Senators Hassan, Cornyn Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Expand Access to New Opioid Reversal Agents

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the Halting the Epidemic of Addiction and Loss (HEAL) Act, which would expand access to new opioid overdose reversal agents in addition to naloxone by updating guidance and grant language from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

“As narcotics continue to evolve and become more deadly, we must keep up and expand access to more sophisticated overdose reversal agents,” said Sen. Hassan. “Our bipartisan bill will help increase access to these new reversal agents that will help save more Granite Staters’ lives.”

This bipartisan bill is part of Senator Hassan’s ongoing efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. Since 2017, Senator Hassan has successfully worked to secure a nine-fold increase in funding to New Hampshire to address the substance use disorder epidemic. She successfully worked to pass into law the Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act to increase the number of medical professionals authorized to prescribe the gold standard of opioid treatment. Senator Hassan and a bipartisan group of Senators also called on the DEA to take further action to remove barriers to this treatment. She also worked with her colleagues to pass into law the bipartisan INTERDICT Act, which has provided critical tools to Customs and Border Protection to help detect and intercept fentanyl and other illegal synthetic opioids. 

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