Congress is moving forward with a bill that could change how emergency rooms handle suspected drug overdoses.
Dubbed “Tyler’s Law,” the legislation would require the Department of Health and Human Services to figure out exactly how often hospital ERs are actually testing for drugs like fentanyl, marijuana, cocaine, and amphetamines when someone comes in after an overdose. The bill is named after Tyler Shamash, a 19-year-old who died in 2018 from fentanyl ingestion but wasn’t tested for the drug when he arrived at the hospital.
While the primary focus is squarely on the fentanyl crisis, the House version of the bill loops in marijuana and other narcotics, asking HHS to study the costs, privacy risks, and potential benefits of standardizing these tests. They’re also supposed to issue guidance on whether ERs should just make fentanyl testing a routine procedure across the board.
The House committee just gave the bill a thumbs-up, but there’s a catch: the Senate has its own version of the bill, and they already stripped out all the language mentioning marijuana and other drugs to keep it strictly focused on fentanyl. Now, they’ll have to iron out the differences before anything becomes law.
Dabbin-Dad Newsroom
