Skip to content
MYRIGHTZ
marijuana and drugs

Calling For An Overdose

ORC 2925.11 — the immunity written for the phone call

Email

Ohio wrote an immunity into the possession statute itself, for one reason: people were not summoning help because they expected to be arrested for what was in the room. The immunity is narrow, it has conditions, and it is real. What follows is what it covers and what it does not, because a person deciding in the next thirty seconds deserves the actual shape of it rather than a reassurance.

The section protects a qualified individual, and that phrase covers three different people, not one.

  • A person acting in good faith who seeks or obtains medical assistance for someone else experiencing a drug overdose.
  • A person who experiences a drug overdose and who seeks medical assistance for that overdose.
  • A person who is the subject of somebody else seeking or obtaining medical assistance for that overdose.
The person overdosing is covered too, whoever made the call. The third category is the one people do not know about. Someone who is the subject of another person's call is a qualified individual in their own right, which means the protection does not depend on having been conscious, or on having dialled anything.

What it covers is a short list, and everything on it is a low level possession offence.

CoveredWhat that is
A minor drug possession offenceA violation of 2925.11 that is a misdemeanour or a fifth degree felony
ORC 2925.12Possessing drug abuse instruments
ORC 2925.14, division (C)(1)Possessing drug paraphernalia
ORC 2925.141Illegal use or possession of marihuana drug paraphernalia

The protection is not only against conviction. The words in the statute are that the qualified individual shall not be arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted or penalised under the drug chapter for those offences, which reaches the first minute of the encounter and not just the last day of the case.

There are conditions, and one of them runs for thirty days after. The evidence has to have been obtained as a result of seeking or obtaining the medical assistance. Within thirty days the person has to seek and obtain a screening and receive a referral for treatment from an accredited addiction treatment programme or professional. And on a prosecutor's request, documentation of that has to be produced. A condition nobody was told about is a condition that gets missed, which is why the thirty days is on this page rather than in a footnote.
Twice, and no more. The section says in terms that it does not apply to a person who has twice previously been granted this immunity, and that nobody may be granted it more than two times.

What it does not reach is as important as what it does. This is an immunity for low level possession and the paraphernalia sections beside it. It is not an immunity for trafficking, for possession at a degree above a fifth degree felony, or for anything outside the drug chapter, and it does nothing about an outstanding warrant that was going to be found anyway.

Being on supervision does not put a person outside this section. This is widely believed and it is not what the statute says. Where someone serving a community control sanction or under post release control acts under the immunity division, the section routes their case to four named provisions, in 2929.141, 2929.15, 2929.25 and 2967.28, which govern a violation of the sanction based on a minor drug possession offence or on one of the same three sections. That is a different mechanism from the immunity rather than an exclusion from it, and where it lands is decided in the supervising court.

Naloxone sits in its own statutes. Ohio provides for a person who is not otherwise authorised to administer drugs to administer an overdose reversal drug to someone apparently experiencing an opioid related overdose, and the drug chapter carries its own section on the lawful administration of one. The immunity attached to administering it is tied to emergency services being summoned, which is the same idea as the section above: the law removes a consequence from the act of getting help.

“I called for help for an overdose.”

Whether a particular person is a qualified individual, and whether evidence was obtained as a result of the call, are questions of fact decided afterwards on a record rather than at the scene. The screening and referral requirement has a definition of its own in the section and thirty days is not long. Nothing here covers a federal charge, a charge under another chapter, or what a hospital or an employer may do with the same facts. Whether this immunity applies to a specific case is a question for a licensed Ohio attorney, and the public defender's office takes that question before anyone has been convicted of anything.

Sources for this section (11)
  1. ORC 2925.11 — Possession of controlled substances
  2. ORC 2925.61 — Lawful administration of an overdose reversal drug
  3. ORC 3715.504 — Administering overdose reversal drugs
  4. ORC 2925.12 — Possessing drug abuse instruments
  5. ORC 2925.14 — Drug paraphernalia
  6. ORC 2925.141 — Illegal use or possession of marihuana drug paraphernalia
  7. ORC 2925.03 — Trafficking in drugs
  8. ORC 2929.141 — Committing an offence while on post release control
  9. ORC 2929.15 — Community control sanctions for a felony, and what a violation of one carries
  10. ORC 2929.25 — Community control sanctions for a misdemeanor, and what a violation of one carries
  11. ORC 2967.28 — Post release control

Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Talk to a licensed Ohio attorney about your situation.

Words in this section

Terms with a legal meaning that is narrower than the everyday one. Each links to the definition and the authority behind it.

Nearest pages

Sections that share statutes or vocabulary with this one. Most questions turn out to sit across two of them.