Just Say Know: A Social History of How Naloxone Came to Matter

This keynote speech for “Changing Minds: Societies, States, the Science and Psychoactive Substances in History,” the annual meeting of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society, was delivered on Thursday, June 13, 2019, at Shanghai University in China. Drawing attention to the knowledge questions embedded in the harm reduction movement, this talk examines how naloxone—a narcotic antagonist approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1971 to reverse opioid overdose—came to matter for the harm reduction movement in the United States. The talk situated naloxone as a “technology of solidarity” useful for animating lively selves, in contrast with previous uses of narcotic antagonists for surveillance and social control. During the 1990s and early 2000s, activists, advocates, and researchers moved naloxone from its relatively settled status within a medical enclave to the unsettled status of a commodity for mass distribution.