Minnesota responds to opioid crisis with strategies focused on inclusion and awareness

requiring states to monitor and report opioid prescriptions, expanding education for teens and their parents, and allowing law enforcement agencies and first responders greater access to the overdose reversal drug Naloxone.

Klobuchar, along with U.S. Senators Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Angus King, Heidi Heitkamp, and Tammy Baldwin, introduced a permanent funding plan that would expand access to treatment for substance abuse. The senators proposed taxing pharmaceutical companies 1 cent per milligram of active opioid ingredients in prescription pills, to be used to fund and expand substance abuse treatment.

“No person should be turned away when they are seeking treatment,” Klobuchar said.