Legislative Matrix based upon the specific legislators in a residential/geographical legislative district
Week 2 Project
Geographical legislative district
Different states in the United States handle the issue of legislation differently according to the state rules and regulations. They have various health laws and policies that target issues concerning the health of the populations.
When it comes to the state of Florida, there was introduction of the 2017 policy on drug abuse and substance abuse which was passed to regulation and legislation in the year 2017 (Delcher et al.,2017). The new bill was placed under the one of the general bills on Health and Human Services Committee that served under the department of families, children, and seniors subcommittees. The law serves in protecting the population and public members who have been misused by the drug suppliers thus undergoing the effects of drug and substance abuse. It is one of the major and effective bills that has benefited the public has it has helped protect them from poor market practices.
The 2017 Policy on Practices of Substance Abuse service providers was first introduced to the House in the state of Florida by Hager and Harell who were Florida House representatives. On its introduction, the bill was supported by Stevenson, Willhite, Abruzzo, Ahern, and Bermanm Roth. The law experienced the first filing on the 13th of February, 2017 (Belackova et al., 2017).
According to the 397.433 section of the Florida Statutes, the Florida Statewide Drug Policy Advisory Council Annual report analyses the problems of drugs and substance abuse within the state and files a report regarding the information acquired. The report is handed to the legislature and the governor for further considerations and analyses. Thereafter several meetings are held with the objective of discussing the findings that are on the report. The council reviews all the relevant information related to the abuse and interviews some of the victims of the challenge with reviews from experts so as to get actual information that helps formulate the best approaches of management. Members of the council are also involves in several meetings and conferences around the state to try and understand the actual risk and predisposing factors.
The development of legislations against drug abuse and substance use in Florida began in the year 2008 with the introduction of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act by Pete Dominici and Paul Wellstone (Ettner et al.,2016). The act was developed due to the challenges of mental health related to substance abuse. They wanted management of substance abuse to be integrated with other illnesses in the healthcare systems. Hence, the current president of the US, Donald Trump appointed the Commission on Combating Drug addiction and Opioid Crisis. The commission released a well written and analysed report on the same year, 2017 July, with the final one being on November. Among the objectives and recommendations that were on the report was the importance of championing for their new act to be passed into law. Additionally, they included a standardised method of assessing and managing all mental health disorders and cases of addiction according to proper diagnostics and physical health assessment.
During the year 2012, the legislature decided to focus on the problems of the unborn babies faced due to medical prescriptions and abuse of prescribed medications among the people of Florida. The attorney general of the state General Pam Bondi created a task force comprised of 15members that were to study the effects of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) in Florida (Ko 2016). The task force was very effective in their study and serving their purpose as they published their final report February the following year. Various copies were also distributed to the stakeholders that contained the ways on prevention, intervention, and treatment of NAS. Additionally, before the resolution of the taskforce, they continued to study and research thus publishing 15recommendations on sustaining the efforts. They also recommended on creation of a council that handled the matters.
In the year 2017, after the introduction of the new act on drugs and substance abuse, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the address of NAS that was targeted to the Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The report consisted of more than 30recommendations that explained the best ways for managing the NAS syndrome.
References
Belackova, V., Ritter, A., Shanahan, M., & Hughes, C. E. (2017). Assessing the concordance between illicit drug laws on the books and drug law enforcement: comparison of three states on the continuum from “decriminalised” to “punitive”. International Journal of Drug Policy, 41, 148-157.
Delcher, C., Wang, Y., Young, H. W., Goldberger, B. A., Schmidt, S., & Reisfield, G. M. (2017). Trends in Florida’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program registration and utilization: Implications for increasing voluntary use. Journal of opioid management, 13(5), 283-289.
Ettner, S. L., Harwood, J. M., Thalmayer, A., Ong, M. K., Xu, H., Bresolin, M. J., … & Azocar, F. (2016). The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act evaluation study: Impact on specialty behavioral health utilization and expenditures among “carve-out” enrollees. Journal of health economics, 50, 131-143.
Ko, J. Y. (2016). Incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome—28 states, 1999–2013. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report, 65.
