You know you have an overdose problem when more of us in California die from drugs than car accidents.

Nationwide a majority of those deaths involved prescription drugs. Marijuana looks downright beneficial in comparison.

State Assemblyman Richard Bloom of Santa Monica announced today that he has introduced a bill that would help fund overdose prevention programs:

*The bill, AB 831, would hand out $500,000 total grants to prevention programs; it would encourage new programs in towns where they don't exist, too.

According to a statement from Bloom's office the legislation …

… encourages communities to address overdose prevention from a health and education perspective rather than a punitive, criminal justice perspective …

Denise Cullen, co-founder and executive director of Broken No More, which helps parents of overdose victims, says:

Anecdotal reports from other states tell us that simply cracking down on prescription painkiller availability doesn't always work and can have unintended consequences, such as driving prescription drug abusers to heroin. We can't keep relying on just crossing our fingers and hoping that a scattershot approach to preventing these deaths will work.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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