Drug Overdose Bills to be Introduced in Georgia House, Senate
Two heroin users in west Atlanta overdosed Friday night.
But they didn’t die. 
A quick-acting community member administered an overdose-reversing drug known as Naloxone.
An audio version of this story
“That makes the fifth person this year who’s been saved by having Naloxone in a community member’s hand,” says Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition executive director Mona Bennett.
AHRC workers often carry the drug. But they, like the unnamed community member, are breaking Georgia law because they are not licensed medical personnel.
But Bennett says state Rep. Sharon Cooper (R-Marietta), a nurse who chairs the House Health and Human Services Committee, plans to sponsor a bill to make Naloxone available to anyone by prescription.
Another bill about to come to the floor would also save lives, Bennett says.
Known as the “911 Good Samaritan Bill,” it protects someone who calls 911 to report a drug overdose from being arrested for their own involvement.
(To learn more about the Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition and another law that makes what they do illegal in Georgia, listen to the WABE documentary, “Stuck in the Bluff.”)
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