Sponsors (9)
Introduced May 1, 2025 by Suzanne Bonamici · Last progress May 1, 2025
The bill expands prevention, treatment, training, naloxone access, and national data efforts to reduce youth synthetic-opioid harm—particularly benefiting students and underserved communities—but does so with added costs, administrative burdens, privacy risks, and limited funding/scale that may leave gaps and strain schools.
Students (K–12 and secondary school youth) will receive expanded prevention, early-intervention, treatment/recovery services, naloxone access, and improved surveillance, reducing the risk of synthetic opioid overdoses.
Teachers, counselors, and school staff gain funded, evidence-based professional development, instructional materials, and training to recognize and respond to synthetic-opioid risks and overdoses.
Targeted federal grants, priority for tribal/rural/underserved areas, technical assistance, independent evaluation, and best-practice sharing improve equity of access and can raise program quality in high-need communities.
The legislation authorizes open-ended spending and creates new administrative bodies and evaluations, which will increase federal and local costs and impose a taxpayer burden.
New reporting, compliance, and grant-administration requirements will increase administrative burden on schools, grantees, NCES, and health departments, diverting staff time from classroom instruction and direct student services.
Several provisions mandate planning, training, or program components without providing dedicated funding, risking strained school budgets and forcing trade-offs with other school-based services.
Based on analysis of 14 sections of legislative text.
Creates a coordinated federal effort to prevent synthetic opioid (including fentanyl) misuse and overdoses among secondary‑school‑aged youth by funding local prevention and recovery partnerships, requiring school training and planning, expanding data collection, permitting naloxone in school health centers, and establishing an interagency task force to develop a national strategy. The bill sets up a 3‑year competitive pilot grant program for up to 25 partnerships, directs federal health and education agencies to collect and report new youth opioid data beginning in 2026, and requires schools and state and local education agencies to include opioid prevention in training and planning.