Infrastructures of Naloxone

Abstract

This paper is an exercise in Joseph Dumit’s (2014) implosion project and explores the object world of the opioid reversal drug naloxone. This narrative focuses on naloxone as it distributed in kit form across Canada and situates this kit according to its growing role as an overdose prevention tool within the context of an increase in opioid-related overdose deaths in Canada. Drawing from anthropological literature on the marketization of health and health infrastructures, as well as theories of the psychological stigma surrounding drug use, I focus on two elements of the complex assemblage of factors that lead to barriers in uptake: the economic and the social. Identifying potential barriers in accessing naloxone kits and arguing for the importance of such analysis, I turn to my own ethnographic exploration of the accessibility of state-subsidized naloxone throughout community pharmacies in the City of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area.