by Ty Tagami | Nov 13, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A mandatory cellphone ban could be coming for all public high schools in Georgia after the positive outcomes reported by schools that have already implemented such policies.
A new state law will require every public elementary and middle school in the state to lock up students’ phones and other personal devices starting next fall, but many already have such policies in place, including at high schools.
Teachers have reported strong support, with 92% backing an extension of the ban to high schools, according to a survey of 3,000 educators by Georgia Southern University detailed at a state Senate hearing Wednesday.
And educators and advocates who testified recounted similar enthusiasm at their schools and among parents.
Teachers and administrators have seen academic gains accompany the silencing of phone notifications. Studies show distractions bump minds off task, sending students’ minds careering. Banishing cellphones has also removed a tool used by miscreants to bully peers, coordinate fights and unleash other mayhem.
Students behaved better at Lakeside High School in DeKalb County when the phones were taken away last year, and they interacted with each other more, said Susan Stoddard, the principal there. “You heard the joyous fun of school in the hallways. They were talking to one another,” she said.
The district experimented with phone bans at several schools, then measured the impact.
“It was transformational academically, behaviorally and socially,” Stoddard said, noting that prior to implementation, classroom observers had counted an average of 16 notifications on each student’s phone every half hour.
That added up to nearly 300 disruptions per classroom each half hour, she said.
Similarly, Marietta City Schools banned phones in middle school last year. Superintendent Grant Rivera said district surveys found near-universal approval among teachers. He said the students themselves reported a 22% improvement in classroom behavior in the Georgia Student Health Survey, an annual questionnaire administered by the Georgia Department of Education.
Rivera’s enthusiastic testimony about the policy during the legislative session last winter may have helped to convince lawmakers to back the lower grades prohibition. House Bill 340 passed with broad bipartisan support.
Rivera said Wednesday that he needed a similar ban at the high school level but lacked community support for it. Too many parents had grown accustomed to reaching their teens, he said.
He wished lawmakers luck if they tried to extend the prohibition.
A refrain among critics of a high school ban is that parents need to be able to reach their kids if a shooter enters the building, a concern amplified by what happened at Apalachee High School last fall.
Police counter that cellphones make schools less safe in an emergency by distracting students from following instructions.
Stoddard said she routinely told parents that students drill to stay silent when an active shooter enters the building. The ding of an ill-timed text could draw the killer to the classroom, she would explain to parents who complained about Lakeside High’s ban. “I had to be very blunt,” she said, telling them, “It could be the difference between life or death for your child.”
The main sponsor of HB 340 had excluded high schools from his bill precisely because he worried about a backlash from parents. This was out of keeping with other states that prohibited phones from all schools, but Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, reiterated his concern about parent resistance at Wednesday’s hearing, counseling patience. He predicted that more parents and students would be receptive to the idea after rising high school students have experienced the benefits of phone-free middle school.
Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, a member of the committee, said he was “just wondering out loud” if that was a better course.
But Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, seemed unwilling to wait.
The hearing was the last in a series by the bipartisan study committee that she has helmed with Sen. Shawn Still, R-Johns Creek.
The senators have been exploring the impact on children of electronic devices, social media and artificial intelligence. Harrell has been emphatic about introducing legislation that pushes back against the encroachment of technology companies into the lives of children.
“I have a feeling that this discussion is going to continue into the legislative session,” she said, “but with a bill in committee.”
by Ty Tagami | Nov 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — If Congress ultimately approves the legislation that the U.S. Senate adopted Monday to end the government shutdown, it could throttle the multibillion dollar hemp consumables industry.
A provision tucked into the nearly 400-page appropriations bill would close what critics consider a loophole in a 2018 federal law that legalized the sale and use of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, from the hemp plant.
THC is a psychoactive chemical present in both hemp and marijuana plants, and the law legalized a limited amount in consumable products when it is derived from hemp.
Chemists found ways around the limit, and highly intoxicating products quickly filled store shelves, including at gas stations and convenience stores. Children were getting their hands on the gummies, vape fluids and other substances, ratcheting up calls for a crackdown.
But THC from hemp also spurred a mainstream industry with known brands incorporating it into their products.
“The implications of the government shutdown are very significant,” said Christopher Lackner, the Colorado-based president of the Hemp Beverage Alliance. Food stamps, cancelled flights and other disruptions are the focus, he said. “What is being lost is that the fate of an entire $30 billion industry is also at stake.”
Among the potential casualties is Atlanta-based Scofflaw Brewing, a decade-old beermaker that introduced hemp beverages after alcohol consumption began to decline nationally a few years ago.
Co-founder Matt Shirah said he invested millions of dollars into making THC beverages under his own brand and for other companies.
Sales have exploded, already rivaling his beer revenue. Projections had his THC-infused beverages blossoming into a $100 million product line within a couple of years, he said.
If this legislation becomes law, it could threaten the livelihoods of a hundred employees and short circuit an expansion employing dozens more, he said.
“If they institute a ban, we would stay small, not hire anybody, start letting people go,” he said. “This is very bad.”
Critics of the industry argue that the 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act intended mainly to open a market for industrial uses of hemp rather than for intoxicating products.
“Intoxicating hemp-derived THC products have inundated communities throughout our states due to a grievously mistaken interpretation of the 2018 Farm Bill’s definition of ‘hemp’ that companies are leveraging to pursue profits at the expense of public safety and health,” said a letter to Congress last month that was signed by 39 state attorneys general, including Georgia’s Chris Carr.
The letter accused shady players in the new industry of marketing products such as psychoactive gummies to minors, and it cited an increase in pediatric exposures to THC after the law’s passage.
The 2018 law attempted to limit the intoxicating potential by capping hemp-based THC in products at 0.3% or less “on a dry weight basis,” which some have described as ambiguous.
Marijuana remains a Schedule 1 drug under federal law, making it illegal for consumer use. So chemists got to work and learned how to concentrate the intoxicating effects of hemp using different elements of the plant.
They extracted an Alphabet soup of alternative forms of THC, such as delta-8, delta-10, THC-O, THCP and HHC, then infused them at high concentrations into a multitude of highly intoxicating “Frankenstein” products, the attorneys general letter said.
Gregg Raduka, a founding member of Georgians for Responsible Marijuana Policy, heralded the Senate’s proposed cap as “wonderful news,” adding that he hoped the U.S. House of Representatives would approve it. He had testified at state legislative hearings about what he saw as a burgeoning and dangerous hemp consumables market in Georgia.
Shirah’s beverages contain THC at levels condoned under state laws that were established to regulate the industry after the 2018 federal law made it legal.
Scofflaw sells cans of lemonade and other beverages with five or 10 milligrams of THC. The legislation that passed the U.S. Senate would limit products like that to 0.4 milligrams per container. It would also apply to gummies and any other consumable with hemp-derived THC, whether in bags, bottles, cans, cartridges, packets or other enclosures.
The Georgia Department of Agriculture has tried to weed out bad actors who exceed the state’s legal limits while supporting compliant businesses. Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper even spoke at the Hemp Beverage Alliance’s convention in Atlanta in July, noted Lackner, the Alliance president.
Lackner likened the crackdown to a ban that takes out sugar and all other sweeteners when the target was just saccharine.
“I don’t know what the intention is,” he said. “All I know is that the end the result is going to be catastrophic for our industry.”
Lackner saw a silver lining in the legislation though. It includes language that would allow the industry to keep operating for another year, giving mainstream companies time to lobby for a law that would let them continue to exist while eliminating competitors with highly intoxicating products.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — The one in eight Georgians who rely on food stamps to put meals on the table will start receiving their money on Tuesday.
The Georgia Department of Human Services (DHS) said recipients who were supposed to receive deposits to their electronic benefit transfer cards last week will see the transactions post, but they will be getting less money than they normally do.
“SNAP recipients will receive up to 65% of their normal benefit amount depending on their household income and other deductions,” the agency announced Sunday after receiving yet another communique from the federal government about the distributions.
A DHS spokesperson confirmed Monday that the plans had not changed.
They are based on a message Saturday from Patrick Penn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture deputy under secretary overseeing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. His latest guidance warned states not to issue full benefits or risk financial consequences.
It was the sixth time the USDA had changed the rules for states since the first guidance went out a month ago, on Oct. 10.
Penn, who had told states last week that they could issue full benefits, said the new mandate was based on the decision Friday by the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a stay against an order by a federal judge in Rhode Island requiring the agency to immediately release full November funding.
Some recipients in Georgia normally begin receiving deposits on the fifth of each month. The payments roll out to others on odd dates through the 23rd. Anyone who normally would have received their November allotment by now will see the deposits Tuesday, the state said. Thereafter, the reduced deposits will return to the normal schedule.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 10, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Hundreds of flights in and out of Atlanta were cancelled or delayed Monday amid the ongoing government shutdown.
At 41 days, this shutdown was longer by nearly a week than the prior record of 35 days set during President Donald Trump’s first term.
Last week, as the U.S. Senate seemed locked in stalemate, the Trump administration ordered a gradual cutback in the number of flights at the country’s 40 largest airports, starting with 4% Friday and reaching 10% Tuesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration had said the slowdown was necessary to alleviate strain among air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay since the country began operating without a budget Oct. 1.
On Monday, that translated to 220 cancellations and another 207 delays at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware. That works out to about 10% of the average 2,100 daily flights cancelled and another 10% delayed.
FlightAware was expecting a gradual winding down of disruptions later in the week, with about 100 cancellations Tuesday and fewer than 70 Wednesday.
Meanwhile, on Monday Congress seemed poised to reach an agreement on reopening the government ahead of the busy holiday travel season, as the U.S. Senate signaled a deal on passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government into January.
by Ty Tagami | Nov 7, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Georgia’s net tax collections rose by 6.9% last month compared to October of last year, accelerating ahead of percentage gains the prior two months, according to new state figures reported Friday.
October net collections exceeded $2.7 billion. That was less than the nearly $3.3 billion in September, but it was more than the $2.5 billion in October 2024, according to the numbers from the Georgia Department of Revenue.
The October year-over-year increase beat September’s 1.9% gain.
October individual income tax collections of more than $1.3 billion were up 6.3%, or nearly $79 million, over the same month in 2024 as tax refunds rose 4.2% and withholding payments fell 0.6%.
Corporate income tax collections fell 12.2%, bringing in $8.5 million less than in October last year.
Motor fuel taxes gained 8% for an extra $14.2 million, and tag and title fees rose 26.6%, for $8.6 million.
The title ad valorem tax rose 11.8%, raising an extra $7.9 million compared to a year ago.
