It’s called Occam’s Razor: “The simplest answer is often the correct one.”

And so it holds with the opioid epidemic. We’re not here to tell you that solving the crisis will be easy. But as with anything, there are basic and positive steps that everyone can take.

Perhaps most important in the short term: overdose antidotes like Naloxone to keep people from dying before they have a chance to kick the habit.

Of course, for that to work it actually has to be put to use. So it’s surprising, and depressing, to learn so many police agencies still haven’t embraced the antidote.

Some counties can’t claim to be trying at all. Fayette County, which reported 41 drug-related overdose deaths in 2015 and has the fourth-highest rate of opioid-related overdose deaths in the state, has exactly one of its 14 municipal police departments carrying Naloxone, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.

Larger counties, such as Allegheny and Philadelphia, aren’t doing much better. Allegheny reported that just 19 of its 107 municipal police departments carry Naloxone, contributing to a dismal total of 24 reversals of opioid overdose events as of Oct. 3, according to information provided by DDAP Secretary Gary Tennis.

To better put that number in context: Washington County, which is about one-fifth Allegheny’s population, reported 80 reversals by police departments, according to Tennis. Butler County, which at about 186,000 residents is even smaller, reported 11 successful overdose reversals by police officers.

Do a little simple math and you get even more context — what you might call a reversal rate for the county, using the total number of overdose saves against the number of overdose deaths.

In Butler County, which reported 47 drug-related overdose deaths last year and 11 Naloxone reversals by police officers, that rate is nearly 25 percent. In Allegheny County, which reported 422 overdose deaths in 2015, it’s only 5.6 percent.

In Fayette and other counties in this region — Venango, Crawford, Greene, Lawrence — it’s zero percent.

No police department in any of those counties carries or uses Naloxone, according to Tennis.

That’s shameful, but they’re by no means the only ones in need of a reality check. Butler is one of only three counties in Western Pennsylvania where every municipal police department is equipped with anti-overdose medication. One of the other two, Forest County, doesn’t have any municipal police departments at all and are covered by state police. The other, Clarion County, didn’t report any Naloxone saves.

Butler County, which is just now beginning to roll out a community-based effort to address the opioid epidemic, has been far from perfect in its response. But in this we are setting an example departments throughout the region and state should imitate.

It has been two years since Pennsylvania made Naloxone widely available and shielded emergency responders from any liability related to its administration to an overdose victim. And yet, in a move that beggars belief, many police departments still refuse to carry the life-saving antidote.

For the vast majority of overdose calls (70 percent) police are the first responders, according to a 2015 survey by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania. The vast majority of departments (84 percent) had responded to a drug-related overdose call within the last year. And yet the vast majority (82 percent) also weren’t carrying Naloxone and had no plans to start.

That number has surely improved since then, and Tennis, in May, said that more than 320 municipal departments had been equipped with the antidote through a DDAP effort. But that is a fraction of the 1,117 law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania — the vast majority of which are municipal or county agencies.

Those departments without Naloxone are robbing their communities of life-saving programs that offer officers the chance to change the relationship between drug users and law enforcement, and to foster trust and understanding with a troubled population in dire need of help.