“By making the disclosure required by law, SB 1319 allows providers to make a limited disclosure of the overdose information and remain in compliance with privacy laws,” said a statement in support of the new law, released by Dallas City Council members Paula Blackmon and Adam Bazaldua. “SB 1319 strikes a careful and necessary balance between privacy and the public health and safety needs of reporting overdose information. It also allows law enforcement agencies to map these overdoses for public safety purposes and allows municipalities to work with a private overdose mapping entity.”
Overdose mapping in Dallas will start less than a year into the city’s newly designed opioid response program. The program consists of Dallas Fire-Rescue personnel administering Narcan for possible overdoses and conducting follow-up visits to residents who experienced an overdose requiring transport to a hospital or a 911 call.
When the Observer spoke to DFR Battalion Chief Scott Clumpner in December, he said the opioid overdose problem had been on a clear rise in Dallas for years. He said the department administered 800 doses of Narcan in 2020, 1,200 doses in 2021, and more than 1,900 in 2022. The increased availability of fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid reported to be as much as 100 times more powerful than morphine, has fueled the rising number of overdoses. Cheaply made fentanyl is often included in illegally pressed pills designed to look like typical Percocet or OxyContin pills.
Jeff Beeson, deputy director for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program (HIDTA), which coordinates responses to regional drug threats with local, state and federal agencies, said in an email to the Observer that overdose mapping is “a three-pronged strategy that includes a partnership between our public health and safety partners to provide harm reduction, supply reduction, and demand reduction strategies in order to save lives.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses and poisonings are the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 18 and 45. Beeson elaborated on the “three-pronged strategy” that the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP) employs in helping to combat the rise in opioid overdoses.
“The potency and lethality of the drugs we are seeing in our communities has never been greater and in order to respond effectively, we need real time information to deploy those resources,” Beeson wrote. “ODMAP provides us with that information. The ability for Fire/EMS to see trends and patterns, and more importantly overdose spike information, allows them to staff appropriately and respond quicker, getting overdose victims the medical attention they need. We are also in a better position to send harm reduction services into the community and better educate families and people who use drugs. From a demand reduction standpoint, we can better educate community members at pivotal times about treatment and support options.”
Even with the increase in opioid-related headlines, overdoses, arrests and deaths over the past few years in Texas, many municipalities have yet to put overdose mapping into action. Executive director for the Texoma HIDTA program, Lance Sumpter, says there were some legitimate obstacles standing in the way of ODMAP adoption in the minds of some.
“ODMAP’s usage began in the northeast area of the country, where the opioid epidemic first manifested itself,” he said in an email to the Observer. “The utilization of the system grew with the spread of the epidemic. Prior to the governor signing SB 1319, advocacy for the program was done by our limited staff. The challenges included promotion of the program, understanding the tool’s value, and the misperception of violation of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) related to the privacy of health information. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed SB 1319 into law, eliminating the concern organizations may have had with HIPAA.”“The potency and lethality of the drugs we are seeing in our communities has never been greater." – Jeff Beeson, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program
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Sumpter said that the names and addresses of overdose patients who are treated will not be provided to law enforcement. “This process removes the ability to track back to a specific address for the incident, but is not so general as to negate the strategic effect of the data source,” he said.
Although overdoses from all drugs are tracked in this program, ODMAP is the latest, major statewide move geared to address opioid and fentanyl overdoses. In April, Abbott announced a $10 million “One Pill Kills” campaign to create awareness and to arm counties with necessary resources, including Narcan doses.
A number of bills that aimed to reduce the impact of fentanyl found their way to the House floor during the recent Texas Legislature. House Bill 6, which would allow people who provide a fatal dose of fentanyl to someone to be charged with murder, is on the governor's desk, awaiting his signature. But the bills that would legalize fentanyl testing strips, currently listed on the state’s “drug paraphernalia” list, including one authored by Dallas Sen. Nathan Johnson, failed to pass this session.
