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Yesterday (Friday) federal district court judge Raymond Jackson ordered new sentencings for Lee Boyd Malvo.
For those that are too young and for those that don't remember who this man is, Lee Boyd Malvo was part of the DC Sniper duo. In the fall of 2002, he, along with John Allen Muhammad committed several sniper shootings in Virginia, DC, and Maryland. Muhammad and Malvo randomly picked the 10 people they killed and the 3 people they wounded. Their victims were shot @ gas stations, parking lots, on their way to school, etc. The terror finally came to an end after Malvo and Muhammad were caught sleeping in the vehicle they used to drive around and commit their crimes @ a rest stop in Maryland. A jury in Virginia convicted Muhammad, sentenced him to death, and he was executed in Virginia in 2009. Malvo was convicted after 2 separate trials and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The problem, back in 2012, the Supreme Court banned life sentences without parole for juveniles. @ the time that this ruling was handed down, Malvo was appealing his sentencing. Conveniently for him, fast forward to 2016, the Supreme Court deemed that the ruling would be retroactively applied to cases in the appeals process. This led to Judge Jackson's ruling. Thoughts: As many of you know by now, I'm proudly from the state of Virginia, so I recall when this happened very well. I think I was in 6th grade when this happened, 1 of the shootings happened maybe 5 or 10 minutes from my childhood home. The night that this particular shooting happened, I was out with my mom, and I believe my aunt (her sister) was with us, and we were actually in the area where the shooting happened, I don't remember what we were doing, but I can remember riding past where the shooting happened on our way home and seeing all of these police cars and their flashing lights, but we didn't know what had happened until we got home and saw the news. After we found out what happened, I can remember being scared cause the other shootings were in the area, but they were far enough away up north that you could still feel relatively safe because they hadn't come that far south. That night, my mom normally sleeps with her tv on, my grandma would fall asleep with her tv on until it would turn off according to the timer, that night however was different. Our house was silent and pitch black dark, I can remember I couldn't sleep for a couple reasons: 1) I could never fall asleep without my mom's tv being on, 2) I have this issue with silence, it makes me very uncomfortable, I sleep with a fan on cause I need the white noise, 3) There were helicopters flying in the area looking for these men with the brightest spotlights I've ever seen. I don't think @ the time we knew that they were driving around doing what they were doing, plus a card was found in the woods behind the location that the victim was shot @, so authorities believed that they were in the woods, and my childhood home is surrounded by trees, and lastly 4) I was a kid and I was terrified! My house was normally well lit and semi noisy was dark and quiet cause we were afraid that they were in the area and that if we made any indication that we were home, they could come and harm us, it was by far the scariest thing I've experienced. I can remember after the shooting happened, schools were closed, when we went back to school we were told to of course walk with urgency to our buses, and if we heard gunshots we were taught to run in zig zags to decrease the likelihood that we would be hit with a bullet. Shit was very real and very scary. I can remember they closed our schools again cause these men were in the area again and made a call from a gas station pay phone...yeah I said a pay phone! So, as you can see this story came into contact with my life, not in the way that the victim's families were affected, but it happened near my home and my school and it scared me, so it was very important that I did this post. I'm confused as to why this resentencing is necessary based upon his crime. I mean what else would they charge him with? Yeah, he might've been brainwashed, but that still doesn't take away the fact that you murdered innocent people, scared children and parents, all for no reason. I do believe that he deserves to be in prison for life because he took life, multiple lives @ that. I don't support him receiving any other sentence that would allow him to be released, so that he could live his life because his victims don't get to continue with their lives, so why should you?
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Florida Governor Rick Scott declared the state's opioid epidemic a public health emergency this past Wednesday.
His declaration enables the state to have access to $54 million in US Department of Health and Human Services grant money for recovery, treatment, and prevention services. Along with the declaration, Governor Scott also allowed the state Surgeon General Celeste Philip to begin distributing Naloxone (an overdose antidote) to 1st responders. Quick facts about how Florida has been affected:
Quick thoughts: These are deaths all across the country that don't have to happen, so I support any and every move/measure that's put in place to try and gain control of this epidemic! Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price made an announcement @ a drug prevention summit in Atlanta that'll help with the current opioid crisis.
The announcement was that the federal govt will provide states with $485 million for prevention and treatment programs. The money will be in the form of a grants and was contained in bipartisan legislation approved by Congress in 2016 and signed by President Obama. **Makes sense as to why this is actually getting done...cause Trump has nothing to do with this, it was already done.** Price also announced that another 1/2 billion in grants will be made available next year as well. "States know best what their communities needs and have already been @ the forefront of supporting prevention, treatment, and recovery," he said during the summit. The grants will be used for training health professionals, technology and support for prescription drug monitoring programs that will hopefully prevent abuse and identify patients who may need addiction help. Grant will also be used to promote the use of the overdose antidote drug Naloxone. He confirmed that the Trump administration has a 5 part strategy to combat the crisis:
Quick fact: In 2015 alone, 33,000 plus people fatally overdosed on opioids, i.e. prescription drugs and heroin; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no other year on record has seen a higher number; nearly 1/2 the deaths involved a prescription opioid My thoughts: Trump and his administration hasn't gotten anything positive done since he's been in office and when I saw President Obama's name attached to this, it made sense on why this is actually moving forward. Hopefully, Trump and his administration will hold true to this strategy they allegedly have and hopefully, he'll actually put people on this task force to combat opioids that know what they're doing, if not, it'll fail like everything else this man and his administration have touched. The opioid crisis has hit the state of West Virginia hard and a new law has been introduced to try and save those who have overdosed in the midst of the crisis.
West Virginia public and private schools will now be able to give drugs to students who overdose on opioids without 1st consulting with parents under the new law. The law was signed last Tuesday by Gov. Jim Justice after passing unanimously by state legislature. The law will also authorize administering the antidote to school personnel or others during regular school hours and @ school functions/events on school property. The law will take effect after 90 days and the Board of Education will develop regulations on trainings, storage of the antidote, and notifying parents after the drug has been administered. In 2016 alone, the state had 844 overdose deaths and more than 700 of those deaths involved @ least some form of opioid i.e heroin, fentanyl, or prescription pain pills. My thoughts: it's not shocking to me personally that this is something that's going to start happening in schools because I can remember these idiots doing drugs in 1 of my high school math classes. I do think it's a good idea to now have this in schools to try and save these young people's lives and try to get them to realize that a life of drugs isn't what you want because without the drug that was administered to you by your teacher, principal, etc you could've/would've died. Ohio Gov. John Kasich unveiled a plan that would limit the amount of opiates physicians and dentists can prescribe to no more than 7 days for adults and 5 days for minors. Previously physicians and dentists were allowed to write prescriptions for up to 90 days.
The new rules require doctors to provide a specific diagnosis and procedure code for every prescription they write. Doctors that don't adhere to these guidelines they will lose their licenses. Important note: this rule doesn't apply to those with cancer or those that are currently admitted to hospice and are in the final stages of life. Facts about the drug crisis in Ohio:
My thought: anything that can be done to curb the crisis, I'm all for it. I think this is a step in the right direction to cut off 1 of the ways people are obtaining these drugs. It's not to say that doctors are the main cause of the problem because they're definitely not, but there's no denying that there are corrupt doctors out there that are handing out these pills like tic tacs. This aspect of the epidemic baffled me because I take a sleeping pill and after like a month I have to go see my doctor and have a heart to heart with him, just so that he'll refill my prescription. I'm not sure if that's a Virginia thing or if it's the norm for the type of sleeping pill I take because apparently it's high addictive and my doctor has to make sure I'm not becoming addicted to it. it just baffled me that if I had to go through all that just for a sleeping pill, why isn't that the case for these opiates? In case you've been living under a rock, there's a HUGE heroin epidemic crisis in this country, I found this interesting article on CNN, and I wanted to share cause it combines 2 issues that Trump's promised he would fix.
According to Quest Diagnostics, the percentage of American workers testing positive for illegal drugs has climbed steadily over the last 3 years. Quest Diagnostics performed more than 10 million employment drug screenings last year. This increase is @ the highest level in a decade. Apparently this increase isn't just from heroin, it's also coming from other illegal drugs such as cocaine, meth, etc, but also surprisingly from the increase in states legalizing recreational marijuana. Employers insist drug testing keeps workplaces safe and ensures productive and stable work environments, yet there's no evidence that these tests are necessary for all jobs or lowers risks or reduces drug use. **I mean those are things that we already knew, so no surprises there** The most interesting thing I read in this articles is that when American works can't be found to fill these positions, who do you think employers turn to in order to fill them? You guessed it, illegal immigrants and refugees. You know, the people that Trump is desperate to kick out of the country. Let's put this in perspective, American workers can't fill these positions because there's a big problem in this country. 1st, I don't think legalized recreational marijuana should count in these drugs tests. Again, legalized marijuana, if you're living in a state where it's not legal just yet, yes it should count. Now, onto this heroin epidemic, something has to be done. Trump made mention of the epidemic while he was campaigning, but other than that to the best of my knowledge he hasn't mentioned it since, please correct me if I'm wrong, I would love to be wrong in this case. Anywho, Trump has also promised that he was going to create jobs, and I definitely agree that more jobs need to be created, however there are jobs now that can't be filled because this is such a problem. Instead of slashing and cutting the budget to down to nothing and taking away programs that can potentially curb this crisis, more funds needs to be pumped into these programs. I mean, it's not rocket science! And it's bigger than just trying to fill these jobs, it's about people's quality of lives, it's about people dying, it's sooo much bigger than just jobs. It's 1 thing to just casually mention that there's an epidemic while you're campaigning, but it's a completely different thing to actually do something about it. Now, regarding the illegal immigrants and the refugees. I will always and forever believe that programs should be in place to make it so that these people can become legalized instead of just tossing them out. Listen, no matter what goes on in this country, goods and services still need to be produced, and if illegal immigrants and refugees do their part and help to keep this country going, that's a good thing! It's not like they're sitting on their asses and just mooching off the country! They're contributing to this country while also trying to make better lives for themselves, so why is that a bad thing? |
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