Jan 20, 2018 4 min read

Editorial voices from newspapers across the United States:

Mankato (Minn.)

Free Press

Hurricanes and tornadoes, fires and floods, hailstorms and drought. The natural disasters keep adding up. So does the expense.

Last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the United States had 16 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2017 – tying the record – carrying a total bill of $306 billion, more than $90 billion more than the previous high.

The past calendar year featured three of the five most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history: Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida, Maria in Puerto Rico. The Western wildfire “season” is now virtually year-round; 2017’s fire bill was put at $18 billion, triple the previous high.

And the cost keeps climbing. On Tuesday in southern California hillsides that lost their vegetation to the giant Thomas fire last month started giving way in the belated winter rains, bringing horrendous mudslides into residential areas.

Climate change is without a doubt part of the problem. We have criticized in the past this administration’s unwillingness to grasp that reality, and we renew that criticism today.

But another aspect is the continued insistence on development in high-risk areas, and the market distortions that mask or subsidize the cost of that development.

Stillwater (Okla.)

News Press

The War on Drugs will not be won in a hail of bullets. It certainly wasn’t won by knocking down the doors of crack dens in the ’80s. But a battle could be won in the courtroom, and it could possibly create a chain-reaction that deals a major blow to the demand side of the supply-and-demand dynamic.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter successfully brought opioid manufacturers to trial, where he said he hopes to “hold them accountable” for an epidemic that has a death toll larger than our current wars in the Middle East.

Hunter filed the suit in June, a motion to dismiss was ruled against last December, and they are currently in the discover phase – in which lawyers work to gather information and evidence prior to trial.

Hunter and his team will have to prove drug manufacturers created addicts by misleading doctors and patients about the addictive nature of the drugs, or by trying to convince people to take drugs that they didn’t need in the first place.

Congratulations to Hunter and his office for getting their day in court. Thanks to him for taking an approach that doesn’t look to penalize people for their addictions.

Akron (Ohio)

Beacon Journal

The Children’s Health Insurance Program should have gained congressional reauthorization months ago. The renewal should have come before its budget expired at the end of September. The program long has received broad bipartisan support. Yet Congress has disappointed in failing to get the job done.

What the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association and its allies, nationally and in other states, find troubling is how the program has become tangled up in the bargaining among lawmakers over a larger spending bill.

It hardly surprises the program results in healthier children, and better outcomes more broadly in their lives, from something as simple as eyeglasses to improved academic performance. What also deserves attention is how CHIP works as the necessary insurance option for many children with special needs, who require, frequent, comprehensive and expensive care.

Actually, CHIP is cheap, now $800 million for the decade after the Congressional Budget Office recalculated the cost due to the repeal of the individual mandate. Which is another reason for Congress to act quickly. …