Los Angeles Overdose Prevention Advocates Gearing Up for International Overdose Awareness Day

SANTA MONICA, CA – On Sunday, August 31 from 10 a.m. until 12 p.m., members of A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing) Los Angeles will host their annual commemoration of International Overdose Awareness Day at the Santa Monica Pier and Palisades Park. The event is free and members of the public impacted by a drug overdose are encouraged to attend. The press conference at Palisades Park begins at 11 a.m.

Drug Policy Alliance proudly supports A New PATH LA and hundreds of organizations in the US and abroad in drawing attention to the preventable tragedy of fatal drug overdose on International Overdose Awareness Day. The day honors and remembers lives lost to drug overdose and educates the public and lawmakers about simple, cost-effective solutions to the problem.

Numerous legislative victories across the US will be celebrated this year, including Santa Monica Assemblyman Richard Bloom’s overdose prevention bill, AB 1535, currently awaiting signature by Gov. Jerry Brown. Bloom’s bill, co-sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance, would permit pharmacists to furnish the opiate overdose reversal medicine naloxone to people at risk of an overdose and to their caregivers and loved ones. A number of states are now making naloxone more widely available, including New Mexico, Washington, Vermont, Rhode Island and New York.

Drug overdose remains a leading cause of preventable, injury-related death in the United States.

Many participating countries use this day to send a strong message to people who currently and formerly used drugs that their lives are valued and that no one should ever die from a preventable fatal drug overdose. A New PATH LA began commemorating International Overdose Awareness Day in Los Angeles in 2010.

For more details about the event, contact John Whitaker at A New PATH LA.