Support treatment for drug addiction
I believe that Down East Maine has a growing drug addiction problem. I have never been addicted to drugs, but I have seen first hand what it does to those we love. Instead of blaming or judging people with addictions, maybe we should open treatment centers, halfway houses and other supports in this area.
Bangor has three methadone clinics, and our community has a great need for one as well. But we have people who judge these places and don’t want them in our community. By ignoring the need for help, they are not helping many who could be saved.
Any of our loved ones could find themselves struggling with addiction. Some people are narrow minded because they haven’t had it in their lives. Some people think opening a clinic will bring crime into our towns. But a clinic actually will help those struggling with addiction return to a normal state of being.
I have witnessed how a clinic does wonderful things for a person I love. This person probably wouldn’t be here today and have a chance of a normal, drug-free life if it wasn’t for one of the clinics in Bangor. So people must stop trashing clinics and wake up to the reality our community that young people are in need of a clinic in our towns. Don’t judge them; let’s help them, support them, and take back our towns.
Bevi Jo Pinkham
Columbia Falls
LePage’s senseless opposition to solar
Gov. Paul LePage said that households with solar panels get paid for putting electricity onto the grid and that “ratepayers are being charged twice” for transmission and distribution. This is untrue. When households with net metering agreements (like mine) put excess onto the grid, the meter effectively runs backward. A credit is accrued, and if it is not used within 12 months, it is lost. A minimum meter fee is always charged ($7.48 a month in Emera Maine’s service district).
When our system puts electricity onto the grid, electrons go to the closest load, typically a neighbor’s house. Their meter doesn’t know the source of these electrons, and they are charged full supply, transmission and distribution costs. When we require grid electricity, electrons come from the generating station and our credit is reduced. It’s important to understand that the transmission and distribution costs for our electrons have already been paid for by the neighbors when their meters register the electrons generated by my solar panels. The utility loses nothing.
Not allowing a full credit (which the governor advocates) would result in double-dipping on transmission and distribution costs. Because fuel is free, promoting renewable energy is the best way to stabilize electricity prices for Mainers. Solar is a growth industry, and it should be encouraged. Except for ideology, the governor’s opposition makes no sense.
Frank John
Brooklin
Put constituents before party
Sen. Susan Collins is reportedly contemplating a run for governor in 2018. Whether she decides to pursue that course or seek another term in the U.S. Senate in 2020, her actions now will determine whether Mainers support her.
As an independent, I back candidates who put integrity and respect for their constituents ahead of party politics. Collins needs to stand firm against the enormous pressure to follow misguided Republican Senate leadership. Her loyalty should be to us, not to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of her caucus.
She showed courage last year by being one of the few Republican senators willing to publicly denounce Donald Trump. Now that most of her Republican colleagues in the Senate are putting political expediency over principle, she must not follow their lead.
Many of her recent actions are troubling. She supported Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in committee, then voted against confirming her. It was reported that Republicans said privately Collins waited until enough votes had been secured to ensure DeVos’s confirmation before announcing her opposition.
Collins also joined her Republican colleagues in voting to pass a budget plan that set the stage for repealing the Affordable Care Act without having an alternative plan ready. And when McConnell cynically invoked an obscure Senate rule to stifle Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the confirmation hearings for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Collins once again joined her caucus in backing him.
Unless Collins starts showing her constituents that she values them over party politics, we won’t support her for senator, governor, or any other public office.
Ed Geis
Camden
The politics of dying
Sen. Roger Katz recently introduced LD 347, An Act to Support Death with Dignity. The bill is identical to an aid-in-dying bill, LD 1270, he introduced in 2015. Katz and the co-sponsors of LD 347, two of whom are physicians, believe in end-of-life autonomy, and they are trying again to bring this resource to Maine’s competent, dying adults.
The only valid question about the bill now, as I see it, is this: How long will the state of Maine continue to consider it a crime for a physician to ease the suffering of a competent, dying adult patient?
A terminally ill Mainer can move to any of the states having this end-of-life option, establish residency, and once medically qualified, ask to receive a prescription to later help them die in a way that preserves their personal sense of autonomy.
If the same competent, terminally ill adult stays right here in Maine, the act is a crime that would put her, her physician, family and pharmacist at risk of prosecution.
Why should Mainers have to consider leaving home and family to pursue the end-of-life care and services they feel they need?
To confuse this discussion with unfounded, rhetorical arguments, as the opposition tends to do, simply suggests a blatant disinterest for understanding the individual nature of our dying or the very straight forward process defined by these laws. Dying is a deeply personal experience that should not have to conform to any other personal, organizational, or religious idea of how it should go.
How much longer do Mainers have to wait and potentially suffer under a system that dictates how we are to die?
Valerie Lovelace
Westport Island