A new House bill unveiled on Monday by lawmakers aims to fight the rise of opioid abuse. Representative Elizabeth A. Malia said the new legislation would require schools to have a substance abuse policy and would even restrict first-time opioid prescriptions.

According to A. Malia, the new legislation would require the schools to make the substance abuse policy public. It would also mandate substance abuse evaluations for people in acute care hospitals suffering from apparent opioid overdoses.

Some say the House bill veers significantly from legislation that was proposed in the fall by Governor Charlie Baker. Bakers’s bill required dentist’s and doctors to limit the prescribing to not more than a 72-hour supply of opioids to patients whom they are prescribing the drug for the very first time.

Malai’s bill would create a seven-day supply limit for initial opioid prescriptions. It will make it mandatory for a practitioner to not issue an opioid prescription with more than a seven-day supply to a minor at any time.

The new bill would require patients in acute care hospital that are suffering from an opioid overdose to be provided with a substance abuse evaluation within 24 hours of admission.

The bill even shuns a controversial measure in legislation passed by the state Senate that would require all public school districts to screen students for potential drug use.

Baker said, “With nearly four people dying each day in the Commonwealth, our administration is eager to work with the Legislature to bend the trend on opioid misuse”.