The Columbus Dispatch

Teenage drivers must stop texting

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All Americans are concerned and saddened by the deaths of innocent children and young people at the hands of madmen who use guns to take lives. Those definitely matter and solutions need to be found.

What doesn’t seem to matter to these young people is the number of deaths caused by misuse of cellphones while driving. According to AAA, 11 teens die every day as a result of texting while driving. Further, 94 percent of teen drivers reportedly acknowledg­e the dangers of texting and driving but 35 percent admit to doing it anyway.

This doesn’t even mention the numbers of innocent victims killed by teenage drivers who text or misuse phones while driving.

These deaths are caused by cellphones, which need to be regulated.

Edwin Douglass Gahanna for creating this nationwide disaster: the U.S. Food and Drug Administra­tion and the Drug Enforcemen­t Administra­tion.

These agencies continue to classify addictive, lethal drugs like fentanyl as “safe for human consumptio­n,” while the DEA continues to classify cannabis as one of the most dangerous drugs known to man. This is obviously ridiculous.

Tests on mummies have shown that cannabis was actively and regularly used by the Egyptians at a time when the pyramids and Stonehenge were being constructe­d. The oldest known textiles, found in China, are made of cannabis fiber and date back to the end of the Ice Age.

It is more than likely they were ingesting the plant long before they figured out how useful its fibers were.

The DEA and FDA are susceptibl­e to corporate bribes. It’s time we go after the biggest causes of this epidemic destroying our state and families.

Karl Schmidt Worthingto­n drug-company executives. That’s why we need to allow Medicare to negotiate better drug prices for seniors, and why that idea is part of my comprehens­ive plan to lower the cost of prescripti­on drugs.

That plan would also end abusive price-gouging, require more transparen­cy from drug companies and boost competitio­n and innovation in the market. One news organizati­on said it “combines every policy idea drug lobbyists hate,” and that’s something I’m proud of.

The purpose of prescripti­on drugs is to allow Ohioans to live longer, healthier lives; not to pad the profits of Big Pharma. Hilliard

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Tom Smith

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