Davis Schneider Blue Jays Partner With Emergent on Naloxone Access
Toronto Blue Jays player Davis Schneider is teaming up with Emergent BioSolutions on a naloxone awareness push after his brother’s death in November 2020. The schneider blue jays partnership centers on making the overdose-reversal spray more visible in public places.
Davis Schneider and Emergent BioSolutions
Emergent BioSolutions publicly announced the partnership on Wednesday, putting Schneider in a paid spokesperson role. The company makes Narcan, the brand-name naloxone nasal spray, and the project is aimed at increasing public awareness and access to a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses if it is administered in time.
Schneider said his older brother Steven was a nurse who worked “every single day to help people in need.” He also said, “He was kind of like the big popular guy who played a lot of sports and everyone kind of loved him and I looked up to him every single day. Still do.”
Steven Schneider in New Jersey
Steven Schneider died of an opioid overdose in November 2020 in a relative’s home in New Jersey. He was 26 and alone in a room in the house when he died. Schneider said, “Probably the most devastating thing is that he was alone, he wasn’t with anyone,” and added that if someone had been there with naloxone, his life could have been saved.
Schneider said he did not know about naloxone before his brother’s death. He described Steven as “the Superman,” and said, “During COVID, everyone was kind of dealing with some stuff. It was just [an] abnormal time.” He added, “Mentally, he just wasn’t in a really good spot. And I didn’t know that. He never really kind of showed me he was kind of struggling... And, you know, he fell into some drug stuff,”
Canada’s naloxone gap
The partnership lands against a large public-health backdrop. More than 55,000 Canadians died in the opioid poisoning crisis between January 2016 and September 2025, and the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction says about 20 people die of opioid overdoses every day in Canada.
Naloxone kits are available for free across Canada, including in many pharmacies and health centres, but Dr. Taryn Lloyd, an emergency department physician and addiction medicine specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, said, “There is sometimes a denial about how close to home opioid overdoses can be, and people find themselves in scenarios or situations where they didn’t expect to be,”
For readers, the practical takeaway is simple: naloxone is already available without cost in many places, but Schneider’s push is aimed at getting more people to notice it before they need it.
