Editorial

The rise of Adderall-addled college students continues the trend of prescription drug abuse in this country. Sunday’s Spokesman- Review article by three Washington State University students took a detailed look at young people popping pills with disturbing nonchalance. Though Adderall is designed for people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy, many students use them as “smart pills” to stay alert for all-night study sessions and exams. Others partake recreationally. National studies suggest that 25 percent of college students have popped cognitive stimulants.

It shouldn’t have taken three years to bring the Spokane Regional Clean Air Agency’s open-meetings case to a close. But it did. Not only that, it cost taxpayers $25,000, the amount the agency paid for failing to follow a state law that’s been on the books more than three decades.

While soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying at the rate they did in the Vietnam War, they are amassing nightmares that could haunt them, their families and society for years to come. In Vietnam, it was usually one tour and done, because the draft produced more troops. Now, it’s three or four and possibly more tours as an all-volunteer force bears the burden. The good news is that the nation’s attitude toward the troops is largely positive and the military has grown more sensitive to the strain of service. The bad news is that the accumulated stress may overwhelm those efforts. Plus, the pressure to return troops to service could short-circuit needed care.

The overriding decision facing the Spokane City Council between now and year’s end is whether to adopt the 2010 budget. Meanwhile, the council also has to decide what to do about the YMCA building it now owns. These challenges aren’t directly related, but both of them touch on the adequacy of city revenues to cover city expenses. The council ought to keep that in mind as it mulls the Y property.

Mail-in voting has become popular in the states that have adopted it, despite the lag times in tabulating ballots and posting final election results. Voters have made it clear that the convenience of voting by mail outweighs any drawbacks. But legislative leaders in Boise haven’t warmed to the idea of change, so voters have to put up with more hassles. One of the more inexcusable hurdles is forcing voters who want an absentee ballot to formally request one before each election. That could mean multiple requests in a single year. When voters ask why they can’t be given permanent absentee status, county clerks don’t have a reasonable justification.

Even during a stagnant economy – no, especially during a stagnant economy – a community like Spokane needs to lay plans for economic growth and development. And one of the area’s most important assets in that regard is Spokane International Airport, which finds itself in the middle of a significant and complicated annexation plan involving the cities of Spokane and Airway Heights, as well as Fire District 10. And, of course, Spokane County.

It’s seven years late, but Libby, Mont., is finally getting substantial help for its sick and dying residents. Triggered by the federal government’s unprecedented declaration of a public health emergency in June, money from a $6 million health care grant will start flowing to the town this month for screenings and treatment. The city thought that declaration would come in 2002, but the Environmental Protection Agency settled on a traditional Superfund designation. That surprising decision dealt a huge blow to a town with limited health care options.

This seems familiar. The Washington state Department of General Administration adopted rules last week that limit seasonal displays in the Capitol in Olympia to a state-sponsored “holiday tree.” No religious displays, real or fanciful, nor anti-religious displays either. Just the official evergreen tree, deliberately nonsectarian by name: holiday tree.

Technically, the Little Shell Indian Tribe of Montana asked for federal recognition in 1978, the same year the U.S. Department of Interior adopted regulations governing the Federal Acknowledgement Process. But tribal elders say their fight to regain status in the U.S. government’s eyes began in 1892, when federal recognition was withdrawn because Chief Little Shell wouldn’t sell reservation land to the government.

Washington state far outperforms the national average when it comes to seat belt use – 96.5 percent to 83 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s statistics for 2008. So it seems uncharacteristic of such automotive safety consciousness that one out of four schoolchildren sampled in a recent awareness campaign by Spokane-area law enforcement officers was improperly secured in his or her car seat.

It looks as if the fate of Referendum 71 will be decided long before a final decision is made on whether to release the names of the more than 120,000 people who signed a petition to have the state’s “everything but marriage” law put to a vote. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that the names could be released. The injunction will remain for at least as long as it takes for both sides to file new motions, which could take weeks or months. If the Supreme Court decides to accept the case, it may not issue a ruling until June.

A recent Washington State Supreme Court ruling shows that the Legislature has some long overdue housecleaning to attend to. It shouldn’t be difficult, which makes it all the more puzzling why this mess was ignored for 23 years. The court affirmed two lower court rulings that the administrative records of the courts are exempt from the state’s public records act. The case began when David Koenig, of Federal Way, requested all of the records pertaining to the controversy involving Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Colleen Hartl, who resigned and was censured over a sexual relationship with a public defender who sometimes appeared in her court. The court turned over 183 pages of documents, but it withheld the correspondence between Hartl and her supervisor, Municipal Court Judge Michael Morgan.

In the national political arena, health care is about competing constituent interests, counting votes and wading through pages of statistical and fiscal analysis. On the fourth floor of Providence Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital this week in Spokane, a small group of supporters got a reminder that health care is also still about healing, curing and comforting.

The myths about the H1N1 vaccine may be spreading more rapidly than the virus itself. Along with the annual suspicions about inoculations come new fears that are also unjustified. Public health officials are urging that specific groups be given priority as supplies of the new vaccine arrive in communities: pregnant women, household contacts and caregivers for children younger than 6 months, health care and emergency personnel, people ages 25 to 64 with medical conditions that could be exacerbated by the flu and all people ages 6 to 24. That last group is important, because children congregate in group settings, like schools, that facilitate the spread of the flu. Plus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday that 53 percent of people hospitalized with H1N1 have been younger than 24. But an Associated Press poll conducted in the first week of October found that more than 38 percent of parents won’t be giving permission for their children to be inoculated at school.

The Kootenai-Shoshone Library District has been through half a dozen consolidations, but for Post Falls voters, the ballot proposal facing them on the Nov. 3 ballot will be a new experience. Naturally, voters want some answers before handing their library over to the district. What happens to the competent librarians and other professionals that patrons have come to appreciate? Why should Post Falls give away a relatively new facility that hasn’t even been paid off yet?

It’s been reported that the recession is over, even if some of its unpleasant effects linger. But they may linger indefinitely in Washington if voters approve Initiative 1033. The measure would limit general fund revenue growth for the state, as well as all its cities and counties, to the combined rates of population growth and inflation. And since the base year would be 2009 – with its stubborn unemployment figures, anemic retail sales reports and recurrent business closures and cutbacks – that would be I-1033’s model for the future.

Listening to the opponents of Referendum 71, you’d think the Washington state Legislature had either outlawed marriage, made it legal for same-sex couples or advocated the burning of Bibles. None of those things happened when Senate Bill 5688, or the “everything but marriage” law, was adopted last spring. But the videos at the official “Vote No” site try to put the fear of God in voters. If they don’t reject this measure, they will “put asunder” God’s work and “violate His mandate.”

The Rev. Robert Spitzer’s retirement as president of Gonzaga University over the summer turns out to have been the beginning of a trend. Whitworth University President Bill Robinson and Community Colleges of Spokane Chancellor Gary Livingston now have both announced they will step down at the end of the academic year.

On Saturday night, President Barack Obama will be the keynote speaker at a dinner sponsored by the Human Rights Network, a gay-rights organization. It would be a great time to announce a dishonorable discharge for the nation’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which has governed the lives of gay and lesbian members of the military since 1993. The best case for dumping this odious compromise between President Bill Clinton and military brass comes from the military itself. Writing for an upcoming edition of the Pentagon’s scholarly publication, Joint Force Quarterly, Col. Om Prakash, who works for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, wrote: “After a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly. Based on this research, it is not time for the administration to re-examine the issue; rather it is time for the administration to examine how to implement the repeal of the ban.”