Two bills signed into law allow easier access to life-saving medications in Louisiana schools, businesses

BATON ROUGE, La. (WGNO) — Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed two bills into law, allowing easier access to life-saving medications in places like schools and businesses.  

Under the new legislation, employees other than school nurses will be legally allowed to administer medicine to save the life of an individual, as long as they undergo a certain amount of training.

“This really allows me to be able to let her live her own life,” said Camille Ivy O’Donnell, the parent of a child with multiple life-threatening allergies. “I think there’s a high sense of anxiety that comes with being a food allergy parent.”

HB 456 is geared toward K-12 schools, allowing schools to stock emergency medications for a range of things such as Albuterol for asthma emergencies and Epinephrine for allergy emergencies.

HB 602 permits businesses, camps, childcare centers and other entities to stock emergency medications with no age restrictions or specific qualifications on who receives the medicine. 

“I see it as success for families who are in a very challenging position,” said O’Donnell.

The state will come up with a master list of what medications are included. Businesses are not required to comply with the legislation.

“The training is based on what a physician, the prescriber or an emergency medication training entity, what they recommend to be included in these types of training,” said Dr. Alice Hoyt with the Hoyt Institute of Food Allergy. “So, yes, people need to be trained, but training on an Epi-Pen is much different than training on Albuterol. We didn’t want significant barriers to teaching people how to use these devices.”

The legislation also provides protection for schools and employees against civil action.

“We wanted everybody to be indemnified, so everybody can really get behind this idea of, ‘Let’s be better prepared for medical emergencies in our communities,’” said Hoyt.

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