses and deaths. So it was definitely the right thing to do to stay proactive and go ahead and get them put in place.”

Every System campus should have these kits. Kremer’s reporting does not list UW-Whitewater as among the campuses installing opioid overdose rescue kits, although perhaps they have. If not, that installation should — and other universities show can — be accomplished quickly. This is not a matter of avoiding drug use or concealing the possibility of it. These kits are useful for those who are, in the moment, in the grip of a life-threatening overdose.

Nalox-ZONE boxes can preserve lives, and only after preservation is healing and restored good health possible.  


Unexplained leak from Soyuz spacecraft forces Russia to abort ISS spacewalk mission:

Subscribe
Notify of

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments