Opioids

It's part of a national agreement that requires grocery chain to pay $1.4B nationwide.

Drug companies already have sent $100 million to Missouri to settle lawsuits for their role in the opioid crisis. But the state could receive hundreds of millions more over the next two decades.

The St. Louis Department of Health has placed a naloxone box outside its building near Soulard Market, the first of many boxes planned for throughout the city. The nasal spray blocks the effects of opioids in the body of someone who is overdosing.

Drug overdoses have killed more than 23,000 Missourians in the last two decades. Many of those were involved fentanyl and other potent opioids.

St. Louisan John Gaal has called for airlines to stock the overdose-reversal drug naloxone after he used the spray to revive a person during a Southwest flight to Las Vegas in 2022. The airline now has announced that starting this year it will include naloxone in its on-air medical kits.

Missouri's prescription drug monitoring database went online this week. Health workers will now need to enter patient information into a statewide database when they dispense opioids and other controlled substances.

Refugee and immigrant community advocates say more, and more accurate, resources and data are vital to overcoming the stigma and rising death toll from the opioid crisis.

The St. Louis County Department of Health will soon distribute the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone for free at county public libraries. Visitors can ask library employees for naloxone, and librarians will distribute it with no questions asked.

The overdose reversal medication naloxone is now available for purchase over-the-counter, but advocates say it’s still cost prohibitive — and that stigma continues to impede access.

In Missouri, the average person born in 2021 could expect to live to be 74.6 years old, a whole three years younger than the average age ten years ago. The state’s drop is part of a nationwide decline, though the life expectancy in Missouri is lower than the United States average.