Monroe County trains business owners on use of rescue drug Narcan

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) — Monroe County leaders are on a mission to train local business owners and their staff members on how to use the rescue drug Narcan. The "Monroe on a Mission" initiative was set up by Monroe County Addiction Services officials. They say overdoses can happen anywhere at any time, and people need to be ready to step in and help.

Dr. Tisha Smith, Monroe County Director of Addiction Services, "When we started talking about what we can do to help our business community, Carol and I from Mission Recovery just started having a discussion about what we can do that was unique and innovative. We decided to just go ahead and travel the entire community and get Narcan into the hands of our business community. Like i said, overdose does not discriminate against people and we know that it’s cross all lines of demographics in our community and we really wanted to talk to the business community and get it in the hands of the business community, because we know folks in our community are struggling from overdose."

This all comes as Monroe County reports record numbers of opiod overdoses.