This inconspicuous vending machine saves several hundred lives a year

The University of Cincinnati summed up the results of two years of operation of the only street vending machine in the entire state of Ohio to help drug addicts. It is based on the principle of vending, only instead of money it uses electronic points of the rehabilitation program. Participants register for the program and are given access to the machine’s contents for 90 days, after which they are tested and given a chance to renew their participation in the program.

The main contents of the vending machine are sprays of naloxone, a substance to combat opioid overdose. A single dose, if used in time, keeps a person alive until they are taken to the hospital. This reduces mortality and helps prevent opioid use – having had one foot in the grave, but being saved, a person often rethinks their addictions. In two years of operation, the dispenser dispensed 3,360 doses of naloxone.

The second most popular “product” in the machine is fentanyl test strips, which help detect the presence of this deadly substance in other drugs. It turned out that about two-thirds of the program participants found impurities of fentanyl in the drugs they bought, and then threw them away or used only minimal doses. In two years of operation, the dispenser handed out 11,155 test strips, which helped save 960 lives.

The machine also has compartments for safe disposal of syringes, pregnancy tests, patches and bandages. Because of bureaucratic delays, the project initiators were unable to add sterile disposable syringes to the range. They note that it was much more convenient for people to use a street vending machine than to seek help from medics in difficult situations, so the experiment was positively evaluated.