The Minneapolis Fire department is adding a third Narcan vending machine at Station 5, one of the top stations responding to the highest number of overdose calls in the city. The previous two locations have distributed more than 6,000 doses of NARCAN since the initiative began last year.
The move is welcomed by a mother who lost her son five years ago.
"Tyler was in recovery from opioid addiction," explains Michelle Hein who shared the story of her son's death as a way to help prevent it from happening to anyone else.
Her son was in recovery for four months and bought a Percocet pill online. That pill turned out to be one hundred percent fentanyl.
"I didn't know what the word fentanyl even was until seven months before Tyler passed away," explained Hein. "And this is something in society today that everybody should know what that word is."
Hein says she started the Fentanyl-Free Communities Foundation, which also works on harm reduction like making sure Narcan is readly availe, in the fight against dealers who are profiting from the crisis.
"Drug dealers are just trying to get people addicted to it, and then they're addicted until they're dead," she added.
The new vending machine from the City of Minneapolis, which offers free NARCAN kits containing two doses each, builds on the success of two existing.
The program is led by the Minneapolis Health Department in partnership with Hennepin County and the Minneapolis Fire Department.
“Every life lost to an overdose is preventable — and we’re treating it that way. This third NARCAN vending machine is part of our citywide strategy to make life-saving tools more accessible, more visible, and more integrated,” said Mayor Jacob Frey. “By installing a third machine, we’re sending a clear message: harm reduction saves lives, and Minneapolis is all in.”
Minneapolis NARCAN vending machines are located at:
Fire Station 5, 2700 Bloomington Ave. S.. Fire Station 14, 2002 Lowry Ave. N. (installed May 2025), and Fire Station 21, 3209 38th St. E. (installed July 2024).
The three Minneapolis machines provide 24-hour access and are located outside. They each contain more than 100 boxes of NARCAN, each holding two doses, and they are restocked weekly.