Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

To the Editor:
I read that between Christmas and New Year’s is the most dangerous time to be on the road because it’s the top week for drunk drivers. New Year’s Eve is the top day for drunk drivers. I had read an article about how drunk driving and distracted driving and texting causes hundreds of times more deaths and thousands times more injuries for teenagers than school shootings each year. However, the major media focuses on school shootings and not on drunk driving or distracted driving in the hope of getting gun bans. School shootings are tragic but don’t even make the top ten causes of teen deaths in the U.S. It appears the major media doesn’t care if American teenagers die in car crashes but cares if Americans have guns! Most car accidents are preventable and is the fourth leading cause of death for young adults. All news media is designed to scare you. Why? Because news organizations make money off of people clicking on headlines and people are more likely to click on headlines that scare them. Media leaders and owners say, “if it bleeds it leads” and is our top story. Headlines can mislead and don’t tell the whole story. We have to obey, 1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Prove (test) all things; hold fast that which is good (true).”
Few people know the true leading causes of death for young adults. I just read an article at www.christianheadlines.com that is disturbing. “Fentanyl is leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 45 over the last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports.” Suicide, COVID-19 and car accidents followed fentanyl overdoses on the list of the top four highest causes of death for young adults. James Rauh, founder of Families Against Fentanyl, said, “This is a national emergency. America’s young adults, thousands of unsuspecting Americans are being poisoned.” Fentanyl has been added to and found in “nearly every type of street drug.” Fentanyl is driving the massive increase in drug-related deaths. According to Families Against Fentanyl’s website www.familiesagainstfentanyl.org, fentanyl is a “synthetic opioid that is 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin.” The drug was initially created to alleviate extreme pain. “A lethal dose of fentanyl is extremely small. It takes 30 mg of heroin to die, while just 2 mg of fentanyl could kill someone.” In 2021 federal authorities seized a record amount of drugs. Authorities confiscated 11,201 pounds of fentanyl from people attempting to cross the border this year. This is more than double the 4,791 pounds confiscated in 2020. The Drug Enforcement Administration said 20 million counterfeit pills containing fentanyl have been seized this year. This is another reason we need walls and better security of our borders!
I agree with Families Against Fentanyl which launched a petition urging the U.S. government to label illegal fentanyl as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, which would enable the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Department of Defense and other relevant federal agencies to better coordinate their efforts and immediately publish the necessary administrative directives to eliminate the threat posed by these deadly substances.” Parents need to warn their children and schools need to warn their students not to take any drugs because fentanyl could have been added to it and only one pill or one dose could kill them! Most of all in these dangerous last days parents need to pray for their children and make sure their children know that they love them and Jesus loves them!

D.D. Nave
Elizabethton