BATON ROUGE – A House bill that would extend penalties to any person, including a child’s relative, who administers nonprescription medication to a child without parental consent easily advanced to the Senate on Monday.

House Bill 106, authored by Rep. Vincent Cox III, R-Gretna, specifically targets the distribution of melatonin, a sleep aid, without parents’ approval and provides penalties of up to $1,000 and six months in jail.

Cox said the bill was prompted by an incident in Gretna in which a nanny at a child’s home gave the child medication without parental permission. The child’s family was unable to pursue charges under current state law, and Cox said the city’s chief of police brought the concern directly to him.

The bill faced some initial opposition on the House floor.

“There are a lot of medications that are not crimes to give to children,” Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, said. “As a grandparent, I wouldn’t want to be charged with a crime for giving someone melatonin.”

Cox said he would not adjust his bill to protect grandparents.

“A lot of times you can get into the nitpicking of the law and forget about common sense,” Cox said in an interview with LSU Manship School News Service.

The bill advanced to the Senate floor by a vote of 87-5.

Other childcare measures were also debated on the House floor on Monday.

Extensive debate was generated on House Bill 119, authored by Rep. Bryan Fontenot, R-Thibodaux, which would make the possession of artificially created nude images of a child a felony. The bill specifically penalizes the possession, dissemination and sale of juvenile deepfakes.

House members’ concerns were primarily on the liability of a bystander who might be unwillingly exposed and in possession of an artificially created image.

“But if I didn’t ask for it, why should I become a mandatory reporter?” said Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, “Why should I have to submit myself to criminal prosecution?”

Fontenot argued that individuals have a moral obligation to report the dissemination of those images. He also said that receiving the image would make that person party to the crime.

An amendment to the bill that would not penalize unwilling bystanders is still under debate. The bill advanced unanimously, 101-0.

House Bill 584 by Rep. Delisha Boyd, D-New Orleans, mandating that local social services provide foster children with proper luggage and containers to move between foster homes, also engendered discussion. Boyd said foster children, in many instances, use garbage bags to move their belongings.

The bill also proposed that the Department of Children and Family Services host donation drives every two years so that luggage can be donated and obtained for foster children.

“This bill is to bring some dignity to the children who are held in foster care,” Boyd said.

The bill passed 100-0 on the House floor.