New Texas laws taking effect Friday include everything from school safety to fighting the fentanyl crisis
TEXAS - Nearly 800 new laws are now in effect across the state of Texas.
HB-3 requires an armed security officer at every school, which could be a police officer or a school employee who completed safety training that certifies them to carry a handgun on school premises.
RELATED: 774 Texas laws going into effect on Sept. 1, here's a few; some bills blocked
There’s also HB-3908.
"My son was a varsity swimmer at The Woodlands High School. He was a year-round swimmer. He was smart. He was funny," explains Kathy Posey.
Josh Posey was also taken too soon. After surviving 12 drug overdoses, he died after overdosing a 13th time.
Mrs. Posey is grateful for HB-3908 now in effect in Texas, making anti-drug curriculum for public schools mandatory for 6th through 12th grade students.
Posey hopes the instruction will also give kids effective coping mechanisms because many begin self-medicating and experimenting with drugs, instead of facing things like trauma or mental health concerns.
"That’s what happened with my son. He was experimenting, and he developed a very severe substance use disorder. He was in and out of treatments for many years. When we counted it was about 12 different rehabs," Posey explains.
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Combating the fentanyl crisis specifically. Another new law will now replace a statute on the books to charge drug dealers in connection with deaths that had been under utilized and ineffective, because it mostly covered large amounts of drugs.
"What the new law allows us to do is charge those cases, regardless of weight, as a murder, which is a first degree felony, which would expose that drug dealer to a five to 99 year punishment range," explains Prosecutor Donna Hansen with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.
House Bills 3553 and 3554 expand no trafficking zones to… "All college campuses, higher education, juvenile detention centers, community centers, residential facilities, all of these facilities where children are preyed upon," explains the Founder of the non-profit No Trafficking Zone Jaquelyn Aluotto.
She added, "Now what we’re saying to traffickers, and pimps and predators, is when you enter these areas these zones it is now going to be punishable by 25 to 99 years. (Wow that’s huge. We’ve seen a growing number of predators target students at schools and school sponsored events.) Yes, traditionally it’s been schools, college campuses, and homeless youth facilities. Homeless children were really being preyed upon," Aluotto explains.
Aluotto says too often these predators were receiving little to no jail time. So it was a low risk, high profit crime.
"We want to make this high, high risk, so that no one wants to traffic children and make it a very low profit," says Aluotto.
Boating with a child while intoxicated is now a state jail felony, and you know the sex offender list? There’s now a public registry for domestic violence offenders.
"For individuals who have two or more convictions for family violence offenses, which could include stalking, continuous family violence, assault of a family member," Hansen explains.
Another Texas law taking effect requires college athletes to play sports on teams matching the gender stated on their birth certificate. Texas has also banned gender-affirming care, including medication and surgery, for minors.