In most circumstances, a report declaring that the Federal Government has saved the lives of 1700 Australians would be headline news.

Perhaps the issue, at least in the eyes of most of the media, is that many of these lives are those of injecting drug users and so maybe they don’t count as much.

The number, which does have some qualifiers attached, comes from an independent evaluation of the government’s take-home naloxone pilot, which has been funding pharmacies and drug services to provide the overdose reversal agent for free and without a prescription.

Running in NSW, SA and WA since 2019, it has cost just under $14 million.