State House approves medical amnesty bill
By: Zane McMillin
Minors who drink too much and need medical attention might be more inclined to dial 911 if legislation passed Wednesday by the state House of Representatives becomes law.
Legislators overwhelmingly voted in favor of a bill sponsored by state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, that would provide immunity from a MIP to minors who seek help after overconsuming alcohol. Minors who call for help on another’s behalf also would be exempt.
ASMSU, MSU’s undergraduate student government, has lobbied in support of the bill and claimed another victory in its fight after it was passed by the House with 98 representatives in favor, seven opposed and five either absent or abstaining during voting.
The group has worked for almost a year to lobby for medical amnesty initiatives, said Marvin Yates, ASMSU’s director of governmental affairs. Several group officials testified in support of the bill Oct. 14 in front of the House Judiciary Committee, which Meadows chairs. The committee almost unanimously approved the legislation and it was referred to the full House for voting.
Yates said ASMSU now has its sights set on the state Senate, which likely will refer the bill to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration.
The group plans on approaching the issue from multiple angles by meeting with senators from that committee and addressing any questions or concerns other Senate members raise with the bill, he said.
“We’ll kind of just first find out what some opposition may be, why some of (the senators) might be opposed to the bill and then build a stronger strategy,” Yates said.
Meadows said the large number of votes in favor of the bill shows the amount of support it has garnered from various organizations and municipalities, such as the Ingham County medical examiner, the Prosecuting Attorney’s Association of Michigan, or PAAM, and the city of East Lansing.
“I’m real happy that it is passed and I’ll be even happier if it gets passed by the Senate and signed,” he said.
Meadows said he will wait to see which Senate committee the bill is referred to and then work with the committee’s chair to discuss the legislation’s further passage.
“As soon as I find out where it’s assigned, I’ll contact the committee chair and see what kind of prospects we have,” Meadows said.
State Sen. Wayne Kuipers, R-Holland, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment on the bill’s chance of passing in the Senate. However, state Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, said the bill stands a good chance because it has been endorsed by PAAM.
Brater introduced a similar bill to the Senate in March. Although that bill has not been discussed in the Senate committee, Brater said she was glad to see Meadows’ bill making its way through the Legislature.
“I’m very happy that Representative Meadows took up the bill and (it) went through the House,” Brater said. “I think (the endorsement) would help.”
ASMSU’s Student Assembly Chairperson Kyle Dysarz said the group’s effort in favor of medical amnesty legislation has inspired other state universities’ student government groups, such as Saginaw Valley State University’s, to bring the issue to light on their campuses.
Dysarz said ASMSU continues to work with other universities to support the legislation.
That Meadows’ bill passed by such a wide margin is a testament to the legislation’s importance and the bipartisan effort to pass it, he said.
10/22/09 @ 9:27am
Good Work ASMSU! Now get it passed into law.
10/22/09 @ 11:49am
What a joke. Way to encourage underage drinking. How about we instead put this amount of effort into further criminalizing underage drinking, and crimes like drunk driving? How about mandatory PRISON for drunk driving, and mandatory JAIL for MIP.
This effort disgusts me.
10/22/09 @ 1:25pm
I so glad they are passing this law. My brothers friend went into a coma after drinking too much alcohol, and my brother did not call because he was too afraid he would get an MIP. Not only do I have a personal story to this, I have heard of many other cases of students too afraid to call the cops. One example is a group of friends in the dorm, one of the girls (a minor) got way to drunk, and another girl (also a minor) called 911 because she was scared, and the signs posted in the dorm say to call even if you are a minor and not to be afraid. Well sure enough, while the wasted girl was passed out in the hospital, the officer slipped a MIP citation into her back pocket, only for her to find it later apon awaking. Her friend who called out of concern also recieved a citation. That could just be the evil hearted east lansing officials.
And “way to encourage” you are an idiot. I feel sorry for your children, hopefully they wont get too drunk behind your back and are too afraid to call for help.
10/22/09 @ 2:26pm
“Way to encourage underage drinking,” this is no laughing matter. Why, my dear old grandmother once passed away from underage drinking, and now you have the audacity to say that the problem can be solved by jail time. If my dear old grandmother had called 911 back in the day when she was o’ding on alcohol, perhaps she would not have passed away for the first time. I mean, she got better, but still the fear, aggravation, and pressure of dying almost did her in.
I believe the only reason she was able to survive her ordeal was the lack of blood in her system. You see, my grandmother has a medical disease where she only has about half the blood of a normal human being, and as such, she has been able to die three times, and survive a very nasty dog bite due to a dispute over ham.
Imagine it was your grandmother who almost died because she was afraid of being jailed for drinking underage.
“Way to encourage underage drinking,” you disgust me.
10/23/09 @ 10:35am
It was fine the way it was, thinning the herd of idiots who don’t know when to stop drinking.
10/23/09 @ 11:09am
Excessive underage drinking, like all excessive drinking (including by tailgating alumni, which is encouraged by the University in the hope of donations) is a health problem. When drunks become social nuisances, then it becomes a law enforcement problem, as well, but there is no evidence that strict enforcement of underage drinking laws has any deterrent effect on anti-social drunken behaviors. At least this new law may make it easier to get medical help for those who need it.
During the U of M game, I saw a girl passed out with a few drunk friends trying to revive her. I told them to call the cops and that they would not get in trouble (it is common knowledge that the policy in the legislation is de facto law on campus and in East Lansing). They told me she hadn’t drunk all that much (right!). I’ve seen this many, many times before. We have a problem. Underage drinking isn’t the problem. Drinking to excess is. It hurts brain development for college age people and causes physical and mental damage at all ages, not to mention time lost to learning and work—let’s not forget there is a terrible job market for recent college grads, and likely to be for a long time. There is little law enforcement can do to change the attitude that you need to get stinking drunk to have a good time. That’s a stupid attitude, but it’s up to MSU students to figure that out for themselves, and in the meantime facilitating treatment for those most in need of medical attention is the responsible thing to do.
10/23/09 @ 4:00pm
The way to FIX this problem is to make the penalty for underage drinking OH SO MUCH more severe. Kids should not be drinking, in fact, students should NOT have time to drink in college – If you have more time to play than if you were working a FULL TIME JOB in the REAL WORLD, then you aren’t studying enough, and should FAIL.
Because of all you worthless loser partiers, the bachelors degree is the new HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA – Unless you are in a god tier degree like the medical sciences, engineering, physics, etc, your degree means JACK.
I have been hiring/firing people for years now, and I can always sniff one of your party kids out in a second. I DO NOT hire your type, rather, I hire QUALITY employees.
10/23/09 @ 4:04pm
Townsend, if you had a brain, you would realize that IF your grandmother had PASSED AWAY, then your family would NOT EXIST!
Your post is nothing more than a logic error, and story that you clearly made up.
Lol.
10/23/09 @ 5:37pm
Way to encourage underage drinking, did you have to walk 15 miles in the snow to get to class, too? I bet you liked it!
I mean, what’s with this nonsense of kids enjoying their lives before they start having to pay back those outrageous amounts of students loans, go to jobs they hate every day (with the fear of being fired because of “rightsizing,” not performance issues), raise and provide for their families, all while making less in income relative to their grandparents’ and parents’ buying powers!
And who cares if certain students are so intelligent that they can do well with little effort! They should study more, because, well, goddamn it, I hate my life, so they should hate theirs!
Goddamn hippies!
(Note sarcasm. It sounds like someone needs to loosen up…or get some from their wife.)
10/25/09 @ 7:08pm
“HaHa Townsend,” you obviously know nothing about medicine. A person’s health is directly related to the amount of blood currently flowing through their endocrine system. If one has less blood, then logically they do not need to worry about things like dog bites, because the dog is not very likely to strike blood. It’s physics really. And while I enjoy viewing your logically fallacies, it does become tiresome defending my family from baseless accusations perpetrated by peoples who speak with their mouths, not their hearts.
May this be a lesson to you “haha townsend.”
10/26/09 @ 9:05pm
“I have been hiring/firing people for years now, and I can always sniff one of your party kids out in a second. I DO NOT hire your type, rather, I hire QUALITY employees.”
I have an engineering degree and a good job. Also, I drank when I was underage and continue to enjoy drinking. Way to correlate two completely unrelated things. You should probably write a book about your ideas.