Colorado Adds $3.5 Million to Free Naloxone, Extending It Through 2028

Colorado's attorney general is adding $3.5 million in opioid settlement money to the state's free naloxone program, a move that keeps the drug flowing to schools, syringe service programs, jails' reentry partners, tribes and first responders through June 2028.

Attorney General Phil Weiser announced the funding on Oct. 22. It builds on a $3 million grant awarded in 2025 and brings his office's total commitment to the Naloxone Bulk Purchase Fund to $6.5 million.

"Naloxone saves lives, and no one should lose a loved one to an overdose because this medication wasn't available when they needed it," Weiser said in the release. The fund, he added, puts "the money we recovered from the companies that fueled the opioid crisis to work protecting Colorado communities."

The announcement is small next to the hundreds of millions of dollars the state expects to receive. It is also one of the few dollars in that settlement that reaches a person at the moment of an overdose, which is why the numbers attached to it are worth reading closely.

What the bulk fund actually buys

The Naloxone Bulk Purchase Fund is not a giveaway counter. It is a purchasing pool run by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and it has been running since 2019.

Eligible organizations order naloxone through CDPHE and pay nothing for it. The eligible list is broad but specific: syringe service programs, first responders, law enforcement agencies, schools and school districts, tribes with jurisdiction in Colorado, units of local government, reentry organizations, institutions of higher education and community-based organizations. For-profit entities are not eligible, and doses obtained through the fund cannot be resold.

Two requirements sit in front of every applicant, and they matter more than they look.

First, the organization needs a current standing order. A standing order is a written protocol that lets an agency dispense a medication to people who have not been examined by a clinician — in this case, CDPHE's chief medical officer issues one so that an agency can hand naloxone to anyone at risk of experiencing or witnessing an overdose. Schools and districts have an extra step: they must already have a policy covering possession, administration and maintenance of naloxone before they apply.

Second, since May 31, 2024, doses have been allocated under a prioritization plan that directs supply to the people most likely to be at the scene of an overdose. The state has said it will amend that plan if funding grows enough to widen eligibility — which is exactly what a $3.5 million injection may allow.

For a school nurse, a county jail's release planner or a syringe program in a rural county, this is the difference between a budget line nobody can fund and a supply that arrives.

The doses, the reversals, and the undercount

During fiscal year 2025–26, the fund made 364,072 doses available at no cost through 231 eligible agencies, with participation reaching all 64 Colorado counties.

Eight of those agencies reported back that naloxone distributed through their programs was used to reverse 5,100 overdoses in the same period.

That last figure is the one to hold carefully in your head. It is not a count of every overdose reversed with bulk-fund naloxone, because organizations are not required to report reversals at all — only eight volunteered the data. The true number, as the attorney general's office itself notes, is likely substantially higher.

The undercount runs in the same direction for the dose count. A dose in a box in a supply closet has not yet saved anyone; the 5,100 is what happened when a fraction of 364,072 doses met an actual emergency.

A state where overdose deaths are rising

The timing of the announcement is not accidental.

According to CDPHE data cited in the release, 1,175 Coloradans died of opioid overdoses in 2025, including 980 deaths involving fentanyl.

Federal provisional data tells the same story from a different angle — and a more uncomfortable one for anyone who assumed the national decline had reached Colorado. CDC's National Center for Health Statistics counts 1,847 drug overdose deaths among Colorado residents in the 12 months ending May 2026, up from 1,674 in the 12 months ending May 2025. That is roughly a 10 percent increase. Over the same months, the national figure fell from 72,373 (12 months ending August 2025) to 65,351 (12 months ending May 2026).

Within Colorado's 1,847, opioid-involved deaths account for 1,256 and synthetic opioids other than methadone for 1,048; psychostimulants appear in 906 and cocaine in 360. Provisional counts are revised as investigations close, so the exact numbers will move. The direction has been consistent for a year.

That combination — deaths climbing while the rest of the country's curve bends down — is the strongest argument for a statewide supply program that does not depend on a person finding a pharmacy, a clinic or a treatment bed first.

Where $6.5 million sits inside $912 million

Colorado is on track to receive more than $912 million from the nationwide settlements with drug manufacturers and distributors over 18 years. As of December 2025, it had received $205.7 million.

How that money gets split is set by the state's opioid settlement memorandum of understanding, signed in August 2021. It divides every settlement dollar four ways: 10 percent to the state as a "State Share," 20 percent directly to participating local governments, 60 percent to regions, and 10 percent to specific statewide abatement infrastructure projects.

The $6.5 million for naloxone comes out of the state's 10 percent share.

That detail explains both the fund's strength and its fragility. Ninety percent of the money is decided closer to home — by counties, municipalities and regional councils — where naloxone competes with treatment beds, recovery housing, youth prevention and everything else in the approved-purpose list. The bulk fund exists because one statewide purchaser can do something a hundred local budgets cannot: buy in volume and standardize what arrives.

It also means the program's future depends on a share that is fixed and finite. Settlement payments run out. Naloxone purchasing does not.

Coloradans can track where the money goes through the state's public settlement dashboard, linked from the attorney general's release.

What a family in Colorado can do this week

None of the above requires waiting for a grant cycle if you are an individual.

• Carry naloxone. It is available at Colorado pharmacies without a personal prescription, and the state's Save a Life Colorado site lists free naloxone locations by address and radius. If you live with or love someone who uses drugs, this is the highest-value thing you can do today.
• Run an organization that should be enrolled? Start with a standing order from CDPHE, then apply to the bulk fund. Schools and districts should check the policy requirement first.
• If you find someone unresponsive: call 911, give naloxone, and be ready to repeat the dose — naloxone is not a substitute for emergency care, and the medication wears off before the opioid does.
• Call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or 1-800-662-4357 for the SAMHSA National Helpline, which handles treatment referrals and insurance questions 24 hours a day in English and Spanish. Colorado Crisis Services, linked from CDPHE's overdose prevention pages, offers 24/7 call, text and in-person behavioral health support.

Our guides on how to get naloxone and what to do in the days after an overdose walk through the practical steps, and how to read your county's overdose data explains where the numbers in this article come from.

What's next

The funding runs through June 2028, which gives the bulk fund two full fiscal years of certainty it has not had before.

Three things are worth watching. Whether CDPHE now expands the prioritization plan to admit more categories of organizations, since the money is no longer year to year. Whether the state publishes distribution at the county and agency level, which would let a local health department see whether its share of 364,072 doses matches its share of the deaths. And whether Colorado's overdose curve turns before the settlement checks stop arriving — the one outcome the fund cannot buy on its own.