Editorial voices from elsewhere
Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States:
Flying guns might not be something you worried about on the way to work today, but lawmakers have introduced a bill in the Michigan House to make sure you never have to.
The legislation, introduced in June, would outlaw drones with guns or other weapons attached. It’s a good idea, even if problems with such concoctions haven’t yet occurred.
Clearly, attaching weapons to small flying devices shouldn’t be legal, regardless of whether the owner possesses a license to carry his or her weapon. Just as it’s illegal to attach weapons to unmanned booby traps, flying firearms should be reserved for military and law enforcement use only.
As sales and personal use of drones continue to increase, legislation should keep up.
Appalachia’s substance abuse epidemic is a difficult problem to comprehend. Why are so many men and women destroying themselves – and their families – this way? But among those considering the possible solutions to the problem, there is a subset who believe substance abuse is a voluntary addiction, a series of disasters a person brings upon himself or herself. Spending money on treatment facilities, education and rehabilitation is a waste of resources.
The truth is far more complex and frightening.
A few weeks ago, a West Virginia couple was charged with trying to sell their 3-month-old baby for $1,000. Authorities suspect the pair hoped to exchange the child for drug money. When no one accepted the first offer, they lowered their price. They were willing to take $500 for a precious child. Still, when there were no takers, the couple appears to have been willing to accept the smaller financial advantage of simply no longer having a child to take care of. They abandoned the baby and skipped town. An innocent infant will be affected for the rest of his life by drugs he never touched.
Entire communities are facing the public health risk of HIV and hepatitis B and C because of the needle use associated with drugs. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 56 percent of all the counties identified as vulnerable to HIV and hepatitis B and C outbreaks are in West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. Experts say it will take a massive coordinated effort to slow the development of outbreaks. That effort cannot include ignoring addicts and hoping they go away. The poison that has been brought to our region by drug pushers – legal and illegal – is affecting us all, and we must face it as the threat to our communities, our states, our country that it has become.
Inside the opaque world of outsourced, privately run prisons around the country, there’s an even less-understood, minimally regulated sub-industry that specializes in transporting extradited prisoners across state lines. It is a deadly serious business that operates in a legal gray area and appears to be accountable to no one when prisoners are maimed, medically neglected or killed during transport.
These companies typically operate vans that are packed with prisoners and travel long, circuitous routes to deliver them to jails and prisons covering 26 states. Reporters for the nonprofit Marshall Project news organization recently published results of an investigation on ways prisoners have been abused or fatally injured while shackled, sometimes for days at a time, in the back of transport vans. Since the vehicles cross multiple state lines, it becomes exceedingly difficult to determine which state holds jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute a homicide or abuse.
The drive to privatize doesn’t always bring greater efficiency. It certainly doesn’t produce more accountability or transparency for taxpayers. This is one case where the public’s interest is better served by keeping prisoner transport services entirely under government management.