New plans to combat the heroin epidemic that has a grip across this country and in our community made it through the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Chief Medical Officer of Meridian healthcare, Dr. Dan Brown, who treats people who are addicted is cautiously optimistic, as the House of Representatives passes comprehensive opiod and heroin prevention legislation.

Dr. Brown says, "We'll have to make sure that we see everything we want to see in this bill which is attention to all the facets of treatment, 
both medication assisted treatment, recovery programs, as well as prevention programs and law enforcement."

The package of bills includes the creation of a task force to set best practices for prescribing pain medications and child protective services being directly involved with a safe care plan when babies are born addicted.

Plus the legislation offers federal funding through grants for recovery services at community organizations.

Tim Ryan, Congressman, 13th District, Ohio says, "We need to make sure that the resources are there so we're not just getting a little bit of money but we get enough money in our community to really be able to stem the tide with this epidemic that we're all facing."

The Senate passed legislation in March and now the two versions will go to a conference committee to settle the differences.
There has been criticism that additional funding was not approved or the actual funding for the grants.

Senator Sherrod Brown says "We need money to scale up these treatment centers, we need more funds for prevention and education and congress again failed to do it the way that it ought to be done."