SANFORD, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill increasing criminal penalties related to controlled substances on Monday morning.
He signed Senate Bill 718 at a press conference in Sanford that will provide criminal penalties if someone exposes a first responder to a controlled substance that is in their possession. Any overdose or serious bodily injury to a first responder caused by fentanyl will be a second-degree felony.
It also prohibits the arrest, charging and prosecution of a person who "acts in good faith" seeking medical assistance for a person experiencing an overdose.
"When you are putting fentanyl in our communities, you are killing people, and you need to be treated like the murderer you are," DeSantis said.
The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and had 12 "no's" in the House. It will take effect Oct. 1.
The American College of Medical Toxicology said in a statement that absorbing fentanyl through the skin is "unlikely to cause opioid toxicity."
"It is very unlikely that small, unintentional skin exposures to tablets or powder would cause significant opioid toxicity, and if toxicity were to occur it would not develop rapidly, allowing time for removal," they wrote.
He also passed Senate Bill 66 designating June 6 as "Revive Awareness Day"
The Department of Health will hold events in honor of this day to raise awareness about the dangers of opioid overdose. The act, known as Victoria's Law, is named after Victoria Siegal, who died of an accidental overdose in 2015.
The governor also announced the expansion of the Coordinated Opioid Recovery Network, which is the state's addiction recovery program coordinated by the Department of Health, Department of Children and Families and the Agency for Health Care Administration.
Its goal is to curb the number of deaths caused by laced drugs with medication treatment, recovery programs and support. It was started in 2022 and will be expanded to 29 counties.
New counties added include Hernando, Hillsborough, Polk and Sarasota counties.
"That’s a lot of people that are going to be impacted by this and we’re proud of that,” DeSantis said
Fentanyl is extremely deadly, with just two milligrams being deadly depending on a person's body size, tolerance and past usage, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
The amount of fatal opioid overdoses in the state has increased from 909 at the beginning of 2018 to 1,446 at the end of 2022, according to data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.