Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2002

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Ways and Means, to which was referred S.B. No. 2776 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to expand the responsibilities of the Department of Health by permitting the department to assist in the implementation of a statewide poison control program.

The State funded the poison control center until 1995, when it was advised that it could no longer do so without statutory authority. However, your Committee agrees with the Department of Health that a full-time poison control center needs to be reinstated in Hawaii. A twenty-four-hour poison control center is an integral part of an emergency services system. Poisoning is often an acute crisis in which every minute counts, and action must be taken immediately. A phone call to a poison control center can start life-saving treatment immediately when there is no time to make a doctor's appointment or even get to an emergency room.

Your Committee finds that a poison control center saves lives and needs to be active around the clock to avert the pain, suffering, and death arising from crisis poisoning situations.

Your Committee has amended this bill by making technical nonsubstantive amendments.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Ways and Means that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2776, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2776, S.D. 1.