In Wisconsin, There's HOPE on Heroin

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has signed a package of seven bills (Assembly Bills 445, 446, 447, 448, 701, 702 and 668) known as HOPE (Heroin Opiate Prevention and Education) legislation put forward by State Rep. John Nygren. The legislation is a comprehensive package to fight heroin addition, and are supposed to be "smart on crime" measures to "help expand accessibility to treatment." Some general goals of the HOPE program are:

• Grant immunity to drug users who call 911 about overdoses
• Allow all emergency responders to give Narcan (not just medical technicians)
• Allow communities to start drug disposal programs
• Create treatment programs in rural areas
• Require identification to pick up high-risk prescriptions
• Add funding for treatment
• Punish those who violate probation

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was also pleased to see the HOPE package signed into law, noting: 

I commend Representative Nygren for his leadership, and I thank fellow lawmakers and the Governor for their support of these critical, life-saving pieces of legislation.  The spiral of opiate and Heroin abuse is unrelenting but so is our will to defeat it, and today marks an important step in ridding our great state of this evil.