Happy Birthday weekend to Commissioner Tina Slendak! Tina has been a breath of fresh air on the commission, and I hope this was a fun orbit around the sun for her this past year and that next year will be just as fruitful!
Speaking of Commissioner Slendak and the district 7 race, usually when someone comes out of the blue to run for public office and lose the race, they usually stick around, hoping that perhaps their next run might be more successful. Politics kind of gets into the blood that way.
That doesn’t appear to be so with Slendak’s also-ran candidate, Dr. Marshall Bedder, who has disappeared from the radar faster than the Air Force’s new F-47 fighter jet.
This has given some credence to claims that Bedder was a one-issue candidate who was focused solely on the opioid abuse problem and possibly having a hand in meting out the federal/state money Augusta has received to deal with this epidemic that knows no socio-economic bounds.
That could be a fair assessment, given that Bedder is the director of the Medical College of Georgia’s Addiction Medicine Fellowship at Augusta University. To me, this shows his heart might have been in the right place, but you need more than one issue to be a good politician and candidate for office.
Even though Bedder did not win election, I hope that he has been one of many that has been consulted on how to properly spend the settlement money and get addicts the help that they need and also wean off legitimate users of opioids after the drugs have served their purpose for a medical or trauma issue.
Mayor Garnett Johnson says to be on the lookout for an announcement soon on how the city plans to use its portion of the opioid lawsuit payouts. Since the city will be continuing to receive funding for the better part of two decades, the mayor and his staff have been tasked with putting together a program that will still be in place long after he has left office.
With $2 million already in the bank, I’m certain that the city has had to wade through a ton of contacts and applications from “pop-up” groups that are more interested in getting their hands on the money than actually doing anything to solve the problem.
My wife, who is a retired attorney, was contacted by one such group, led by a charismatic former addict. This guy claimed he had the answers, all he needed was $5 million. She attended a couple of meetings and discovered that the group had splashy-looking promotional ideas, but all they really planned to do operate a van that was to disseminate “Narcan” doses to people who might need them.
Talk about the timing having to be perfect! One van to show up at the scene of an overdose?
My wife wisely declined to have anything to do with the group because it became clear pretty quickly that they knew nothing about setting up a non-profit, filing grant applications or even basic budgeting.
It turned out they were more based on the Stacey Abrams’ model of “show me the money and I’ll show you how to spend it…Oh, and my friends and I will need a paycheck too.”
People have made fun of and downright disparaged Elon Musk for his DOGE and its investigations of USAID. However, I uncovered many of the same abuses of federal dollars in my book, “The Contract on the Government,” which was released over 10 years ago. Since the beginning of the Cold War and beyond, America has been the world’s benefactor, police officer and chief negotiator to the detriment of the people that pay up and make the system possible.
For too long the federal government has acted like an ATM, and it is not just the Democrats pocketing tax money, they are just more blatant about it, in my opinion. The Republicans have “green” on their hands too and I am anxiously Musk and his crew to look into the connection between the Saudi royal family and American politicians.
Here, locally, though, we need those funds that are available to fight against scourge of drug abuse that has decimated several generations at this point.
I, personally, am looking forward to hearing Johnson’s plans to combat the opioid/fentanyl problem as I have lost several friends to opioid overdoses.
As part of my cancer treatment, I am prescribed fentanyl, and I can attest that this is not a drug that should be used without the strictest of physician care.
Fentanyl is so highly addictive and potent that even people who take it for extreme pain caused by cancer have to have it delivered to the system by time-release patch, because one pill too many may be the last pill you take. Those who no longer need the medication must be weaned off of it.
I feel very sorry for people who have been seduced into using those types of medications recreationally and it makes it difficult for people like me, who actually need the medication, to gain access to it. However, I don’t mind having to jump through the paperwork hoops and have my ID ready even though my pharmacist knows who I am, because these drugs are needlessly killing Americans everyday.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, Editorial Page Editor and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
