MARTINSVILLE, Va. – What looks like a newspaper box on the street could actually save your life. Free doses of naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, are now available in purple dispensing boxes placed across Southwest Virginia by the Virginia Harm Reduction Coalition.
The boxes — nicknamed “Barney boxes” by coalition staff for their purple color, which represents overdose awareness — are stocked with two nasal spray doses each and include instructions on how to administer them.
“We want to make it super accessible so that even if, ‘oh, I forgot the backpack that it had it in there and someone’s in an emergency,’ that everybody knows that they can always come here, get it,” said Danny Clawson, Executive Director of the Virginia Harm Reduction Coalition.
The boxes are concentrated in Martinsville, Henry County and Roanoke — areas that have been among the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic in Virginia. The program is funded through Anthem’s HealthKeepers Plus program.
Martinsville Police Chief Chad Rhoads said his department knows firsthand how critical naloxone access can be. His officers have carried the drug for eight years.
“We first started carrying this back in 2018 and we’ve probably saved a couple dozen lives with it,” Rhoads said. “It’s very effective.”
Rhoads said Martinsville’s overdose numbers underscore the urgency of expanding access.
“Historically, over the last few years, we’ve had one of the highest overdose rates in Virginia,” he said. “So this is a place where we need that help, where we need aspects of harm reduction to reduce the number of overdose deaths.”