With about a week left of the 2018 legislative session, lawmakers are facing increased pressure to pass gun safety legislation—in response to last month’s mass school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. But, as Sascha Cordner reports, the process is pitting people within the same parties against one another.
While some of the priorities announced by Florida lawmakers at the beginning of the legislative session have taken a back seat to efforts to respond to the Parkland school shooting, Regan McCarthy reports a measure to help curb the state’s opioid epidemic has moved forward in the House.
Meanwhile, addiction specialists and law enforcement officials are pleading with Florida House members to keep funding an injectable opioid-addiction treatment. As we hear from Ryan Benk at member station WJCT in Jacksonville, the House’s proposed budget zeroes out funding for vivitrol, a drug that can block opioid receptors in the brain for up to thirty days.
Florida Senators have teed up a change to the state’s death penalty rules, which is now heading to the chamber floor. It comes two years after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring the previous system unconstitutional. Lynn Hatter reports.
Tallahassee Community College President Jim Murdaugh talks with Tom Flanigan about what he and other college administrators had been hoping would happen during this Legislative Session and how they’re prepared to be disappointed yet again.
The Florida House of Representatives has passed a bill that bans a particular medical procedure. Affiliates of Planned Parenthood, along with some lawmakers, believe the ban is really an effort to restrict abortion. Bill supporters insist that’s not the case. Davondra Alston tries to sort it all out.