Ohioans should back Issue 2
Ohioans should vote “yes” on State Issue 2 and prove that people have more power than Big Pharma.
The ballot measure opens prospects for reform and for affordable medicine that are not possible unless we begin defeating the prescription drug corporations with our votes.
Those corporations are funding the “no” campaign to the tune of $16 million. The same corporations shut down the nearly identical Proposal 61 in California last November by outspending taxpayers 10 to 1. Drug corporations also funded research cited by the “no” campaign to back its position. This is currently the subject of an investigation by the Ohio Elections Commission.
High medicine prices force patients to split pills and push families into bankruptcy. We cannot wait for others to act. While there are questions about how to best implement the measure, there are also good possible answers and flexibility for the legislature to adapt upon its approval.
First, we have to beat the drug corporations on the ballot and make way for more initiatives to lower medicine prices for everyone, such as Sen. Sherrod Brown’s Stop Price Gouging Act.
Ohio should vote “yes” on State Issue 2 in November.
Justin Mendoza Access-to-medicines organizer Public Citizen
Washington, D.C. after mass shootings?” If the definition of “nothing” is simply repeating the same pathetic sound bites about “rapid-fire weapons” or “hidden loaded guns” or “the NRA is evil” or “universal this” or “restrict that,” then I would agree. But much more than sound bites can and has happened right here in Ohio to protect our schools and the public in general.
Changes to make Ohio’s schoolchildren safer started shortly after the horrific murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in late December 2012 with these simple words spoken at a town-hall meeting by Buckeye Firearms Foundation’s Ken Hanson: “We are done talking, we are going to put armed teachers in schools.”
In spring 2013, the first class of 24 school teachers, administrators, custodians, coaches, lunch ladies and bus drivers received 3½ days of firearms, emergency and crisis-management and trauma medical-care training and returned to their schools armed, trained, prepared and more determined than ever to make certain their schools were as safe as possible.
Since this first pilot class, the FASTER Saves Lives program has provided training to more than 1,000 school staff members from more than 200 school districts in 12 states.
This is a better definition of “nothing.”
Joe Eaton Program director FASTERSavesLives.org
Franklin Newark