Inside it’s a regular vending machine. But instead of holding chips and cookies, the coils cradle overdose-reversing naloxone and fentanyl test strips, hidden behind a huge interactive touch screen.
“Are you prepared to save a life?” the vending machine asks. “Opioid is the leading cause of accidental death in the United States.”
It plays a naloxone training video on loop.
Instead of a hard-to-remember PIN, it prompts users to create an avatar, like a blue aardvark or a purple crow.
It collects basic, non-identifying data including age, gender and number of visits to help harm reductionists target their efforts. Then it dispenses lifesaving supplies for free.
The ease of use enabled the Harm Reduction Coalition of San Diego to place them inside lobbies of four detention facilities: Las Colinas, George Bailey, Vista and the East Mesa reentry facility.
Because it trains and collects data on its own, it doesn’t place extra work on facility staff.
Those exiting incarceration and their visitors can easily access the machine.
It serves what the coalition said is the population most at risk for overdose.
When people re-enter the community, no matter how short of a time they were incarcerated, the drug supply has changed, Harm Reduction Coalition COO Amy Knox said.
“So when they go back to that trusted source where they’ve purchased drugs from before, they may now have a tainted source,” she said.
Knox sourced the add-on technology for the machines from Canada. She said the machines are the first of their kind in the U.S., and because the company established a U.S. corporation to be able to sell them to her, that opened the door to spread the technology nationwide.
Knox said the Washington State Health Care Authority has already expressed interest.
She said it costs $14,000, only $1,500 more than a standard vending machine, plus a monthly fee of $2,500 that includes all maintenance, service and a replacement every three years.
It’s cheaper than hiring a part-time worker, she said.
And they’re telehealth-capable, meaning there could be a future in which people with poor medical access — like in rural or low-income areas — could speak with a doctor on the vending machine and have certain prescriptions dispensed immediately.
Knox dreams of these machines everywhere, stocked with a wider variety of harm reduction and medical items like clean needles, drug pipes and pregnancy tests.
But to make that dream a reality, she said, her team first has to end the stigma against harm reduction.
