Existing law requires the State Department of Public Health, subject to an appropriation in the Budget Act of 2016, to award funding to local health departments, local government agencies, or on a competitive basis to other organizations, as specified, to support or establish programs that provide naloxone to first responders and to at-risk opioid users through programs that serve at-risk drug users.

This bill would authorize the Counties of San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange, until January 1, 2029, would, until January 1, 2029, establish the Overdose Response Team Fund, to be available upon appropriation by the Legislature, for the administration of grants by the Board of State and Community Corrections to county sheriffs’ departments’ task forces established for overdose response. The bill would authorize a department receiving a grant to establish and implement overdose response teams with the sheriff’s sheriffs’ departments of those counties. The bill would require the teams to only respond to and investigate overdose deaths and nonfatal overdoses involving juveniles and multiple victims, with a focus on overdose deaths related to fentanyl. overdoses. The bill would require counties participating in these programs to send annual reports to the Assembly Select Committee on Fentanyl, Opioid Addiction, and Overdose Prevention, Committee on Public Safety, including the number of arrests of drug dealers in each county, for specified crimes, the amount of fentanyl and opioids seized in each county, and the number of units of opioid antagonists found at each overdose scene. administered, distributed, or recovered at each overdose scene.