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Introducing Boulder County's First Ever Harm Reduction Vending Machine
We are thrilled to announce Boulder County's first-ever harm reduction vending machine is available to our community as a free resource! It works much like any other vending machine where you can buy snacks and beverages, except this one dispenses lifesaving harm reduction tools at no cost - including NARCAN®/naloxone kits, gun safety devices, sexual health kits, and wound care kits.
To use the vending machine, individuals are asked to select their preferred language, followed by three quick questions before their items dispense. This demographic information is collected so that Boulder Community Health can measure and report on impact, since the vending machine is funded in part through grants.
The questions asked are:
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What is your race?
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What is your ethnicity?
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What is your gender?
Importantly, no other information is collected to protect each person’s confidentiality, privacy, and anonymity.
This vending machine was made possible thanks to Boulder Community Health, as well as the Boulder Rotary Club for their financial support. We are deeply grateful for these key community partners for making this lifesaving resource a reality.
Harm reduction and early intervention are proven and effective tactics for addressing substance use – including the deadly spread of fentanyl in our communities. By increasing access to life-saving tools like naloxone and fentanyl testing strips, together we can save lives.
What is harm reduction?
Harm reduction is an evidence-based philosophy rooted in compassion. It focuses on enacting positive behavior change by supporting people without judgement, stigma, coercion, discrimination, or requiring them to change their behavior as a precondition of support.
Organizations and individuals who practice harm reduction believe that keeping people who use substances alive and safeguarding their health is the top priority. After that, harm reduction aims to offer safer alternatives to reduce and hopefully end substance use through prevention treatment and care. However, this course should only be pursued once the individual chooses to do to so, rather than treatment being imposed on them.
While harm reduction is commonly used to support people who use substances like drugs and alcohol, this approach has also been proven to be effective in other health scenarios – such as safer sex and HIV prevention.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse:
“Decades of research have shown that some harm reduction strategies provide significant individual and public health benefits, including preventing deaths from overdoses and preventing transmission of infectious diseases among people who use drugs and the larger community. Others reduce emergency department visits and costly healthcare services, while in some cases offering people who use drugs opportunities to connect to substance use treatment and other healthcare services in settings relatively free of stigma.”
One example of harm reduction in action is needle and syringe programs, which provide clean, sterile syringes to individuals using intravenous substances to help prevent the transmission of infectious diseases. Another example is widely sharing fentanyl testing strips and opioid overdose reversal treatments, like NARCAN.
What is NARCAN/naloxone?
NARCAN® is the brand name of the FDA-approved medication called “naloxone.” Designed to rapidly reverse an opioid overdose, NARCAN is an effective, lifesaving treatment that comes in the form of a nasal spray.
Naloxone medications like NARCAN are opioid antagonists, meaning they work by binding to opioid receptors in the brain and blocking the effects of opioids such as fentanyl, heroin, morphine, and oxycodone. While applying NARCAN may cause some uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms for individuals who are overdosing, these symptoms are mild and not life-threatening. There are no known negative side effects for applying NARCAN to someone who has not taken opioids.
Best of all, this lifesaving medication can be administered by anyone in Colorado – whether or not they have been trained. NARCAN is designed as a safe, straightforward, and easy to use nasal spray – with clear and detailed instructions provided with each kit.
In March 2023, NARCAN became the first naloxone nasal spray to be approved for over-the-counter (non-prescription) use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Why Boulder County, and why now?
Fentanyl is a highly addictive opioid, up to 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Even a tiny amount can be deadly, and it is commonly mixed into other illicit substances – like cocaine and methamphetamine (meth). In fact, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says one kilogram (equal to two pounds) of fentanyl has the potential to kill 500,000 people.
In recent years, fentanyl has increasingly been discovered in Boulder County’s street drug supply – as this brief timeline shows:
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In February 2021, Boulder County Public Health warned that street drugs containing fentanyl were circulating in the community and could significantly increase the risk of accidental overdose deaths.
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In August 2021, the City and County of Broomfield issued a public notice that counterfeit pills containing fentanyl and/or other dangerous additives were being seized in Boulder County. This same month, Boulder officials warned residents that fentanyl was increasingly being found in counterfeit oxycodone, Xanax, and other medications.
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In December 2021, the Colorado Sun reported 19 confirmed fentanyl-related deaths in Boulder County over the course of just nine months.
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In December 2022, law enforcement seized nearly 45 pounds of a fentanyl and cocaine mixture in Longmont.
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In April 2023, Boulder Police warned residents of a possible tainted or new strain of fentanyl after responding to five overdoses in 36 hours.
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In May 2023, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office announced the seizure of 30 pounds of fentanyl (about 124,000 pills) and 25 pounds of methamphetamine.
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In July 2023, The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment reported 228 overdoses in the first half of 2023, including 146 that involved fentanyl (16% increase compared to 2022).
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In September 2023, the Longmont Leader reported that powdered fentanyl had been found in Boulder County.
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In May 2024, Boulder County, in partnership with the Boulder County Drug Task Force and agencies across the Denver metro region, announced the seizure of approximately 29,000 counterfeit M30 fentanyl pills (along with other illicit substances).
While such news is concerning, there are positive signs that we are beginning to make progress to address the opioid and fentanyl crisis. Nationally, in 2023 drug-related deaths in the U.S. declined for the first time in five years.
While this early data is promising, we still have a long way to go to combat the threat of fentanyl and opioid overdoses facing our communities. The 2023 decrease in deaths was small, just 3%. And while 3,500 lives saved is significant, it means that over 100,000 people still lost their lives to overdoses in 2024, including nearly 75,000 from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. To help put this number in context, in the year 2000, fewer than 20,000 people died from any sort of overdose-related death.
Undoubtedly, harm reduction efforts – such as making NARCAN/naloxone and fentanyl testing strips more readily available – are playing an important role in preventing overdose deaths.
From October through December 2024, 54 boxes of NARCAN were dispensed by the vending machine. In addition, Clinica Family Health & Wellness distributed 3,848 boxes NARCAN/naloxone and 1,700 fentanyl testing strips in 2024 at no cost to our community via a network of kiosks and our 24/7 Walk-In Crisis & Addiction Services Center.
How you can help
You can find this first-of-its-kind vending machine at Boulder Community Health’s Beacon Center for Infectious Diseases (first floor lobby), located at 4800 Riverbend Road, Boulder, CO 80301. The Beacon Center is open Monday-Friday, 8am to 8pm. Visitors do not need a physician referral to access the supplies, and you can stop by and pick up supplies for yourself or a loved one.
In addition, this vending machine is just one part of a network of kiosks located across Boulder County and Broomfield where community members can access NARCAN/naloxone and fentanyl testing strips for free. Visit our You-CAN page for a full list of other locations.
To support our efforts to build a network of free, lifesaving harm reduction resources in our community, we invite you to visit our Donate page and contribute to the You-CAN campaign.