Free naloxone day event to be held in all 50 states this year

by Lori Kersey, West Virginia Watch
September 24, 2025

As volunteers around the country prepared last week for Save a Life Day, an annual naloxone giveaway event, Kanawha County saw a stark reminder of the need for the opioid overdose reversal drug. 

Within 24 hours, 35 people in Charleston overdosed on what police believed to have been fentanyl laced with xylazine, a powerful tranquilizer.

In each overdose, naloxone was reportedly used to revive the person. No deaths were reported.

For Joe Solomon, a Charleston City councilman and a co-founder of Save A Life Day, it was also a reminder that more could be done for drug users in the city. 

“I wish every day were ‘Save a Life Day,” Solomon said. “The only way to do that is if we had an accessible, needs-based harm reduction program that would make every day Save A Life Day. Because you can meet hundreds of people every day where they are with what they need, and get your arms around them — naloxone, test strips, drug testing, and if they want more services like counseling and primary care and infectious disease treatment, that too.”

During this year’s Save a Life Day on Thursday, volunteers from every state — and even one from the nation of Colombia — will distribute the opioid overdose antidote drug at more than 900 sites.

Solomon and fellow co-founder Sarah Stone, both of the overdose prevention organization SOAR, helped start Save a Life Day in Kanawha and Putnam counties in 2020, as the number of fatal overdoses rose during the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year, the event was held in 32 states, including every state east of the Mississippi. 

More than 30,000 doses of the opioid overdose antidote were distributed by volunteers in West Virginia during the 2024 event. 

Solomon said the milestone of being in every state is undercut by the city’s passage of legislation in 2021 that restricted harm reduction programs that may have had a bigger impact on helping people struggling with drug addiction.

“I’m torn, right? Because, it’s like you send out this real signal of hope from this place of hurt. That feels like something to be really proud about,” Solomon said. “And we’re still a place that criminalized harm reduction. And so much of our story hasn’t, I think, found the level of atonement.”

Stone said she didn’t expect the event to cause miracles, just a slow move toward lessening the stigma that has been associated with naloxone. 

“I think [going from] two counties to over 900 sites in five years is pretty good,” she said. 

Stone and Solomon are also the coordinators of Kanawha County’s Save A Life Day distribution.

West Virginia has long had the highest drug overdose rates in the country, but the state has celebrated some victories recently.

In July, West Virginia marked the largest reduction in fatal overdoses across the nation over a 12 month period. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Virginia saw two months of declines in the annual rate of fatal overdoses, representing a 41% decrease compared to deaths reported in both preceding 12 month periods.

Stone said events like Save a Life Day have the potential to make big changes by encouraging people to talk to one another. Even in the midst of an overdose spike, Charleston is more prepared to handle the crisis today than it was five years ago, she said. People will always use drugs, she said. 

“But not talking about it, or being in denial about that or the layers and layers of shame are weird,” she said. “I like to think we’re encouraging people to have conversations about what the reality of their life and their family and their communities are so they can make it better. 

“Access to naloxone is the baseline, and we still have lots of places that don’t have access,” she said. “We’re learning a lot. We always learn a lot each year talking to people in other places about what works for them and what they do.”

The state of West Virginia is contributing 16,712 naloxone kits for Save a Life Day, which is 2,084 more kits than it did in 2024, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Human Services told West Virginia Watch in an email. Each kit contains two doses of the drug. 

Caroline Wilson, who coordinates the national event, said the most exciting aspect of the event is the unity of volunteers from all the states coming together. 

“We’re trying to help each other. We’re trying to bring the numbers down. Yes, they’ve been dropping, but [it’s] still too many,” Wilson said. “And so it’s just amazing to see how many people are really passionate about this and want to work together and solve the overdose crisis.”

This year, the Matthew Perry Foundation and Healing Appalachia partnered to sponsor Save a Life Day, Wilson said. The “Friends” star died in October 2023 of a ketamine overdose. 

CareSource is providing funding to supply at least one newspaper-style distribution box for each state, she said. The boxes can be filled and refilled with naloxone so that people can have access to the drug as needed.

This year’s event will also add an advocacy component. Volunteers can get post cards to send to their local officials with messages encouraging them to use their opioid settlement funds to support harm reduction programs. 

While naloxone has been available over the counter since 2023, Wilson said Save a Life Day still has an important role. It allows volunteers to meet people they normally wouldn’t encounter. Many people have stories about the people who in their lives who have struggled with drug use or died of an overdose. The event also helps to decrease stigma, she said.

“It’s really cool to me, how they come up and they feel comfortable [telling their stories] just because of what we’re out there doing. They haven’t really met people like us before that they can just openly say these things too.”

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West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com.