SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake Harm Reduction Project is expanding access to naloxone, a medication that reverses the effects of an opioid overdose, with a new "Naloxey Boxey” downtown.
The organization added a third “Naloxey Boxey” on Sunday at Under the Umbrella Bookstore. The box is like a Little Free Library, but for naloxone. People can pick up the medication in front of the bookstore anonymously or after hours.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 664 fatal drug overdoses in Utah in 2024. Of those cases, 60.9 percent had a potential bystander who could have intervened by calling 911, giving naloxone or taking other measures.
In 2023, fentanyl was a factor in 47.9 percent of drug overdose deaths.
“That brought it home… how many Utahns are being affected by the overdose epidemic,” said Mackenzie Bray, executive director for the Salt Lake Harm Reduction Project. "It’s not this rare thing. Everyone knows someone that has.”
That includes Bray. In 2016, Bray’s brother died from a heroin overdose.
"My brother lived with an addiction for a really long time,” Bray said. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t a surprise because we knew it was common, but there was also this feeling that it didn’t have to happen — there were things that could’ve been done.”
Dr. Omar Syed, an addiction medicine doctor at the University of Utah, said fentanyl overdoses happen more often than people think.
“There are plenty of people who take prescription opioid medications, plenty of people's parents, aunts, uncles, loved ones. You can have an unintentional overdose for a variety of reasons,” Dr. Syed explained. “It’s important to have. You can save everybody’s life.”
Since January, the two boxes outside its office in Sugar House and inside Indie Square, a nonprofit co-working space in Murray, have distributed nearly 600 doses of naloxone, according to the organization.
The new box means a whole lot to Bray, who says she’s taking action for people like her brother.
“I don’t blame him or anyone else,” Bray said. "It’s just this lack of community and lack of care that we’re hoping to improve so that others don’t have to go through that same thing.”
