Attorney General Ford Announces Release of Annual Report on the Statewide Substance Use Response Working Group for 2025-2026

Carson City, NV — Today, Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced the release of the 2025-2026 annual report of the Statewide Substance Use Response Working Group (SURG). Created by the Office of the Attorney General through Assembly Bill 374 in 2021, SURG is responsible for recommending ways to create, maintain, expand or improve programs aimed at addressing substance misuse in Nevada. Additionally, the group advises the state on the allocation of state and local funds to support these efforts. Attorney General Ford chairs the committee, whose members consist of state officials and stakeholders in the substance use and recovery community.

“SURG’s work gives us the information and recommendations we need to fight back against substance misuse in Nevada,” said Attorney General Ford. “My office led the fight to bring the perpetrators of the opioid crisis to justice. Now, I am proud the Office of the Attorney General and community leaders across Nevada are working together to keep Nevadans safe and healthy.”

The SURG working group met multiple times in 2025 and 2026. The committee heard presentations from experts on topics including treatment for opioid use disorder in rural jails; state substance abuse trends; legislative bills from behavioral health policy boards; updates on the Fund for Resilient Nevada; and compassionate overdose responses.

SURG is made up of three subcommittees: the Prevention Subcommittee, the Treatment and Recovery Subcommittee and the Response Subcommittee. The three subcommittees made recommendations for prevention; harm reduction; treatment and recovery; and response. The committee then ranked the recommendations in order of relative importance within each category.

The recommendations include:

• Supporting a bill draft request in the 2027 legislative session that would double the annual state investment in primary prevention.
• Creating a bill draft request to set aside funding for youth vaping prevention to reach $2 per capita.
• Requesting guidance from the Nevada Board of Pharmacy to clarify regulations pertinent to the distribution of naloxone in hospitals.
• Eliminating prior authorizations needed for starting medication assisted therapy with buprenorphine and buprenorphine products of all types for opioid use disorder.
• Recommending to the Nevada Department of Human Services that it incentivize the implementation of cohesive addiction consult services. Under this recommendation, hospitals would receive department funds to hire certified peer recovery specialists and/or community health workers/representatives if they adopt delineation of privileges for addiction medicine as a medical specialty and establish protocols for the inclusion of midlevel providers and peer recovery navigators.
• Recommending that insurers and payors not impose dosage limitations for buprenorphine when used for medications for opioid use disorder.
• Conducting a retrospective assessment or/and prospective study to assess the outcomes of all patients after their discharge from certified withdrawal management facilities to examine potential contributors to overdose and develop best practices for continued care after treatment.
• Prohibiting the sale of amanita muscaria, commonly known as fly agaric, and its psychoactive constituents, to individuals under 21 years of age. In addition, mandating that all products containing such psychoactive constituents have standardized labeling, including clear warnings about potential health risks and age restrictions.
• Working with prevention coalitions to make available mechanisms for safe disposal of opioid prescriptions.
• Prohibiting the sale of phenibut and its derivatives to individuals under 21 years of age and mandating that all products containing phenibut or its derivatives have standardized labeling, including clear warnings about potential health risks and age restrictions.

For further details of the recommendations, please see the report.

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