ATLANTA (AP) - Recent editorials from Georgia newspapers:
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Sept. 30
The Telegraph, Macon, Georgia, on medicinal marijuana use in the state:
Dilemma: State of uncertainty or perplexity especially as requiring a choice between equally unfavorable options.
That is what’s faced by patients and parents of those who use medicinal marijuana in Georgia. While it’s legal to have 20 ounces of the liquid (cannabidiol) derived from a particular strain of marijuana plant that does not produce a high, it remains illegal to grow the plant in the state.
Even though patients have to have one of eight maladies, they or their guardians can’t legally buy the oil in Georgia. Here’s where the dilemma occurs. They can order it and have it shipped from a state where marijuana is legal (remember, this strain can have no more than 5 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol). However, due to federal laws, that puts the producer at some risk. Patients or their parents can travel to a state such as Colorado where marijuana is legal and purchase the oil but that could lead to federal drug smuggling charges.
So what to do? Parents will go to any lengths to ease their children’s pain. Seizures are life threatening and the cannabidiol eases their frequency and intensity.
The real solution will come before the Georgia General Assembly starting in January. The lawmakers will have in their hands reports from the Georgia Commission on Medical Cannabis and another panel formed by the chair of the Legislative Black Caucus in answer to the absence of any black or Hispanic participation on the other sanctioned commission, an obvious error.
The dilemma faced by patients and caregivers should be eliminated. They shouldn’t be forced into being federal lawbreakers when all they are trying to do is elevate their own or a loved one’s pain.
Online:
https://www.macon.com
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Oct. 2
Rome (Georgia) News-Tribune on electing Rep. Tom Price as U.S. House majority leader:
Back-stage jockeying for party leadership positions on Capitol Hill isn’t typically of much interest to folks back home. That is, unless one of those looking to move into one of the most powerful and important slots happens to represent those folks. Which is the case in Washington right now, where U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Roswell, is vying to be elected to the second-most powerful position in the House, that of majority leader.
Also in the works is an election that will determine a new House speaker.
That chain of events was set off by the surprise announcement last Friday by Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that he will resign as of the end of next month.
Current GOP Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California is the odds-on favorite to move up to speaker. The only challenger as this was written was a dark horse, Tea Partier Daniel Webster, R-Fla.
Price presently chairs one of the most powerful committees on Capitol Hill - the House Budget Committee - and previously was chair of the Republican Policy Committee.
Price is an orthopedic surgeon who served in the Georgia Legislature (and who was the first-ever Republican Senate Majority Leader there) prior to his election to the U.S. House in 2004. He announced his candidacy for majority leader on Monday evening.
“The hurdles that inevitably lay ahead will require effective and capable leaders,” he wrote in an email to fellow members of the GOP House Caucus. “It will require new thinking and a change from the status quo. And it must advance the cause of a smaller, more limited, more accountable government by allowing everyone’s voice to be included.”
He picked up a pair of important endorsements on Monday. One was from House Ways and Means Committee Chair Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
“Tom has a proven record of advancing conservative solutions and principles,” Ryan said. “He has the knowledge and skills needed to be an effective majority leader, and I’m proud to support him.”
The other was from House Financial Services Committee chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, who had been thinking of running for the position himself.
Also running for majority leader along with Price is Rep. Stephen Scalise of Louisiana, current House Majority Whip. Electing Scalise as leader could pose problems for Republicans. As CNN put it on Tuesday, “A heated race for the majority leader post could once again raise questions about Scalise’s past, notably his speech in 2002 to an anti-Semitic, white supremacist group run by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.”
We hope the GOP Caucus will see the wisdom of electing Price as majority leader. After all, he has excelled in medicine, excelled in politics at the state level and now is excelling in politics at the national level. And it certainly would redound to the benefit of Floyd County, our region and our state to have a fellow Georgian with such credentials so near the pinnacle of power in the House.
The GOP Caucus will meet Thursday to elect the new majority leader as well as Boehner’s successor. For the reasons given above, we believe Rep. Tom Price is the best choice for majority leader and urge his colleagues in the Georgia congressional delegation to support him.
Online:
https://www.northwestgeorgianews.com
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Oct. 3
The Brunswick (Georgia) News on the debate about gun laws:
The senseless slaughter of nine students by a gunman at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., Thursday has triggered yet another emotional debate on whether our nation should tighten laws regarding gun ownership. There are some who say certain guns should not be allowed, and there are others who would like to have even more control than that.
Still others feel a better system of monitoring who is purchasing weapons might prove helpful.
No one should be surprised by this debate, especially among the townsfolk around this small community college on the West Coast. Some of the young men and women shot down and killed were the sons and daughters of people they knew. This episode also undoubtedly reawakened the painful memories of all the moms and dads who have lost elementary and high school children to the same fate. Anyone who has lost of child knows that deep, deep hurt.
When the nation’s forefathers passed laws protecting gun rights, the main weapon at the time was a single-shot muzzle loader.
There’s no way someone could have entered a school at that time and killed or wounded as many students. Most would have fled to safety by the time the second musket ball was packed into the barrel and had the weapon readied to fire again. Did the framers of the Constitution have any idea just how much weapons would evolve over the years?
Of course, those against gun control will argue that no law would keep guns out of the hands of criminals. It only deters honest people. There are also those who witness via newspapers and television the cruelties that occur in other countries where unarmed citizens are at the mercy of despots. These people also wield a legitimate point of view.
Where do these pro and con arguments leave the nation? In the same place it is today: at the mercy of mentally unstable human beings whose idea of justice or leaving a message for society is to take as many innocent young lives as possible.
Something must be done. What that something is should be discussed, debated and presented as a potential solution by some of the finest minds and thinkers in the country. And the sooner the better.
Online:
https://www.thebrunswicknews.com
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