Lamb bill creates police grants for drug-detecting devices – News – Ellwood City Ledger

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb has reintroduced legislation creating a grant program to help police obtain portable, chemical-screening devices that can be used to detect the dangerous drug fentanyl.

Lamb, D-17, Mount Lebanon, along with U.S. Reps. David Joyce, R-Ohio, and David Trone, D-Md., introduced the Providing Officers With Electronic Resources Act on Wednesday. Lamb, a former federal prosecutor, and Joyce, a former Geauga County prosecutor, introduced similar legislation in the House last year.

“The opioid crisis is affecting communities across our region and the country. We need to make sure our local law-enforcement officers are armed with the right tools to stay safe and do their jobs effectively,” Lamb said in a joint statement.

Fentanyl is considered 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Police and first responders have suffered overdoses after unknowingly coming into contact with fentanyl when treating victims.

Besides the safety factor, the lawmakers’ statement said the portable devices bring immediate detections and would allow for more effective investigations because there are “significant backlogs” among local and state labs.

“This legislation will increase the safety of our officers and will streamline the substance-testing process, providing real-time results to reduce the backlog in the legal system,” said Lamb.

“It’s imperative that our law enforcement have the necessary tools to detect dangerous drugs and get them off our streets and out of communities, while ensuring their own safety in the process,” Joyce said.

Trone described losing his own nephew to a fentanyl overdose in 2016. The legislator is the founder of the Freshmen Working Group on Addiction, a 50-member bipartisan group to address the opioid epidemic.

“We must make sure our first responders, who are on the front lines of this epidemic, are protected from exposure to deadly substances like fentanyl,” Trone said. “Providing resources like screening devices to state and local entities is a no-brainer.”

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who introduced companion legislation in the Senate last year, reintroduced his bill, too. Legislators said the bill is supported by several law-enforcement organizations, including the National Sheriffs Association, Fraternal Order of Police and the International Union of Police Associations.