Who Owns Narcan?

Naloxone itself dates to the early 1960s, when it was synthesized as an opioid antagonist. It was approved for injection in 1971 and spent decades as a hospital and ambulance staple for reversing overdoses. The problem was that the people best positioned to save a life, bystanders, family members, and police, had no usable way to give it.

Adapt Pharma, founded by Irish entrepreneur Seamus Mulligan, set out to solve the delivery problem. It developed a needle-free unit-dose nasal spray that a layperson could administer in seconds. The FDA approved Narcan Nasal Spray 4 mg in November 2014, the first intranasal naloxone product, and Health Canada followed.

Uptake was driven by the opioid crisis. As fentanyl deaths climbed through the late 2010s, states passed standing orders and naloxone access laws, police departments began carrying the spray, and pharmacies stocked it behind the counter. Emergent BioSolutions bought Adapt Pharma in October 2018 for up to $735 million, betting that naloxone would become a mass-market public health product.

The pivotal regulatory milestone came in March 2023, when the FDA approved Narcan for over-the-counter sale, the first naloxone product of any kind to reach OTC status. It hit retail shelves nationwide by late summer 2023 at a suggested price around $45 for the two-dose pack, moving the product from pharmacies' behind-counter space to open retail, big-box stores, and vending machines.

Since then, Emergent has extended the product's 48-month shelf life claim, launched a Generation II device with broader temperature storage allowances, and distributed more than 100 million doses in the US and Canada since 2016. A three-year agreement worth approximately $65 million with the Ontario Ministry of Health expanded the Canadian government channel.