The state is selling a nasal spray treatment for $24. The governor calls it disrupting a billion-dollar industry to save lives.
California is making the medication that reverses opioid overdoses available to the public at almost half the market price, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced April 21.
The price the state negotiated with Amneal Pharmaceuticals is $24 for a twin-pack of naloxone HCL 4 mg nasal spray, branded as CalRx-Naloxone, available for purchase online through the state’s CalRx Naloxone Project
website.
Naloxone is the generic form of the medication often known as Narcan, its original brand name. A search online on April 23 showed that
Walgreens sells its own brand of naloxone 4 mg spray at $34.99, while selling Narcan for $44.99.
“Life-saving medications shouldn’t come with a life-altering price tag,” Newsom said in a
statement, “California is using our market power as the fifth largest economy in the world to disrupt a billion-dollar industry to save lives … and we’re just getting started.”
The governor’s office said California is “the first in the nation to provide an affordable direct-to-consumer drug online.”
California’s CalRx Naloxone Access Initiative reached a
deal with Amneal in April 2024 for the Naloxone Distribution Project (NDP), which provides free naloxone to eligible organizations and government agencies including first responders, universities, and community organizations that treat people with opioid overdoses.
This week’s announcement extended the low price offer to the general public.
The initiative, announced in July 2023, is part of Newsom’s
plan for tackling the fentanyl and opioid crisis.
The state provided an initial $30 million in 2023-2024 to support industrial partners in developing and distributing a naloxone nasal product under the CalRx label, which then feeds into the NDP.
California has invested over $1 billion to crack down on opioid use, and in the fiscal 2024 budget, Newsom
allocated $79 million to the NDP.
According to NDP, since its beginning in October 2018, it has
distributed more than 6 million kits of naloxone, which have been used to reverse more than 355,000 overdoses.
The state Department of Public Health’s overdose surveillance
dashboard showed that 7,847 Californians died of opioid overdose in 2023. The data also
showed that synthetic opioid related overdose deaths had been rising every year since 2018 and continued to increase through July 2023, reaching a peak of 770 deaths that month.
Starting in August 2023, monthly opioid deaths dropped, hitting lows of 484 in May 2024 and 463 in June. The 2024 figures are preliminary.
Newsom’s office said that although it was hard to attribute the decline to one cause, the data suggested the state’s “comprehensive effort is making a difference.”
A March 5
report by think tank Brookings Institution said that U.S. overdose deaths began declining in 2023.
“But there is little certainty as to which domestic- or foreign-policy interventions have been crucial drivers,” the report said. “The wider availability of overdose-reversal medication is fundamental, as is expanded access to evidence-based treatment.”
The federal government’s actions toward international supply from Mexico and China could also be contributing to the drop, the report said.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services outlined in its Overdose Prevention
Strategy four pillars to tackle opioid overdose deaths: primary prevention, harm reduction, evidence-based treatment, and recovery support. Naloxone distribution is one component of harm reduction.
Before the Naloxone Access Initiative, California had already taken affordable insulin production into its hands through its
Biosimilar Insulin Initiative. Both initiatives are under the bigger CalRx Initiative, which is intended to make prescription drugs more affordable to Californians.
