Letters

Letters to the editor

Highlands Today
Published: January 3, 2013

Won't rest

I am a mother. I have a drug-addicted daughter. She is 21 and has been prescribed a heavy dose of pain reliever known as oxycontin. She had an epidural a year ago and this was/is the solution, per a medical doctor.

My sorrow begins with this. My daughter now has lifetime back pain. She did receive an MRI showing damage. She's now "legally addicted" to her pain medication and can no longer take care of her child — she's an addict.

I have sought help through a Marchman Act, which only held her in Bartow detox for four to five days. She's still angry and using. How does this happen?

This is my daughter and our youth. As a community I ask that you don't remain silent. This is not just my story. We are a community. This could be your story.

I stand along on this journey, for I know it is not a destiny. It's a long, painful journey. I ask that the next time someone shares a similar story with you, that you rise to the occasion, make a stand to whomever you can and share in the outrage that legal prescriptions are just as deadly and dangerous as the K-2 and bath salts that law enforcement is pursuing.

Until I find a solution or resolution, I will not rest.

Leah Steele

Avon Park

Common sense

In very many of the Tampa Tribune "Our Views" and "Your Views," it is quoted "Congress and our leaders should heed and use common sense."

In the Dec. 21 issue facing the mortgage cliff, there were eight letters with a lot of deep thoughts by good Christian people with a lot of common sense. You see, our Supreme Court literally kicked God out of our schools in 1948. All children born after 1948 have been encouraged by our Supreme Court leadership to live and raise our children without God.

If you have God and Jesus in your life and family, you have love, patience, kindness, fun, understanding, courtesy and many other good things that come from God. A family that prays together stays together.

You cannot and will not stop guns. Yes, maybe we need to tweak gun control to try and keep bad people from having guns. Now, Patti Pier, who heads the Juvenile Division for the Hillsborough County State Attorney's office, said, "We know the ones who are out of control." She said a child can commit 100 burglaries and not be put in a residential correctional facility.

It is time for delinquent parents and reckless lawyers to get out of the way and let justice be done with a common sense party. Hitler and other dictators pretending to be your friend would tell all of you to turn in your guns and everyone will be safe. Under their breath they would say, "Now I have control of you."

The common sense party will have God as head of the party, and each citizen will have a voice to bring the government to "of the people, for the people, by the people."

Ralph Costello

Avon Park

School door locks

The lives in one classroom at the Sandy Hook Elementary School were saved simply because the classroom door was locked. At a very low cost, all classroom doors could be locked on the outside with entry gained only after the teacher presses a button on his or her desk.

LeRoy Esler

Sebring