Coast Guard Mandated to Stock Naloxone on All Bases and Ships to Combat Opioid Overdoses

This legislation makes two main changes related to the U.S. Coast Guard, but one is clearly the headline: it requires the Coast Guard to update its policies to ensure that the overdose reversal drug naloxone is available to its members everywhere they work.

The Life-Saving Mandate: Naloxone on Deck

The core of this bill (Sec. 2) is a direct response to the national opioid crisis. It gives the Commandant of the Coast Guard one year to update the official policy on treating drug overdoses. This isn't just a paperwork change; the new policy must guarantee that naloxone (the medication that can reverse an opioid overdose, often known by the brand name Narcan) or similar drugs are available to Coast Guard personnel. This availability must extend to every single Coast Guard installation and every operational environment where members are working. For a service that operates globally on ships, planes, and remote bases, this is a major health and safety upgrade.

Think of it this way: If you work construction and your company mandates a fully stocked first-aid kit on every job site, this bill is the equivalent for the Coast Guard, specifically ensuring they have the tool to deal with a fentanyl or opioid overdose immediately. This provision saves lives by treating overdose as an emergency that requires immediate, standardized medical response, regardless of whether a member is on a cutter in the middle of the ocean or at a command center on shore. The bill even clarifies that on large installations, if one facility has naloxone readily available with clear access plans, that counts for the whole base, ensuring practicality while maintaining access.

Data Tracking and Congressional Oversight

Beyond the immediate health mandate, this bill pushes the Coast Guard toward better data integration. It requires the service to start participating in a specific substance use tracking system established under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024. The goal is to get a clearer picture of substance use trends within the military services. To make this happen, the Secretary overseeing the Coast Guard and the Secretary of Defense must sign a formal agreement (a Memorandum of Understanding) to ensure the Coast Guard can access the data it needs (Sec. 2).

This move toward data sharing isn't just bureaucratic; it's about accountability. Two years after enactment, the Commandant must brief Congress on several key points: the progress of the new naloxone policy, the rate of illegal drug use (especially fentanyl) within the service over the previous five years, and every instance where naloxone was actually used to save a life. Crucially, the bill explicitly states that all these requirements must be carried out while strictly following federal privacy laws, including HIPAA and the Privacy Act, which is a necessary safeguard when collecting sensitive health data on service members.

Cleaning Up Maritime Drug Law

Section 1 of the bill is a bit more technical, focusing on legislative housekeeping. It cleans up the language defining where drug crimes occur on covered vessels. Essentially, it clarifies the wording in existing law to ensure that manufacturing, distributing, or possessing controlled substances with intent to distribute is clearly criminalized when it happens on board a covered vessel. This is less about creating a new crime and more about making sure the existing law is airtight and unambiguous regarding the jurisdiction of drug offenses at sea.