S. 617 — OPIOIDS Act

This section authorizes the Attorney General to award grants to states, territories, and localities to support improved data collection and surveillance on opioid-related overdoses, including activities to enhance postmortem toxicology testing, data linkage across U.S. data systems, electronic death reporting, and comprehensiveness of data on fatal and nonfatal overdoses.

This section authorizes the Attorney General to make grants to local law enforcement agencies and forensic laboratories in communities with high rates of drug overdoses for—(1) training to help officers identify overdoses; (2) upgrading essential systems for tracing drugs and processing samples in forensic laboratories to provide timely, accurate, and standardized data reporting to the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS); or (3) training to better trace criminals through the darknet. The section prohibits use of such grant funds by grantees that do not submit overdose data reports to NFLIS; directs Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers to provide training to state and local law enforcement agencies on coordinating with state and federal partners to track drug-related activity; and adds to the authorized purposes of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants the provision of training and resources for containment devices to prevent secondary exposure to fentanyl and other substances for first responders.

This section directs the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to develop uniform reporting standards for inputting data on drug purity, formulation, and weight into the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS)—a DEA program that aggregates forensic laboratory analyses of controlled substances from state and local labs—to enable better comparisons across jurisdictions and data sharing between agencies. It clarifies that this requirement does not impose new or increased reporting obligations on state or local laboratories.

This section directs the Drug Enforcement Administration to include, as part of its annual budget submission to Congress, a specific line item for the funding level necessary for the Fentanyl Signature Profiling Program (i.e., a DEA initiative that chemically analyzes fentanyl samples to identify production sources and trafficking pathways).