Huge news!

 The Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Amendment Act of 2012 was introduced on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 in DC City Council!  This is incredible news and an important step in saving lives within the District.

The Good Samaritan Coalition would like to thank Tommy Wells and Phil Mendelson for supporting and introducing the bill. You can follow the bill's progress here.


The push to pass the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Amendment Act of 2012 has just begun.  If you would like to get involved, please e-mail StopODinDC@gmail.com or StopODinDC@googlegroups.com to be added to our listserv.

Spread the word and help us save lives here in DC!

At 4.38%, the level of drug dependence or abuse in DC tops both the national average (2.81%) as well as any other state in the union. Have you signed our Good Samaritan petition yet? Tell Major Gray and DC City Council to stop overdose death, pass the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act! Please spread the word and help us save lives in DC!

Walkathon Outreach

Earlier this month we participated in the annual Help the Homeless Walkathon on the National Mall. The walk is the largest of its kind, bringing together service organizations, city officials, and thousands of local residents together to help prevent and end homelessness in the District. Many of those who experience homelessness also have co-occurring substance abuse issues and would benefit from the passage of the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act in DC.  By participating in the walk, we wanted to show our support for fellow organizations that serve those with substance abuse issues in the city, as well as spread the word about our bill. It was a very inspiring morning on the Mall, filled with good friends, good conversation, and lots of advocating for social change! And, in just over a half hour, we were able to obtain 45 signatures for the Good Samaritan Petition! Thank you all for all of your help and support, we couldn’t do it without you.

Thank Yous All Around!

We would like to give a HUGE thanks to the Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service and the Public Service Grant Commission for funding our efforts to pass the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act in DC. This funding is paramount to our success and will go a long way towards securing community support and involvement. 

We deeply appreciate the award. Thank you so very much.

Good Samaritan Petition

The Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Coalition has started meeting with members of DC City Council in order to continue the process of turning our bill into a law.  For the most part, our meetings have gone well and we are gearing up for what lies ahead.  

One vital piece to Good Sam's future is community support.  As such, our group has created a petition to support the cause.  The link can be found here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stopodindc/

Please make a difference and help us in our mission to save lives.

The Importance of Naloxone

When we set about designing the DC Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act, one of the biggest focuses for our group was the availability and distribution of Naloxone (Narcan).  Given in response to an opioid-related overdose ((i.e. oxycodone, codene, hydromorphone, morphine, heroin), naloxone can partially or complete reverse the opioid effects including respiratory depression (decreased breathing or no breathing at all), sedation, and hypotension (low-blood pressure), thus saving a life.  Our group felt very strongly that this piece at least be considered in the legislation. 

Naloxone is an effective and safe drug (FDA).  Distribution of naloxone has been credited in both diminishing drug-related overdose and preventing excess death.  Knowing these facts is one thing, but putting faces, names and stories to the benefits of naloxone is something else entirely.

This year, The Harm Reduction Coalition founded a Facebook group focusing on this specific issue.  Within the Facebook page, The Harm Reduction Coalition (HRC) has posted multiple video accounts on the benefits of naloxone, highlighting its affects and granting first-person testimony to such an important issue.  Per HRC:  "I'm the Evidence" uses video advocacy to give a face and a voice to overdose stories happening all over the world. It provides an outlet for these stories as a way to mobilize the drug using community and harm reduction advocates around the promotion of naloxone availability and use."

Take a look when you have a moment at I Am the Evidence:  Naloxone Works.  

The Start of the DC Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act

Just over three weeks ago, our group of GW public health students completed a needs assessment focusing on drug-overdose in Washington, DC.  What we discovered was astounding.  In DC, an average of two people die every week from drug-related overdose.  Furthermore, in 2009, accidental overdose in DC lead to 50% more deaths than car accidents. Drug-use in the District of Columbia expands across all wards and every socio-economic group, affecting all races and a wide range of age groups.   In a 2009 report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), researchers found that “drug and alcohol abuse rates are higher in the District of Columbia than anywhere else in the country” (SAMHSA, 2011).  These numbers demonstrate an urgent need for action.   With so many susceptible individuals and a significant amount of mortality from drug overdose, it is clear something needs to be done in order to save lives.

The laws surrounding drug-use in DC are complex and the issue of drug-use itself is even more complicated.  Ultimately, however, fear of prosecution, which is cited as the main reason individuals do not access emergency services for drug overdose, vastly increases drug-related mortality.  The Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act hopes to change this.

Our goal with the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act is simply to prevent death from drug-related overdose.  Our team is proposing to draft and pass The Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act for DC.  As it now stands in DC and in most states, people who dial 911, drop a friend off at a hospital, or otherwise try to get care for someone in the midst of a drug overdose are subject to prosecution for use and possession of drugs.  New Mexico was the first state to address the most common barrier to seeking care—fear of criminal persecution-- and passed the Overdose Prevention- Limited Immunity Act, effective June 2007.  

 

To date, The Good Samaritan Act exists in eight states. After evaluating each state’s law, we will be modeling DC’s proposed legislation after the following states: New York, Washington State, and Connecticut.  Because DC legislature has been very supportive of harm reduction laws in the past, such as needle exchange and medicinal marijuana, we will be striving to create the model Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Law for the United States and include provisions that other states failed to pass.

Our proposed bill will include each of the following provisions:

(NOTE:  We are just passing the drafting phase currently.  We hope to work with multiple community partners in designing this bill and want to gather support from all individuals, including law enforcement, health care providers, etc.)

• Legal protection from arrest, charge and prosecution for the following:
• Possession of drugs (including prescribed narcotics that are scheduled under DC Code and underage alcohol at the scene of an overdose)
• Possession of any drug paraphernalia, such as syringes at the scene of an overdose 
• Possession of drug residue.  DC Code states that drug residue can lead to arrest 
• Sharing drugs at the scene of an overdose (whether for compensation or as a gift)
• Outstanding warrants, including bench warrants, stemming from the same conduct that is protected at the scene of an overdose (i.e. a warrant for failing to appear in court for a drug or paraphernalia possession charge, or underage alcohol consumption, or a warrant for failure to comply with community supervision requirements, such as missing an appointment).  This does not mean that the Good Samaritan or overdose victim would be protected from violent crime; only persons with warrants involving non-violent or drug possession charges would be protected. 

•  Legal protection for good faith peer administration of naloxone
• Legal protection to any persons, including all health care workers, who administer naloxone to an individual experiencing an overdose and immunity from liability for practitioners who prescribe naloxone.   

Naloxone is an opoid antagonist and serves to reverse the effects of opoids, such as heroin and some prescription pain medications. Washington State, New York and Connecticut have protections for both medical personnel and “Good Samaritans” who administer naloxone in good faith.  Additionally, New York’s law directs the state commissioner to publish findings on statewide opioid overdose death and emergency room data that shall include, at a minimum, the following data: (a) information on opioid overdose deaths, including age, gender, ethnicity, and geographic location; (b) data on emergency room utilization for the treatment of opioid overdose; (c) data on utilization of pre-hospital services; (d) suggested improvements in data collection (Laws of New York, Article 33, Title 1, Sec. 3309).  We will include this data collection piece to our legislation to assist with the future evaluation of DC’s Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act.  

If we are successful in passing the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act, we will continue working with our coalition of substance abuse service providers to build a partnership with DC’s Health Department, specifically with the Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration (APRA).  Using their resources and the community partnerships in the coalition, we will work together on a health communication piece to educate the community about the Good Samaritan legislation.  To that end, we would propose this project to the George Washington Public Health Communication and Marketing Department as a possible Culminating Experience opportunity.  

Finally, we hope to work with the coalition and DC’s Health Department on a health promotion component of the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act.  We will work with our community partners to create a Good Samaritan Resource guide that identifies in several languages including brail, by neighborhood and Ward, a substance abuse organization and community outreach worker who is available to meet with the overdose victim or “Good Samaritan”.  As mentioned before, it is challenging to build relationships and trust among substance abusers, but with the support of several community organizations and the DC City Council the Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act will save two lives a week and be a bridge to establishing a foundation of trust for this vulnerable population.  

If you have any questions about the DC Good Samaritan Overdose Prevention Act or you would like to get involved, please e-mail us at StopODinDC@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @StopODinDC