By WASHINGTON — Nearly seven years after Tyler Shamash, a 19-year-old from California, died following a fentanyl overdose, a bill that his mother says could have prevented his death is getting renewed focus nearly 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.
Shamash overdosed a few days before he died while he was living at a sober living house in 2018. His mom, Juli Shamash, was told he tested negative for drugs because the five-panel tox screen doesn’t test for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
“Had we known, we could have sent him to a place with a higher level of care, instead of the sober living home where he died,” Juli Shamash said in a statement.
She said she believes the doctor didn’t know that fentanyl isn’t included in the standard test run in emergency rooms across the country, which tests for marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, PCP and natural and semisynthetic opioids, but not synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., on Tuesday reintroduced the bill, called “Tyler’s Law,” that would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to provide hospitals with guidance on implementing fentanyl testing in routine ER drug screens, according to a news release first shared with NBC News.
In the House, Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif., also reintroduced the legislation Tuesday.
Juli Shamash said, “This bill will save lives in situations like Tyler’s, as well as in cases where people are brought into an ER for an overdose of one substance, but they unknowingly consumed fentanyl from a poisoned product.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed a 24% drop in fentanyl overdose deaths last year. But the fentanyl crisis is still “a public health emergency” across the country, Padilla said.
“Far too many people, including children, have tragically died from fentanyl overdoses, including Tyler Shamash, a Los Angeles teenager whose hospital screening tests failed to detect the drug in his system,” Padilla said.
California and Maryland have enacted similar laws in the past two years, but there is no federal law requiring hospitals to test for the toxic drug.
“Our bipartisan legislation honors Tyler’s memory by bringing California’s updated standard of including fentanyl in emergency room screenings to the federal level. Even one preventable death is too many,” Padilla said.
President Donald Trump said in his speech to Congress last week that the primary reason for his tariffs against the United States’ main trading partners was to curb the flow of fentanyl across the southern and northern borders and that he’s holding Canada, China and Mexico accountable.
Banks, a freshman senator, said “too many families” in Indiana have lost loved ones to fentanyl poisoning.
“Tyler’s Law will help prevent these tragedies by directing emergency rooms to screen for fentanyl, ensuring overdose victims receive timely, life-saving care. I thank Tyler’s mother, Juli, for championing this legislation to make fentanyl testing a national standard,” he said in a statement.
Juli Shamash has spent the years since Tyler’s death working with other families to advocate for the bill’s passage. The bill was originally introduced in the House and the Senate in 2023 but never made it to the floor for a vote.
In an interview in 2023, Shamash said: “Every time I hear about another child dying, it’s like, why didn’t we get to them? I don’t know if it’s … like I didn’t save my own son, so I feel like I have to save everyone else.”
Shamash partnered with an emergency addiction physician at a San Diego hospital to develop a tool kit that could help other hospitals test for fentanyl.
Kamlager-Dove, who represents the Los Angeles area, said Juli Shamash’s “strength and tireless advocacy led to California’s requirement for emergency rooms to include fentanyl in their drug screenings.”
Ryan Oglesby, president of the Emergency Nurses Association, said nurses in emergency rooms “are often the first ones to start treatment when a patient overdoses.”
Endorsing the bill, Oglesby added, “Testing for fentanyl as part of regular drug screenings in hospitals is a big step toward identifying fentanyl exposures earlier and providing patients and their families with this information so they can intervene and seek the correct treatment in a timely manner, which in turn will prevent future fentanyl overdoses.”
Dr. Allison J. Haddock, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians, also backed the legislation in a statement.
Haddock said that “emergency physicians are on the front lines of the opioid and substance use disorder crisis” and argued that it is “vital to ensure that emergency physicians are equipped with the necessary tools and resources to best treat and educate our patients as we help them on their path to recovery.”
