Tenn. Campus Carry law goes into effect July 1
A new law that goes into effect July 1 will allow full-time employees at Tennessee colleges and universities to be armed on campus.
Senate Bill 2376, known as Tennessee Campus Carry, will allow full-time employees of public higher education institutions who have a handgun permit to carry a handgun on property owned, operated, or in use by the institution.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam allowed the bill to become law without his signature.
State regulates fantasy sports operators
Tennessee has a new law governing those who operate fantasy sports contests. Signed on April 27, Senate Bill 2109 goes into effect on July 1 as the Fantasy Sports Act (FSA).
It requires fantasy sports operators to be licensed by the secretary of state, establishes a 6 percent privilege tax on all adjusted revenues of fantasy sports contests. There also are provisions to protect minors from exploitation.
It also requires the operator to maintain records of all player accounts for five years from account creation and submit annual reports. The secretary of state must establish fees for applications, licensures, annual license renewals, late fees, correction of information, change of information, as well as online transaction fees for processing payments for applications.
Fantasy sports are online games that let participants create virtual teams of real players, and then these virtual teams compete based on the statistics of the real players.
Tennessee is yet another state to address and/or regulate the fantasy sports business model, including Indiana, Virgini, and Kansas. Other states’ attorneys general — including Alabama, Mississippi, New York and Texas — have stated that such activities were illegal in their respective states.
For more information, see bit.ly/TN-SB2109.
Bill would spur treatments, cures for patients
KINGSPORT — U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is working on legislation that will “affect virtually every American and be the most important bill Congress considers this year. He was speaking to to members of the Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City Chambers of Commerce on May 4.
He cited some success stories. “Last August, Nashville resident Douglas Oliver was legally blind and today, he can see. Also today, a Tennessee company is 3-D printing artificial hips, some patients with cystic fibrosis are being cured — and in 10 years, the head of the National Institutes of Health predicts we’ll have a universal flu vaccine, hearts rebuilt from a patient’s own cells, and real treatments for Alzheimer’s. These are just a handful of the many stunning breakthroughs in biomedical research that can be accelerated and delivered to more American patients if Congress passes a 21st Century Cures bill into law this year.”
The Senate legislation is result of 50 bipartisan proposals passed by the Senate health committee, which Alexander chairs. Together, those proposals form a companion to the House of Representative’s 21st Century Cures Act, which passed the House last year by 344 to 77.
Alexander recounted the story of Douglas Oliver, who was told last year by Vanderbilt University doctors that there was no cure for his macular degeneration, but suggested he look for a clinical trial.
Oliver found one in Florida, where doctors inserted a needle into his hip bone, extracted his own cells, spun them in a Food and Drug Adminis-tration (FDA)-cleared centrifuge, and injected them back into his retina. The vision in Oliver’s worst eye went from 20/2000 to 20/40. Last December he received his Tennessee driver’s license 11 years after surrendering it because of blindness.
“The bill I am working on will create a breakthrough path for new medical devices, help the FDA attract talented researchers and reduce administrative burdens on researchers,” Alexander said. “That will help more Americans access cutting-edge cures like Tennessean Doug Oliver did. It’s a remarkable story but it’s just one story and there are millions of other Americans who could be helped if we complete the work that we set out to do.”
The medical innovation legislation would also allow the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to require researchers who use NIH funds to share their data.
It would encourage interoperability of electronic medical records, reduce excessive physician documentation requirements, clarify each patient’s right to own their own medical record, and discourage information blocking.
Alexander said that his goal is to present this companion legislation to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), along with a bipartisan “NIH Innovation Projects Fund,” which would provide a surge of one-time funding for targeted NIH priorities, including the president’s Precision Medicine Initiative, the vice president’s National Cancer Moonshot, a Young Investigator Corps, Big Biothink Awards, and the BRAIN Initiative.
Alexander said, “With its 21st Century Cures Act passed last year, the House voted 344 to 77 to provide $8.8 billion in paid-for, mandatory funding to support such NIH priorities. We continue to work to find an amount that the House will agree to, the Senate will pass and the president will sign.”
