Tag: drugs
Will Tennessee Finally Reform Its Draconian Drug-Free School Zone Laws?
“A bill moving through the Tennessee state legislature would reform the state’s harsh drug-free school zone laws, which were the subject of a 2017 Reason investigation.”
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“Reason’s data showing that more than a quarter of the state’s total land area within city limits is covered by drug-free zones”
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“Tennessee’s laws blanket large swaths of the cities, turning minor drug violations into mandatory sentences that rival—and sometimes exceed—punishments for rape and murder.”
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“One such case was Calvin Bryant, who at age 20 was sentenced in 2008 to 17 years in Tennessee state prison—15 of them mandatory—for selling ecstasy to a confidential informant out of his Nashville apartment, which happened to be within 1,000 feet of a school.
If Bryant had been convicted of second-degree murder, he would have been eligible for an earlier release. That crime carries a minimum 15-year sentence but includes a possibility for release within 13.
After serving 10 and a half years in prison, Bryant was released in 2018 after prosecutors struck a deal to release him on time served. Bryant now mentors inner-city youth through a nonprofit organization he started.
“I hold myself accountable for participating in a drug transaction, but do I feel like I should have gotten 17 years?” he testified at Wednesday’s hearing. “I don’t.””
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“drug-free school zone offenders were ineligible for classes or other educational programming because of their mandatory minimum sentences.
“There were no chances for me to take classes with this charge because I was serving 100 percent, a mandatory minimum,” Bryant testified. “Due to us not earning good time, we don’t get to participate in classes, so it’s hard to better yourself in that kind of situation.””
Trump called on Congress to pass a drug prices bill. Democrats reminded him they already did.
“The House bill — H.R.3 — has a few mechanisms for reducing prescription drug prices, but most notably, it would allow the US health department to directly negotiate the prices it will pay for up to 250 drugs every year. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the bill would save Medicare up to $450 billion over 10 years because of those new negotiating powers. CBO has also projected about eight fewer drugs (out of an expected 300 over 10 years) would come to the market in the next decade because of the decrease in revenues for drug makers.
Despite Trump’s promises on the 2016 campaign trail that he would support proposals allowing Medicare drug negotiations, the White House threatened to veto the House plan. They called it a plan to institute government “price controls,” and said it would limit access to medicine, a favored talking point of the pharmaceutical lobby.
Even without this veto threat, H.R.3 is expected to be dead-on-arrival in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shown no interest in taking up the bill.”
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“Instead, Trump has aligned himself more with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has advanced a narrower set of reforms from his perch as the Senate Finance Committee chair. (Grassley has also accused McConnell of sabotaging his bill, which moved out of Grassley’s committee with bipartisan support.)
His committee sent a bill to the full Senate in the fall, though it has languished there in the months since. It’s unclear if Trump’s quasi-endorsement — he did not call out Grassley’s bill directly Tuesday night, instead praising the senator generally for his individual work on the issue — will provide any new momentum for the plan. Grassley’s bill, as the Brookings Institution documented, achieves pricing reform through a mix of technical changes to the rebates that drug makers pay under Medicare and Medicaid as well as provisions to cap out-of-pocket drug costs for seniors.
Right now, neither of the bills seems on a fast track to anywhere. Part of this is because Trump’s interest in drug pricing has been scattershot at best, and many Republicans are reluctant to place too many new regulations on an innovation industry.”