Editorial Roundup: Missouri

Kansas City Star. January 27, 2022.

Editorial: Black entrepreneurs in Missouri are shut out of the medical marijuana business

Black entrepreneurs have been so left out of the booming medical marijuana business in Missouri that in the Kansas City area, not one dispensary is majority Black-owned.

Even Marne Madison, the former president of the Minorities For Medical Marijuana group in our state, has given up and relocated to Oklahoma City, where she plans to open a dispensary in April. That’s after investing about $80,000 trying unsuccessfully to secure a dispensary license in Missouri.

Madison can’t even say it was a learning experience, since she still doesn’t know the reasons the state rejected her application or approved others. And if the lesson for aspiring minority business people is “Move to Oklahoma,” that’s Missouri’s loss.

Oklahoma currently has no limit on the number of licenses the state can issue to medical marijuana businesses, while Missouri capped dispensary licenses at 192.

After being rejected on her home turf, “I drove five hours, spent $2,500 and was approved. It’s ridiculous to ask someone for six figures when it is not needed.”

Exorbitant application fees are clearly limiting minority participation in growing or selling medical marijuana. African Americans make up slightly less than 2% of dispensary owners in Missouri, far below the national average of just under 5%.

Missouri does not consider race and gender during the application process for the right to legally grow and sell pot for medical purposes. And only three of the 192 dispensaries in Missouri are owned by

Black people, a group that has borne the brunt of America’s endless ‘war on drugs.’ Black people are still nearly four times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession — even though both groups consume the drug at similar rates, a 2020 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union found.

For most large government contracts — everything from IT services to road construction — minority and women-owned participation is required. But those parameters were omitted when voters approved Missouri’s marijuana program, according to MoCannTrade, a Missouri medical marijuana advocacy group.

At least 15 states have provisions addressing diversity when awarding marijuana dispensary licenses, including bordering states Illinois and Arkansas, and we should, too.

Legal Missouri 2022’s campaign to place a recreational or adult-use initiative on the ballot is underway. About 170,000 valid signatures are needed from Missouri registered voters. The law would allow anyone 21 or older to buy marijuana for any reason. The initiative, which could be on the ballot in November, would automatically expunge criminal records of any applicant convicted of a non-violent marijuana offense.

It would also require a random lottery to select new license holders, which would be a lot fairer and less opaque than our current system.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch. January 30, 2022.

Editorial: How to make a hard job harder at hospitals and nursing homes

It requires a special level of dedication to take an already-catastrophic pandemic and devise ways to make it even worse. Missouri state lawmakers have embraced the challenge, going beyond the call of duty with four bills that seem designed specifically to increase the coronavirus dangers for health care workers and drive many of them to quit their jobs out of frustration.

The bills purport to address the legitimate concerns people have when coronavirus precautions prevent them from visiting their loved ones isolated in hospitals or nursing homes. In the early days of the pandemic, patients often were left to die alone, with family members viewing from an outside window, because of visitation restrictions.

Those restrictions, however, were put in place because overwhelmed hospital and nursing home staffers were grappling with a deadly, rapidly spreading outbreak. Isolating highly infectious patients was seen as the safest precaution.

But as the Post-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson reports, some lawmakers aren’t satisfied to leave such decisions to medical professionals. One Republican lawmaker, Rep. Brian Seitz of Branson, indicates a desire to put his personal religious views into law.

“Isolation kills. Human beings were created by God to interact with each other,” Seitz said. “Only God can determine life or death.”

Hospitals and nursing homes are understandably protective of their right to set the rules regarding visitations. If a patient is infectious, an outside visitor can become exposed, then walk out the door to spread the infection to others. And if a visitor brings the infection inside, the dangers mount for already-imperiled staffers and patients.

Besides, medical personnel are beyond the breaking point after having endured the first coronavirus wave of patients, only to be hit with an even bigger wave with the current omicron variant. Doctors and nurses are exhausted and overwhelmed trying to keep people alive. The last thing they need are laws requiring them to add visitors to the list of demands on their time. As anyone knows who’s been inside a hospital, visitors have a strong tendency to require attention and make requests as if staffers are their servants.

Seitz wants to require that hospitals allow visitations at any time and prohibit medical personnel from preventing them. Rep. Rusty Black, R-Chillicothe, would require hospitals to let at least one visitor come in and would prohibit a hospital from requiring coronavirus vaccinations as a prerequisite to patients receiving treatment or having visitors.

Another bill would set a 24-hour limit on any patient’s isolation from visitations by designated family members or friends. Yet another would prevent long-term care facilities from adopting policies in response to an outbreak of a contagious illness.

It seems just a matter of time before one of these science-averse lawmakers proposes a prohibition against mask requirements in hospitals. Sadly, common sense seems to have taken a holiday in Jefferson City.

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St. Joseph News Press. January 27, 2022.

Editorial: Don’t ignore vaping problem

In late 2019, the health story that commanded public attention wasn’t the coronavirus.

Emergency rooms had started reporting mysterious cases of lung illnesses, with more than half of the patients under the age of 25. The common link was the use of e-cigarettes, often with vitamin E acetate as an additive to THC.

By February of 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2,807 hospitalizations and 68 deaths associated with vaping. For a time, this story caused a backlash against e-cigarettes, but then the public moved on to other things.

Yet vaping, especially among young people, has not gone away. Not by a long shot. A CDC survey found that nearly 20% of high school and 5% of middle school students admitted to using e-cigarettes within the last 30 days.

Despite the fun packaging and fruity flavors, it still qualifies as risky behavior. Up to 99% of e-cigarettes sold in the United States contain nicotine, a stimulant that’s highly addictive and can harm the adolescent brain.

The aerosol is not harmless water vapor. Ultrafine particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs. E-cigs use flavorings like diacetyl, a chemical linked to lung disease. Vapers also inhale heavy metals like nickel, tin and lead. Post-market modifications can be particularly dangerous and were linked to some of the lung cases in ERs.

Looking for a more immediate impact? Dental experts say regular vaping reduces saliva in the mouth, leading to chronic bad breath. Good luck finding a prom date.

For adults, it’s easy to look at young people and marvel at their vitality and ability to embrace and master new technology and concepts. But it’s also sobering to see how they often make the same dumb mistakes we made in our younger days. Many teenagers still see themselves as bulletproof.

It’s the responsibility of an adult to get between teenagers and behaviors with long-term, negative consequences. Not in a preachy, father-knows-best way, but as a practical intervention until they’re adults and are free to do all the dumb stuff they want.

The St. Joseph School District installed anti-vaping monitoring devices in high schools and at the Webster Learning Center. Now, the Board of Education is considering bids to install the same equipment in middle schools, where the first encounter with temptations and peer pressure often occurs.

These devices won’t stop teens from vaping on their own. They’re probably only as good as the human intervention that comes with them.

But given the prevalence of vaping, and the unknown long-term consequences, the district should pursue these devices and any other reasonable strategies to nip teen vaping in the electronic bud.

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