State senator aims to end “personal belief” exemption of vaccination requirements; rep wants to ban hunting, fishing with drones.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Oregon state Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward sponsored a bill to end exemptions to vaccination laws in the wake of a measles outbreak.
Portland Business Journal reported Thursday that the lawmaker wants to include all vaccinations in the bill.
“We’ve got problems with whooping cough and chicken pox,” she said.
The Disney measles outbreak started in December and has spread to seven states, including Oregon, with more than 100 cases. While the disease was declared eradicated in 2000, it has since staged a comeback. Many have blamed the anti-vaccine movement, which was spurred by a discredited study linking the virus to autism. Oregon has the highest rate of nonmedical exemption from vaccination in the country, at 9 percent. Mississippi, which has no such exemption, has the lowest unvaccinated rate, at 0.1 percent, Steiner Hayward noted.
In the Oregon House of Representatives, democratic Rep. Brad Witt proposed a bill to make hunting or fishing with a drone illegal.
The Statesman Journal reported on the bill.
If it becomes law, HB 2534 would would require the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to ban the use of drones as an aid in fishing or hunting as well as tracking or harassing wildlife, game birds, “game mammals or other mammals.”
It also would be illegal to use drones for harassing or otherwise interfering with lawful anglers or hunters.
