• Rich Barlow

    Senior Writer

    Photo: Headshot of Rich Barlow, an older white man with dark grey hair and wearing a grey shirt and grey-blue blazer, smiles and poses in front of a dark grey backdrop.

    Rich Barlow is a senior writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. Perhaps the only native of Trenton, N.J., who will volunteer his birthplace without police interrogation, he graduated from Dartmouth College, spent 20 years as a small-town newspaper reporter, and is a former Boston Globe religion columnist, book reviewer, and occasional op-ed contributor. Profile

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There are 15 comments on BU Police Will Carry Antidote for Heroin Overdose

  1. Great. More of my tax money going to save the lives of the immoral. Don’t believe the liberal propaganda! Addicts need to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

    1. Cranky, addicts can’t get to church if they are dead.
      I’m glad BU is taking this simple step that will save many lives. I wouldn’t wish heroin addiction on my worst enemy.

    2. I applaud the BU Police Department and every other Emergency Response Agency in the country for saving lives. I went to a funeral this week. My friend’s 21 year old son passed away from a heroin overdose. He was a smart, happy, athletic person with so much potential. He came from a very good family. He became addicted to prescription pain medication. When that wasn’t available, he switched to heroin. His family suffered along side with him for the past 5 years, in and out of rehab. His story is far from unique. He was not immoral, he suffered from a “disease” of addiction. If my tax dollars can save just one life, then it is worth it – we have lost too many already. Narcan is far from a solution but it is a step in the right direction: Drug dealers need to be dealt with more harshly, insurance companies need to help these families trying to help a loved one recover, doctors need to STOP prescribing opiates and pharmaceutical companies need to develop non addictive pain killers. This epidemic needs to be dealt with at all levels. And we should pray for everyone too.

      1. Well said anon. I think drug addiction is a public health issue and should be dealt with as such. I don’t know what level of outcry there has been on campus about the university being open to certain victims of the Ebola virus. Saying someone with a drug addiction is immoral is like saying people stricken with ebola should not have been born or chosen to work in Africa. This is a disease.

    3. That is maybe the most ignorant comment I have ever heard. Do you also believe in Christ as your savior? Maybe you put your children on Adderrall for their ADD or for your own ADD? Do you drink red wine on Sundays? Do you take the bread and body of Christ which is the unleavened bread Eucharist and doesn’t have much absorption when it comes to alcohol? Do you take Xanax as a prescription from your doctor? Do you take ibuprofen for pain? Do you pray? Because I bet you do both. Or maybe all. And hopefully not at the same time, but say you did and you didn’t realize how awful it was for you, then you might not have a chance to survive if someone wasn’t there to pump your stomach or give you something to counteract the drugs you ignorantly took to ease a symptom that was deeply physically bothering you before or maybe even after you prayed. Think about it.

    1. BU is catering to their STUDENTS because that is one of it’s main purposes. All you’ve done is slapped a label on a group of people to generalize it and tried to pass your comment off as an educated opinion.
      People make mistakes so it’s up to institutions to put their research to use and help them. Good for you if you have never fallen into peer pressure or depression or felt so hopeless that you’d turn to anything to feel better, but most people don’t work like that. It’s more productive to try to understand and help a problem than to judge and disregard it.

      This is a step forward in the right direction for the school and I’m glad that BU is moving past denying that their students aren’t perfect and are actively trying to help them be better instead.

  2. This is great to see happening, here, at BU. We are a campus that is part of the community and the city. As first responders the police need to help save lives. I look forward to a follow-up article letting us know how often Narcan was used over the course of the academic year. I hope other college/universities’ police force and public safety departments follow suit.

  3. I am glad they are taking steps to help those suffering from addiction. All enforcement official should be trained. Too many are dying because of heroin addiction and addiction to other opiates. We need to help these people not treat them as criminals The drug dealers should be punished more severely and the doctors should not prescribe these medications without serious thought. The drug companies should work on making no addictive pain medication.

  4. It’s easy to judge and jump to conclusions. You must remember, we all travel different paths and we all face different challenges. Many are quick to assume that being a heroin user is solely the fault of the user, but there are often many other factors involved. Even Jesus may not be enough for someone battling the chemical addictions related to pain medication and heroin… which often go hand in hand.

    Have sympathy and understanding. I am proud of BU for this initiative.

  5. swim was an h addict at one point, and she commends this notion taken by the bu police. more police should follow in these footsteps…people need to cease treating addicts like criminals and think of them as being sick and in need of help. if your family member took the drug by accident and overdosed, would you think its fair of them to die because nobody is trained or equipped with naloxone? didn’t think so.

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