Police and emergency responders will get help dealing with Pennsylvania’s continuing opioid addiction and overdose crisis, after Gov. Tom Wolf on Friday announced the state was funneling 120,000 doses of the anti-overdose antidote naloxone to emergency responders stateside.

That’s great news for people who recognize that no one wants — or deserves — to die like that. It means more lives can be saved amid a swell of more powerful opioids that can require multiple doses of naloxone to counteract. Gov. Wolf said the antidote has saved at least 4,000 lives since 2015, when the state began ordering pharmacies to make it available without a prescription.

Those who want to adopt a more hard-line approach to this epidemic should also find something to be happy about: Wolf on Friday also gave his support to legislation that would allow relatives of addicts to force them into substance abuse treatment.

That bill, by the state Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa, would allow families to file petitions before county officials that, if successful, would compel drug users to go into treatment. It would set up a process similar to the one by which people with mental health problems are committed.

Simply put, these two things are sides of the same coin. Addicts need treatment, but no one can get clean if they’re already dead. Butler County has already lost 69 people this year to fatal drug overdoses — a pace that seems sure to eclipse last year’s total of 74 overdose deaths. The year before that, in 2015, 47 people died from fatal drug overdoses in the county.

Pennsylvania is also attempting to go after the crisis at its source, with pending legislation that would limit opioid prescriptions in many cases, regulate downstream treatment facilities like recovery houses, and require opioid education in schools.

The fight against opioid addiction and overdose will also get a boost next week from the federal government, when President Donald Trump declares the crisis to be a national emergency. That means federal dollars for law enforcement and medical care and rehabilitation, as well as — hopefully — a renewed national focus on the crisis. The nation finally needs to throw its entire weight behind this fight.

It’s fair to criticize both the state and national response to this issue as far, far too late. There’s no way to change that fact, but we can and should do everything we can to ensure no one can claim it was not only too late, but too little as well.