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The Tennessee Conservative [By Jason Vaughn] –
A new law in Tennessee requires hospitals to report all fatal overdoses to local law enforcement.
Senate Bill 1891, sponsored by Senator Joey Hensley (R-District 28-Hohenwald), updates an existing law that already requires that hospitals report all deaths by poison or suffocation to police. The new legislation adds the wording “fatal drug overdose” to that requirement.
The companion House Bill 1905 was sponsored by Representative Clay Doggett (R-District 70-Pulaski).
The legislation reads, “Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 38-1-101(a)(1), is amended by deleting the language “suffering from the effects of poison, or suffocation” and substituting instead the language “suffering from the effects of poison, suffocation, or a fatal drug overdose, to the extent allowed by state and federal law.”
The intention of the bill is to help police determine where people are obtaining these drugs in an effort to stop those individuals who are distributing them.
“When a drug overdose comes into the emergency room or the hospital, they need to know who supplied that drug to the individual,” stated Hensley.
“The bill is very well-meaning in that it’s designed so that law enforcement can find where there are pockets of overdoses that are happening,” said Dr. Mark Lasko.
Lasko works with Samaritan Recovery Community, a rehab facility in Nashville.
Although the bill was eventually passed unanimously, it did have to go through several rounds of rewrites before it was finally approved. The language of the bill initially said that all overdoses must be reported to police, making some legislators afraid that overdose victims would not go to the hospital for treatment out of fear of punishment.
“There was concern with that aspect that people might not go,” said Hensley. “But then we changed it to fatal overdose, so that narrowed it down considerably.”
Lasko is hopeful that the newly worded law will help to get some of the dangerous drugs off of Tennessee streets.
According to the most recent data released on the Tennessee Department of Health’s drug overdose dashboard, there were 3,032 deaths from overdosing in 2020.
About the Author: Jason Vaughn, Media Coordinator for The Tennessee Conservative ~ Jason previously worked for a legacy publishing company based in Crossville, TN in a variety of roles through his career. Most recently, he served as Deputy Director for their flagship publication. Prior, he was a freelance journalist writing articles that appeared in the Herald Citizen, the Crossville Chronicle and The Oracle among others. He graduated from Tennessee Technological University with a Bachelor’s in English-Journalism, with minors in Broadcast Journalism and History. Contact Jason at news@TennesseeConservativeNews.com
