Several years ago, the state cut funding to drug treatment. Now directors say the state needs that back.
"If you want your folks working and paying taxes and raising their families, then by all means, they need to come to treatment," said Kay Baker, Director, Central Texas Treatment Center. "If you want them in prison watching TV, wasting taxpayer dollars, then don't send them to treatment." More.
Boulder, CO: The mother of Gordy Bailey (photo), a Colorado University freshman who died of alcohol poisoning at a fraternity initiation in 2004, is suing the fraternity and the university for negligence and reckless misconduct.
AUSTIN — A citizen member of the state's Sunset Advisory Commission wants the Legislature to dismantle what he calls the "corrupt system" of alcoholic beverage regulation that he says protects wholesale distributors at the expense of retailers and consumers, and blocks any effort to raise taxes on liquor.
Syndicated columnist and author Molly Ivins, a fighter against political hypocrisy and economic greed wherever she saw it, succumbed to cancer this week, at age 62. She kept writing her scathing and often hilarious political columns until the end.06.26.01 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Look at it this way: The good news is there's at least one thing about which George W. Bush is consistent. George W. Bush does not believe in doing anything to hurt big business.Good-bye, Molly. You will be missed.
He especially doesn't believe in letting anyone sue business. He is opposed to a patients' bill of rights for that reason; he tried to keep the lawyers who won a $17 billion case for the state of Texas from getting their fees for that reason; and tort reform, which is another way of saying you can't sue corporations that injure or kill you or your family, is a burning passion with him.
So it should come as no surprise that the federal government has decided to settle its case against the tobacco companies. According to anti-smoking groups, in the 2000 elections the tobacco companies gave $8 million in campaign contributions, 80 percent of it to Republicans. Bush certainly knew when he appointed John Ashcroft attorney general that Ashcroft was one of the leading senators in stopping anti-smoking legislation in 1998 that would have toughened regulations and increased prices.
Administration officials have been saying they don't think they can win the case, even though one state after another has won, which means the tobacco companies go into settlement negotiations with little reason to pony up. The government was claiming $20 billion in damages for money it has spent on health care for its employees, veterans and those on Medicare with illnesses caused by smoking.
Knowingly making and marketing a poisonous, addictive product could be considered of dubious legality. I fail to see the difference between that and Murder, Inc. (As one who has quit smoking many, many times, I speak with some feeling on the issue.) The idea that smokers have a "choice" about the habit seems to me a legitimate argument: I can't imagine suing a tobacco company because I was stupid enough to start smoking. But an addiction you already have is not a problem that can be solved by just saying no.
The government was suing to recover the cost to everybody else of treating smoking illnesses and would then have used much of the money to educate young people about why they shouldn't smoke. Given the amount the tobacco companies spend on marketing their poison, it makes some sense to have a counter-force out there, unless we all want to continue paying these staggering health costs, while the tobacco companies make billions. Source.
His lifeless body was defaced with offensive remarks from head to toe. That's what an autopsy released Tuesday Jan. 9 2007 shows happened to Phanta "Jack" Phoumarrath, the University of Texas (Austin) fraternity member who died of alcohol poisoning in 2005.
It also shows his blood alcohol content was five times the legal limit.
Some members of Lambda Phi Epsilon have been indicted in his death.
The family's attorney says the suspects seem to have spent a considerable amount of time drawing on Jack, when they could have been helping him instead.
"They wrote a variety of things, most of which would be considered juvenile. Some of which were lewd. It was disappointing and certainly discouraging to the family that people who hold themselves out as fraternity brothers would do something like this," Phoummarath family attorney Randy Sorrels said.
UT suspended Lambda Phi Epsilon as a registered student organization until 2011, after determining that hazing had occurred. Source.
Many of the epithets scrawled on Jack's body were homophobic. Source.
Dallas: Jacob Stiles, 20, who was found dead inside his Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house at Southern Methodist University earlier this month, died of a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs, medical examiners said today, following an autopsy. Source.
The program — which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the blessing of then-governor Bush — says on its Web site that it seeks “to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.” See earlier blog item.
Fifteen years ago, students at Pearl C. Anderson middle school in south Dallas, led by teacher Ron Price, formed the "Pearl Guards" to clean up the environment around the school, particularly liquor stores that were a magnet for drunkenness, prostitution, and other crimes. Their protests led to a city ordinance supposedly creating a 1000-foot clean zone around schools ... but loopholes and lax enforcement have left many students and school staff feeling betrayed.More than a decade after a group of South Dallas youngsters known as the Pearl Guards fought to eliminate alcohol businesses near their middle school, little has changed: Customers exit the businesses with bottles in brown paper bags. Homeless people linger out front. Some patrons drink in the parking lots, and brawls break out.It often unfolds as youngsters make their way to and from nearby schools. "The mental pictures – they're poisoning to the mind, especially the younger kids'," said Richard Harper, who was a Pearl Guard 15 years ago.This article in the Dallas Morning News delves into the complex web of local and statewide zoning politics and beverage industry juice that the students and their educators face in trying to surround the schools with a decent environment.
Doctors and nurses should screen and counsel patients for alcohol abuse during routine visits, a doctor-led advocacy group recommended in a recent report.
