The Gazette, June 21, on ballot measure forbidding sale of smartphones to children under age 13
Beware of the supermarket parking lot this summer. Petitioners will approach with clipboards, asking if we care about kids. If so, we must impose smartphone control.
Do not sign this petition.
They want a ballot measure that would forbid the sale of smartphones to children under age 13. The law would require retailers to interrogate adult customers about the intended primary user of each phone. If that user is younger than 13, the transaction would stop or punishment could ensue.
Retailers would endure the burden and cost of submitting monthly compliance reports to the Colorado Department of Revenue, to prove their innocence.
Oh, of course the petitioners mean well. It is for the children.
The whole thing came about because a busy Front Range anesthesiologist could not keep two of his five kids from wasting time on their smartphones.
“There were some real problems,” said Dr. Tim Farnum said, as quoted by The Washington Post. “If you tell them to watch the screen time, all of a sudden the fangs come out.”
Physician, heal thy parenting style. If children revolt against discipline, and a parent allows it, voters and state regulation cannot solve the problem.
Farnum, who apparently allowed hours-on-end of smartphone time, said his boys became moody, quiet and reclusive. One boy had a temper tantrum when Farnum tried to take the phone.
The doctor’s subsequent research found excessive exposure to technology may undermine a child’s social skills and cause unhealthy reliance on the neurotransmitter dopamine. The physiological consequences of phone abuse, he found, are similar to those of drug and alcohol addiction.
Farnum formed Parents Against Underage Smartphones, which obtained state approval to petition for Ballot Initiative 29. The law would require the Colorado Department of Revenue to create a website portal for reports of smartphone sales. It would require the department to investigate suspicious sales and impose penalties that begin with $500 for the second offense and double with each subsequent violation.
Properly managed, smartphones can be assets for young children. Helpful apps use repetition to help kids learn math, spelling, reading and more.
Aside from a few potential benefits of smartphones, we concur with most concerns about children spending their days gawking at screens. Kids should spend more time playing baseball, reading books and building tree forts. We completely support the goal of limiting a child’s time with tablets, cellphones, computers and TVs.
It takes vigilant parents, not the Department of Revenue.
If they impose this law, voters are remiss to overlook other concerns. They should involve the state in controlling what 12-year-olds see on TV. They should forbid video games and junk food.
The world entices children with countless horribles that complicate parenting.
Moms and dads must monitor and manage what children eat, drink and how they spend their time. When kids balk at the rules, parents must figure out how to lead. They cannot run to the ballot, hoping state law can parent their kids.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2rDKtIJ
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The Denver Post, June 20, on opioid epidemic:
An important question for the nation as it struggles with its opioid epidemic is whether, or to what degree, Big Pharma is behind the disaster. Were doctors too often swayed by drugmakers in prescribing painkillers needlessly? Were the drugmakers aware of the dangers of addiction but unwilling to change practices in marketing the drugs? Could more have been done to make the drugs harder to abuse?
Such questions gain even more importance now that the coast-to-coast epidemic is overwhelming hospitals. According to recently released public data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, hospitals saw 1.27 million opioid-related emergency room visits or inpatient stays in 2014, the latest year for which data are available. The total is a 64 percent increase for in-room care and nearly 100 percent increase in the ER from 2005.
So count us as pleased that Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has been working with dozens of state attorneys general in a months-long investigation that intends to answer these questions. Coffman tells us that findings from the recently acknowledged investigation are soon to be released.
What to expect? “We have reason to believe that there are some opioid manufacturers who chose not to see the dangers of over-prescribing,” Coffman tells us.
A little history helps in considering the investigation by the attorneys general. Starting in the mid-1970s, as Percocet and Vicodin started showing up in the medicine cabinet, doctors were being told the drugs could work wonders in managing pain. In 1980, a New England Journal of Medicine report stated that addiction shouldn’t be of concern. In the ’80s, pain-management specialists like Russell Portenoy were telling doctors and patients that opioid painkillers were safe and a more humane alternative to surgery.
In the ’90s, Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin debuted. Doctors started talking about doing a better job of treating pain. Purdue created a video promotion sent to doctors’ offices that showcased patients who had reclaimed their lives from chronic pain, and an expert in the videos claimed the drugs came without serious side effects.
Sales of the painkillers mushroomed, and during the first years of this century, pain management through opioid prescriptions became the expectation.
In 2011, Portenoy and others began reversing their recommendations as addictions to opioids, either prescription drugs or illegals like heroin, began to rise.
“Clearly,” Portenoy said, “if I had an inkling of what I know now then, I wouldn’t have spoken in the way that I spoke. It was clearly the wrong thing to do.”
But it wasn’t until last year that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidelines for prescribing the drugs to alert doctors. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration ordered oxycodone and fentanyl carry warnings about addiction.
Yes, there should be the expectation of personal accountability. Abusing prescription medications or turning to the illegal drug trade to feed an addiction are irresponsible acts. But given that we’re talking about highly addictive substances in the first place, the AGs are easily within their right to question whether prescription drugmakers were cynical in promoting their medicines.
We’ll have to wait to review the findings to know exactly how to respond. But, as with investigations that revealed corrupt practices in cigarette sales, it’s certainly reasonable to think that drugmakers should be on the hook to help cover the societal damage this epidemic has created.
Editorial: https://dpo.st/2sV3pad
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Cortez Journal, June 19, on Colorado’s reforms of civil asset forfeiture system:
Earlier this month, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a controversial bill that, he says, begins to reform the state’s civil asset forfeiture system.
The legislation mandated new reporting requirements for law-enforcement agencies involved in forfeiture activities, and new limits on the practice.
Civil asset forfeiture is a legal process in which law enforcement officers seize assets from people suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity even though those people may never be charged with a crime.
In order to battle the asset seizure, individuals must prove they were not involved in criminal activity - a reversal of the “innocent until proven guilty” presumption that guides judicial criminal proceedings.
Supporters applauded, saying the new law will provide more due-process protections to individuals who are in danger of having assets seized.
Opponents say it will shrink law-enforcement budgets across the state. One feature of the law prohibits local law enforcement from receiving forfeiture proceeds from the federal government in cases where the value of the items seized is less than $50,000. Most seizures fall below that threshold.
According to The Denver Post, that provision is intended to steer forfeitures toward Colorado’s more stringent process, which is more protective of property rights. Under the state process, agencies also receive funds.
At issue are not only abuses - for example, seizure of assets from an individual who is carrying large amounts of cash simply because drug dealers carry large amounts of cash - but also mistakes. Besides cash, authorities can seize a wide range of other items that could be related to criminal activity, including vehicles and real estate.
Issues arise when one member of a household is suspected of criminal activity but other members may be unaware of and not involved in that activity, or whose involvement may be involuntary. In other words, people, including children, may be thrust into poverty through no fault of their own.
The practice has three primary justifications, according to the Department of Justice: To punish and deter criminal activity, to enhance cooperation among law enforcement agencies through asset sharing, and to provide revenue for law enforcement.
Colorado’s reforms seem sensible. They don’t deprive law enforcement entirely of a tool that has valid uses, but they do provide legal protections for those whose assets are forfeited, and the increased transparency is one of the best protections against abuse in a free society.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2rW4gme
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Daily Camera, June 17, on CU’s mishandling of domestic violence allegations:
Reading Cozen O’Connor’s report on the Joe Tumpkin affair at CU brought to mind what is now known as Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice or conspiracy that which can be explained by stupidity or incompetence.
If you take the key officials at their word, as university consultant Ken Salazar of WilmerHale was happy to do, Phil DiStefano, Rick George and Mike MacIntyre were basically the blind leading the blind in an inept game of telephone. In every communication up the chain of command about allegations of domestic violence against Tumpkin, an assistant football coach, large chunks of important information were left behind. Collectively, they used that lack of information to justify inaction. None of them made any effort to get more. Each of the three was required by university policy to report the allegations to the university’s Title IX officer. None of them ever did.
Salazar, once a reformer and now apparently a fixer, takes everybody’s word for everything and assures us there was no bad faith. Cozen O’Connor is less credulous, remaining neutral on motives. University President Bruce Benson’s explanation for his slaps on the wrist - a 10-day suspension for DiStefano, mandatory charitable donations for George and MacIntyre, letters in the file - varies with the day of the week. On Thursday, it was because he knew those guys, knew their kids. On Friday, that had nothing to do with it.
Inconveniently, some facts remain difficult to explain. Tumpkin’s attorney, Jon Banashek, called George five days before the Alamo Bowl, apparently to tell him about the temporary protective order issued against Tumpkin earlier that day. George inexplicably ignored or misunderstood the information. His befuddled explanation is he thought it was some other kind of order. “I don’t feel so good about that today,” he told Cozen O’Connor. The man makes $700,000 a year to be chief executive of the athletic department and he isn’t sure what a protective order is, or if it differs from other kinds of court orders, and he makes no effort to find out. The highest-ranking woman in the athletic department, senior associate athletic director Ceal Barry, is excluded from the process. As a result, a man with a protective order against him calls defensive signals for the Buffs in their postseason bowl game.
When the Camera’s Mitchell Byars broke the story of the protective order, George asked Banashek why he didn’t tell him about it earlier. Banashek replied that he did. That phone call sounds like a Jerry Stiller routine.
There’s also MacIntyre lawyering up the day after Tumpkin’s alleged victim reached out to him last December. Not with university counsel, but with his own, personal counsel. MacIntyre’s explanation is attorney Lisa Wayne represented at least one student against the university in a Title IX matter, so he figured she knew the territory. It was Wayne who advised MacIntyre to block the alleged victim’s calls. This deprived CU of important information that might have helped it appreciate the seriousness of the situation sooner. It also left the woman who reported two years of physical abuse at Tumpkin’s hands all alone, with no help and no contact from the university after two phone conversations with MacIntyre. What motivated MacIntyre to take this advice? According to the Cozen O’Connor report:
MacIntyre said that he thought “whoa, if she texts me 15 or 30 times - I am going to look like the liaison, like the mediator - I asked (Wayne for advice), because no matter what I say, I am going to look like I am guilty.”
Tumpkin’s lawyer, Banashek, called the alleged victim, out of the blue, shortly afterward. According to Cozen O’Connor, MacIntyre referred Tumpkin to Banashek, a member of a firm that sponsors the football program’s annual kickoff luncheon. Anybody who’s ever watched “Law and Order” knows you don’t tell an alleged batterer that his victim is making charges against him without first providing for the victim’s safety. George and MacIntyre did just that. There is no indication that either gave it a thought.
At one point, according to the complainant, Banashek told her that Tumpkin, MacIntyre and George were “on pins and needles” about what she was going to do. Her reply summed up the situation well:
“So, Mac(Intyre) says he 100 percent believes me. You tell me that you have (Tumpkin) in counseling starting tomorrow for his problem. No one is questioning that the guy choked me for two years, but everyone is on pins and needles because they want to know if I am going to the police and not that they know they have an abusive man on staff?”
The least charitable explanation is that MacIntyre and George wanted to keep the charges quiet until they got through the Alamo Bowl and National Signing Day. The most charitable is that MacIntyre was too busy looking out for himself to worry about the complainant and George was not very interested and not very astute. The worst look belongs to DiStefano, the chancellor, who once meted out draconian punishment for violations of CU’s sexual misconduct policy, but suddenly turned forgiving when the shoe was on the other foot.
According to WilmerHale, DiStefano prescribed his own 10-day suspension. Keep in mind this is the same guy who enforced David Glimp’s removal as chairman of the English department for failing to report an offensive email. Philosophy professor David Barnett lost his job for daring to defend a graduate student he thought charged unfairly under the sexual misconduct policy. By contrast, DiStefano failed to report a criminal case of domestic violence by a CU employee to the people who might have reached out to the alleged victim and found the protective order before the alleged assailant represented the university in a high-profile postseason game. He gets 10 days off and goes back to work at his old job as if nothing happened.
Meanwhile DiStefano’s boss, Benson, the man ultimately in charge, remembers nothing. He might have heard something about the allegation but assumed DiStefano was handling it. And the regents, in something less than a profile in courage, punt on the penalties, letting Benson administer his wrist slaps, and flee their meeting before the press conference starts. At least they released the report. Still, the higher you go on the organizational ladder, the more clueless it gets.
Imagine the field day any competent attorney will have if DiStefano ever again tries to enforce a penalty more severe than the gentle one he selected for himself. Lawyers will be lining up to represent his next target.
But it’s more than that. DiStefano was supposed to be the adult in the room. MacIntyre and George may be two of the highest-paid state employees, but they get those large salaries mainly to win football games and raise money, respectively. Evidently, those tasks keep them too busy to keep up with the university policies they are expected to know.
The chancellor is supposed to lead, not follow. He is supposed to ensure the university’s values come first. Instead, he looked for a reason not to report the allegation and thought he found one in the sexual misconduct policy’s jurisdiction section. He was wrong about that. But his instinct, not to help the victim but to evade responsibility for pursuing the allegation, was to protect the resurgent football program first.
DiStefano survives, but his credibility does not. For both ethical and practical reasons, after an interlude to save face, he should get his gold watch and go away.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2tukDbE
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