With money tight and the opioid epidemic continuing, Connecticut's two U.S. senators are proposing a new way to create as much as $1 billion for addiction treatment.

Under the proposal announced early this month, a fee of 1 cent per milligram of active opioid would be added to prescriptions. The money, Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal propose, would go to treatment.

"We have to start thinking out of the box in terms of getting the necessary funding to combat this crisis," Murphy said. "The amount of money states and the federal government are putting into opioid treatment now simply isn't doing the job."

Though the fee would be small, he said that spread across the volume of prescriptions, it could generate significant funds.

"There are a lot of prescriptions out there, so this tiny fee, when you apply it to every pain medication, ultimately garners a billion a year," Murphy estimates.

The proposed bill, dubbed the LifeBOAT Act, comes at a time in which Connecticut, like other states, has seen a steady increase in the number of fatal overdoses, attributed largely to opioid abuse.

Recently released 2016 statistics from the state office of the chief medical examiner showed that those deaths increased for a fifth year in a row. In 2016, heroin played a role in 504 deaths.

"It's these prescription pain medications that are leading to the horrible addictions," Murphy said. "Every time you prescribe a prescription pain medication, you are making it more likely that individual will need additional care."

The bill, which has sponsors including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New Hampshire senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, has provisions to remove the fee from opioids used to treat addiction and add rebates for those prescribed in the treatment of cancer or in a hospice setting.

"The opioid epidemic has caused seemingly endless pain and suffering in Connecticut and throughout the country," Blumenthal said in a statement. "We must utilize every tool in our arsenal to fight back and provide communities, families, and individual patients with the resources they need to deliver and access lifesaving prevention and treatment services."

Blumenthal said the bill would "bolster our efforts to get patients the resources and results they so urgently need, and deserve."

The money collected would be distributed in the form of grants that would fund efforts including establishing new treatment facilities, expanding access to long-term, residential programs, and recruiting and training mental health providers who provide substance abuse treatment.

Officials said the Department of Health and Human Services will complete a report on how this bill might impact opioid prices and patient access to opioid medications.

This bill comes at a time in which lawmakers and medical professionals have been making changes to how prescription opioids are utilized in treatment.

Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines on prescribing opioids for treatment of chronic pain that shifted towards other therapies.

Not long after, Connecticut lawmakers approved legislation that put caps on prescriptions, limiting doctors to seven-day initial opioid prescriptions for the treatment of acute conditions.