Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., is confident of significant bipartisan support in Congress for the proposed Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act being debated on the Senate floor.
Capito anticipates the bill will clear the Senate and be sent to the House later this week or next week. She also is hopeful that amendments she is sponsoring will be considered.
She said the legislation is receiving bipartisan support because many states, including West Virginia, "are being deeply affected by heroin and opioid abuse. It is a broad and balanced approach to answering this crisis."
"My fear is we're going to lose a generation here unless we act aggressively," Capito said. "This (bill) really fleshes out the programs that the funding can go to. ... I think we all joined together and recognized this is something we have to address together."
Capito has introduced four amendments: to create a Cradle Act to protect the youngest victims of the epidemic; set Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for acute pain to prevent overprescribing of painkillers; reduce the amount of unused medications; and prevent overdose deaths.
The Cradle Act directs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to establish new guidelines for residential pediatric recovery centers, like Lily's Place in Huntington, that treat babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome. Capito said there were at least 79 confirmed cases of babies born addicted to drugs in West Virginia in 2015.
Citing a need for new CDC guidelines, Capito said a person who experiences acute pain after a procedure such as wisdom tooth extraction is prescribed a painkiller, but might need medication for only 48 or 72 hours.
"The CDC hasn't set up guidelines for that," she said, adding the agency's current focus is only on guidelines for opioids prescribed for chronic pain.
Another Capito amendment would allow prescriptions for opioid medications to be filled partially, reducing the number of unused painkillers in households.
"Allowing the partial filling of opioid prescriptions is one way we can reduce the drug supply and prevent unused prescriptions from ending up in the wrong hands," she said.
Capito also has introduced an amendment that urges physicians to co-prescribe naloxone, a lifesaving drug that reverses overdoses, alongside opioid prescriptions.
"You would make it (naloxone) more widely available ... A family member could administer it if there was an overdose for any reason. The good thing about naloxone is it doesn't have side effects," she said.
Capito also co-sponsored an amendment by U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., to allow funding to be used to provide follow-up services to individuals who have received opioid overdose reversal drugs.
"In the emergency room, they administer naloxone and the person comes out of the overdose. There is no kind of public follow-up," Capito said. "That's why we need the follow-up to make sure there is a more comprehensive approach to end the drug addiction, rather than just end the overdose."