Blackwood Woman's Fight for 911 Good Samaritan Law Goes Beyond NJ

Patty DiRenzo sees it as basic common sense—saving a life is surely more important than putting someone who had used heroin behind bars for simple possession, she says.

Eight states—Rhode Island, Illinois, Florida, Colorado, New York, Connecticut, Washington and New Mexico—have passed laws that protect people from being arrested should they call police when they or someone they’re with has overdosed, if it is just a small amount of drugs or paraphernalia they possess.

It's Washington, D.C.'s consideration of such a law that led an Associated Press reporter to recently contact DiRenzo, who has become a prominent force in the push for the so-called 911 Good Samaritan Law.

DiRenzo's son, Salvatore Marchese, died of an overdose in Camden at the age of 26 in September 2010. She's worked with Drug Policy Alliance ever since to see the law passed in New Jersey, as she is convinced he was not alone when he took the fatal dose of heroin.

“I couldn’t justify him just dying and walking away,” she told the Associated Press' Eric Tucker for his piece on the law, published on websites for such papers as the Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. “I just had to do something for him.”

DiRenzo had reason to be optimistic about the law's future in the Garden State in late June. The Assembly version of the bill had been overwhelmingly approved in May, and to the full governing body.

The Senate bill (S-851) was pulled from consideration at the last minute, though, when the state Attorney General's Office reportedly contacted a primary sponsor to express reservations over some language in the proposed measure it felt granted overly broad immunity.

Critics of the laws fear they could be easily exploited to allow for a variety of illegal conduct.