Mark Bonifacio/New York Daily News New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, along with Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, made the announcement Tuesday. 
 
 Thousands of city cops will soon carry a life-saving drug that will help prevent heroin overdoses, officials said Tuesday. 
 
 In the coming weeks, 20,000 cops — more than half of the entire NYPD — will be carrying doses of Naloxone, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced. 
 
 Naloxone is a nasal spray that helps revive victims suffering from a heroin or prescription drug overdose. 
 
 Mark Bonifacio/New York Daily News The 20,000 NYPD will carry Naloxone to help prevent heroin overdoses. 
 
 “You cannot prosecute yourself out of a drug epidemic,” Schneiderman said after announcing that he will be spending $1 million to provide the NYPD with the drug, nasal injectors and the training needed to utilize the drug. 
 
 The money will come from money collected in drug forfeiture cases, which Bratton called an “ironic” and “creative” way to use the seized funds. 
 
 Mark Bonifacio/New York Daily News Bratton said it was “creative” to take money from drug forfeiture cases and use it to fund this initiative. 
 
 Bratton said officers on patrol in areas where heroin use is more prevalent will be the first to receive the drug and training. 
 
 Officials announced last month that all cops on Staten Island would be provided with the drug. ||||| Police officers across New York City will soon carry medications to reverse the effects of an overdose from heroin or opioid prescription pills, officials are set to announce Tuesday, expanding from a successful program on Staten Island to all precincts citywide. 
 
 The $1.2 million effort, paid for with funds from the New York State attorney general’s office, would give 19,500 kits with the anti-overdose medication naloxone to patrol officers and to other city officers most likely to come into street-level contact with overdose victims. 
 
 Those encounters are increasingly frequent in the city as well as around the country amid skyrocketing heroin use and opioid pill abuse. In Suffolk County, officers have saved more than 184 lives since a pilot program began there in 2012. On Friday, officers on Staten Island twice revived residents in the throes of an overdose by administering the drug. 
 
 Bringing the drug to officers around the city “will literally save lives,” the state attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said in a statement ahead of a news conference Tuesday morning with the city’s police commissioner, William J. Bratton. 
 
 Mr. Schneiderman has committed $5 million, drawn from criminal and civil asset seizures, to reimburse police departments across the state for their purchases of naloxone. A single kit — two prefilled syringes of the drug, a pair of atomizers that allow it to be given through the nose, sterile gloves and instructions — costs roughly $60, his office said. 
 
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 The police department in the town of Guilderland, outside Albany, was the first to have the cost of its 35 kits of naxolone paid for by the attorney general as part of the program. 
 
 More than 150 other departments around the state have applied for the money, the attorney general’s office said, and payments for 25,000 kits have been approved, with the New York Police Department by far the largest single recipient. 
 
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 It was not immediately clear when New York City officers would begin carrying the overdose antidote, where the department would buy the drug and at what price. Under the program, each police department is responsible for negotiating its own purchases through distributors. Stephen Davis, the department’s top spokesman, said those questions had yet to be answered. “Training is going to be a big factor here,” he said. 
 
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 Increased nationwide demand has led to some fluctuation in the availability of naloxone. A spokeswoman for Hospira, which makes an injectable form of the drug, said the company was ramping up production to meet additional demand after experiencing some recent back orders. 
 
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 Naloxone, which has been available for decades in emergency rooms, works by effectively bumping away the opiate molecules that attach to the brain and slow breathing to fatal levels. The results are rapid and there are no harmful effects if the drug is given to someone who is not overdosing or has taken too much of a non-opiate drug, such as cocaine. 
 
 One of the men revived on Friday on Staten Island was found unconscious on the pavement in the Bulls Head neighborhood, in his hand a bottle of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, which is often used in combination with opiates. An arriving officer suspected an overdose and, although naloxone would have no effect on an overdose from Xanax alone, administered the medication. 
 
 The man, a 27-year-old whose name was not released, revived somewhat after the first dose, the police said, and regained consciousness after the second. He was taken to Richmond University Medical Center. ||||| To view our videos, you need to enable JavaScript. Learn how . install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now . Then come back here and refresh the page. 
 
 City police officers will soon be equipped with a life saving heroin antidote as part of a plan to reduce the number of overdoses across the five boroughs. 
 
 State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says the state will provide more than $1.1 million to equip police officers with an overdose antidote. 
 
 More than 19,000 officers will be trained on how to use the kits. 
 
 The drug will be distributed in high-risk areas first. It comes in nasal spray form, which officials say make it safer and easier to use than the injectable form. 
 
 "The big breakthrough was when they developed the nasal spray so it's now safe to administer, you don't have to worry about get it. It's not safe in the field to worry about trying to do an intravenous injection, and that was a limiting factor. It is not, we're giving this out all over the state of New York, this is something that will save lives," Schneiderman said. 
 
 "One of the ways that we'll roll out will be those areas of the city that have been experiencing, like Staten Island, more significant heroin overdose issues. That's where we'll effectively seek to put these first as we roll it out over. Just imagine 20,000 officers even with the 45 minute training experience, it's still going to take us a while to go citywide with it," said Police Commissioner William Bratton. 
 
 The program is being funded by money seized in drug busts. 
 
 Officers in nearby Suffolk County have been participating in a pilot program with the kits since 2012. 
 
 They say they have prevented nearly 200 overdose deaths in that time.
– Heroin use is spiking so dramatically that the NYPD is adding a new tool to its arsenal: an antidote. About 20,000 officers, or more than half the force, will soon start carrying the drug naloxone to treat drug users suffering an overdose, reports the Daily News. The kits cost about $60 apiece, and the money will come fittingly enough from asset seizures in drug cases, says state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. In all, his office is committing $5 million to pay for the drugs at police departments across the state, reports the New York Times. One big reason for the decision is the success of naloxone in pilot programs. Authorities say they've saved 184 lives in Suffolk County since 2012 with the drug, and on Friday alone, two men on Staten Island were revived. Officers won't have to give people shots—the new kits have easy-to-use nasal sprays instead, reports NY1. (The FDA is on board with naloxone, too.)