I 
112TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 6311 
To prevent deaths occurring from drug overdoses. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
AUGUST 2, 2012 
Ms. EDWARDS (for herself, Mrs. BONO MACK, Ms. NORTON, Ms. LEE of Cali-
fornia, Mr. GRIJALVA, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mrs. NAPOLITANO, Mr. 
LYNCH, Ms. BROWN of Florida, Mr. BLUMENAUER, Mr. BUCHANAN, Mr. 
CARNAHAN, Mr. CARSON of Indiana, Mr. TOWNS, Mr. MORAN, Mr. 
KEATING, Ms. RICHARDSON, Ms. WILSON of Florida, Mr. OLVER, Mr. 
HINCHEY, Mr. CONYERS, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Mr. DAVIS of Illi-
nois, Mr. TIERNEY, Mr. LEWIS of Georgia, Mrs. CAPITO, Ms. BASS of 
California, and Mr. RUSH) introduced the following bill; which was re-
ferred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce 
A BILL 
To prevent deaths occurring from drug overdoses. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Stop Overdose Stat 
Act’’ or the ‘‘S.O.S Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
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(1) According to the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention, a drug overdose fatality occurs 
in the United States every 14 minutes. More people 
now die from drug-related deaths than traffic fatali-
ties in the United States. 
(2) The Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention reports that nearly 36,500 people in the 
United States died from a drug overdose in 2008 
alone. More than 75 percent of these deaths were 
due to unintentional drug overdoses, and many could 
have been prevented. 
(3) Deaths resulting from unintentional drug 
overdoses increased more than 400 percent between 
1980 and 1999, and more than doubled between 
1999 and 2008. 
(4) Ninety-one percent of all unintentional poi-
soning deaths are due to drugs. Poisoning deaths 
cost society $93,464,000 in direct medical costs and 
$28,142,598,000 in lost productivity costs in the 
year 2005 alone. 
(5) Both fatal and nonfatal overdoses place a 
heavy burden on public health and public safety re-
sources, yet no Federal agency has been tasked with 
stemming this crisis. 
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(6) Opioid pain medications such as oxycodone 
and hydrocodone are involved in more than 40 per-
cent of all drug poisoning deaths. Six times as many 
people died of an overdose from methadone pre-
scribed to treat pain in 2009 than a decade before. 
Rural and suburban regions are disproportionately 
affected by opioid prescription overdoses. 
(7) Naloxone is a medication that rapidly re-
verses overdose from heroin and opioid pain medica-
tions. 
(8) In April 2012, the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration (FDA) held a public workshop in collabora-
tion with the National Institute on Drug Abuse 
(NIDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention (CDC), and with participation from the 
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Ad-
ministration (SAMHSA) and the Office of National 
Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), to discuss making 
naloxone more widely available outside of conven-
tional medical settings to reduce the incidence of 
opioid overdose fatalities. 
(9) Health practitioners often do not adequately 
inform patients and caregivers on how to recognize 
overdose symptoms and effectively respond by seek-
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