Topics covered at Friday's annual legislative luncheon ranged from budget matters to interstate trafficking in prescription drugs to roads and health care, with legislators answering questions and updating the audience.

At least half of the time was spent on issues related to Greene Valley Developmental Center. (Please see accompaning article on this page.)

"Prescription drugs brought to Greene County from Florida" is an issue that State Rep. David Hawk, R-1st, of Greeneville, said was brought to him by Greene County Sheriff Steve Burns.

Hawk said the sheriff pointed out that nothing in current state law provides a definition of interstate "trafficking" in prescription drugs obtained legally, or provides appropriate penalties.

Hawk said he and others in the county's legislative delegation are working to increase the penalties for possession or sale of prescription drugs, especially pain medications legally obtained in another state with the intent of resale on the street here.
Currently, the offense is only a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by 30 days in jail and a fine, which Hawk said is not enough of a deterrent for someone who is most likely a drug user.

Hawk said he is working to increase the penalties to make the offense a Class D felony, punishable by at least two years in prison.

State Sen. Steve Southerland, R-1st, of Morristown, said the primary drug being imported from out of state is oxycontin, a strong pain medication.

Abuse of prescription drugs is not just a local problem, he said, "it is America's number one drug problem today."

Southerland said someone can rent a 15-passenger van, fill it with people, and take them to Florida where they can see a doctor for a $200 visit and walk out with a prescription for 200 oxycontin pills.

He noted that seven people from this area were recently arrested in West Palm Beach, Fla., doing just that.

Sheriff Burns, in a telephone interview, said a single oxycontin sells on the street "in the $20 to $40 range," so 15 people in a van could return to Tennessee with 3,000 pills worth at least $60,000 on the street.

Typically, Burns said, the driver will organize the trip, pay for the doctor visits and the cost of the trip and a day in Florida, and come back with 200 pills for himself, and half of the pills each passenger obtains.

Burns said drug trends change, and in recent years, his department has been seeing more stealing and violence related to pain medications than in the past, so he approached Hawk about it.

The sheriff said he believes the Tennessee Sheriff's Association will support any improvement in the law that Hawk can work out.

Sheriffs across the state "are just glad that the legislature is talking about it," Burns said, though improvement may take time to achieve.

Hawk was asked when improvements to the Baileyton Road, (state Route 172) are likely to happen.

Hawk noted that this is "the third or fourth year that I've said the Baileyton Road is my top priority," and the process is "still ongoing."

A four-laned Baileyton Road would be the fastest way for people in Greeneville to get to I-81, Hawk said, and is obviously important to Baileyton. But he said the fact is, "there are no new roads being built in Tennessee" this year, only a lot of road resurfacing.

State Rep. Eddie Yokley, D-11th, of Greene County, said he is "certainly for helping the Baileyton Highway."

However, Yokley also noted that eight miles of four-lane highway in Cocke County, the Newport Highway, "is getting ready to be dumped into a two-lane" in Greene County.

Yokley said he is also in favor of improvements to the Newport Highway (U.S. 321).

Yokley's district includes all of Cocke County and those portions of Greene County outside Greeneville to the south and west, and includes all of the Newport Highway.

Southerland, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said, "Funds are the problem."

He noted that when the federal government rescinded $600 million in road funds that Tennessee had expected to receive this year, that halted many road projects statewide.

"We're mainly trying to maintain our roads," he said.

The local legislators were also asked the status of the "bypass around Greeneville," or northern loop, which was called for by all five planning commissions and mayors in the county several years ago, at the same time that improvements to the Baileyton Road were called for.

Hawk said that project is in about the same standing as Baileyton Road, with environmental studies and preliminary locations worked on, but no funding approved.

Again, Southerland said, "It's all funding."

He noted that improvements to U.S. Highway 11E between Interstate 81 and Morristown have been approved by the Tennessee Department of Transportation and Gov. Phil Bredesen.

"But we still haven't broken ground," and with "everybody in the state competing" for a smaller amount of money, nothing will happen soon, Southerland said.

Yokley said that even if the U.S. 321 project he favors were to be approved this year, it would still be five or six years "before we would see results."
Yokley also recalled seeing surveyors working along the Newport Highway and driving stakes in fields "when I was a little bitty boy."

Legislators took different angles on a question asking, "Is there hope for health care in Tennessee?"

Hawk noted that there have been major cuts in the numbers of people covered by TennCare, the state's replacement for Medicaid that was implemented in the 1990s and soon ballooned to covering 1.4 million people, including "the sickest of the sick" from surrounding states.

Southerland said Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, in looking at the health care reforms proposed by President Obama, called the plan "the mother of all unfunded mandates," and said the President's plan, or those like it, would cost Tennessee an additional $1 billion or more.

Southerland said he believes that tort reform is "at the front of what will help" address health-care costs that are out of control.

Yokley said that 25 percent of this country's people reside in rural areas, but those rural areas are served by only 10 percent of the nation's doctors, and the death rate is higher in rural areas, including in much of rural Tennessee.

He also said that if four of five people from the audience went to get the same x-ray done, they would come back with "four or five different prices," a situation that he said is bad for doctors, patients and hospitals.

However, Yokley also said, "I'm not for the policy in Washington, D.C., that's being presented" regarding health care.

Yokley, however, said something must be done to help people in terrible situations who have been cut from TennCare.

He told of visiting a family on Sunday, where a 10-year-old girl is subject to frequent seizures.

The girl "just got cut off of TennCare," he said, and as a result, one of her parents must quit her job to stay with her.

"I would like to see our country take care of situations like that," Yokley said.