COURTESY STEVIE PIMBLOTT
Stevie Pimblott has set up a Narcan dispenser near Love Bank Park on Cherokee Street.
Stevie Pimblott has lived on Cherokee Street for eight years, and in that time he’s lost “a good number of people” to heroin and now, fentanyl, he says.
“It just kind of got the point where it was like, ‘Why is there no naloxone in the streets?’” He says. Naloxone, more commonly known by its brand name Narcan, reverses an opioid overdose by blocking the drug’s effects.
Many businesses along Cherokee Street have naloxone on hand, but Pimblott was worried about folks who need an intervention when the bars or restaurants are closed. So last week, he set up a box that would be accessible 24 hours a day.
The box was once a newspaper dispenser that a Cherokee Street artist used as part of a project. That person gave it to Pimblott, who is also a visual artist, and he repainted the dispenser, added an instructional poster and labeled it before setting it up at Love Bank Park, a community gathering spot.
Pimblott, who is originally from England but has lived in the states for more than a decade, gets the Naloxone for free from the Missouri Network for Opiate Reform and Recovery (4022 South Broadway, 844-732-3587, monetwork.org), often called MO Network.
Setting the Naloxone dispenser up did not take long, and maintaining it is easy. Pimblott says he walks by it every day and checks as he goes by.
The one issue that Pimblott has encountered is spreading the word about the dispenser. “My initial plan was to make posters for the machine. I was going to have it made in English and Spanish,” he says. “Now I’m working with other grassroots people to set up a referral network and hopefully be able to have a map that people can scan a QR code for and get access to all the places that are carrying naloxone in the future.”
Pimblott did some fundraising to cover the printing costs for the poster, but he quickly had enough money for that and now is working on mapping the network of naloxone dispensers. He hopes other people will be inspired to set up boxes in their own neighborhoods.
“There’s people that are doing this work really diligently,” he says. “I just wanted to get a box on Cherokee Street and hopefully inspire other people to do something grassroots about it, too.”
For more information on naloxone boxes and setting up your own, you can visit getmonaloxone.com, nomodeaths.org, or ENACT: Expanding Naloxone Access and Community Trainings in Missouri.
Coming soon: Riverfront Times Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting St. Louis stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
