Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to add more information about drug take back locations in Summit County.

Visitors to the Frisco Transfer Center in recent weeks may — or may not — have noticed an inconspicuous box that looks similar to the newsstands where locals pick up the Summit Daily News.

But this box, and the almost a dozen others that have popped up in various locations in Summit County since September, don’t contain newspapers. Instead, these boxes contain a life-saving antidote: naloxone.

“Naloxone over the years has saved untold lives,” Summit County Public Health harm reduction specialist Justin Harrow said. “There’s no way to put a number on it.”

Naloxone, sometimes better known by the brand name Narcan, is the opioid overdose antidote, Harrow explained. He said he knows the life-saving power of naloxone, which is easy to use without medical training and can restore a person’s breathing within two to three minutes, from lived experience.

“I myself have been saved by Narcan,” Harrow said. “I was an addict for over a decade, and it saved my life multiple times. Long enough for me to get clean and build a life for myself. That’s the end goal, keeping people alive long enough to make the choice to get better.”

The Summit County Sheriff’s Office and the Summit County Public Health Department have for years offered free naloxone to the community in an effort to prevent deaths from opioid overdoses.

But Summit County Public Health Director Amy Wineland said that these new naloxone distribution sites aim to make the antidote even more accessible by offering it at locations that people frequent.

“We’re really trying to saturate the community with naloxone,” Wineland said. “A lot of people don’t feel comfortable … to come into public health or the Sheriff’s Office. We wanted to make sure it was accessible for all.”

In addition to naloxone distribution boxes popping up at transportation centers in Silverthorne, Breckenridge and Frisco, Wineland said the health department has also set them up at local Colorado Mountain College campuses and popular nightlife locations like Tenmile Music Hall and Brooklyn’s Tavern. There are now a total of 12 naloxone distribution boxes, either in the newspaper-stand or wall-mounted style, throughout the county, she said. 

Summit County hasn’t been spared by the deadly opioid epidemic that has raged for more than two decades in the United States, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. In Colorado, there were 1,926 overdose deaths reported in 2023 alone.

In recent years, fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, has fueled a deadly new wave in the opioid epidemic. Law enforcement officials say cartels and drug dealers are taking advantage of the cheap and addictive qualities of fentanyl, mixing it with other illicit drugs and forging counterfeit pills that may appear to be Oxycodone, Percocet or other prescription pills that could contain a fatal dose of fentanyl.

“Because of the way fentanyl has been interacting with our communities in this country, somebody can die within a few minutes, literally faster than the ambulance can get to them,” Harrow said. “So, to truly do something about the problem, we’re lucky to have a tool like this.”

Even if someone is not suffering from an opioid overdose, naloxone is safe to administer, including for pregnant women and children, Harrow said. So, if a bystander stumbles upon someone who is unconscious, there is no risk that administering naloxone could hurt them, he said. Colorado also has a Good Samaritan law that protects people who provide emergency assistance without compensation from civil damages and criminal prosecution.

“The idea is just to have this in your med kit in your car and at home, especially if you live around people who are using drugs or if you yourself use drugs,” Harrow said. “Just so that it’s available.”

Wineland noted that the new naloxone stations are just one part of a multipronged approach that the Summit County government has taken to address the opioid epidemic locally. Among other measures, the public health department has also pushed to expand treatment services, like medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder, and to educate the public on the dangers of fentanyl and other opioids.

“(Opioid addiction) is an illness that can be treated,” Harrow said. “It really creates a chemical change in the brain, it’s something that is very difficult to overcome, but we do have treatment in Summit County.”