Thoughts on recent news items

Like you, I read newspapers, visit online news sites, and watch the evening news on television. I like to have a general idea of what’s happening in the world, in Alaska, and more specifically, in the Valley.

This past week, two stories caught my undivided attention: one because of subtle omissions, and the second because of the previously unreported aspects of a political issue.

First, I want it clearly understood I’m not criticizing the reporter of the first story. I know the person and she is top-notch in her profession. However, she is relatively unfamiliar with the subject matter and, as a result, reported what she was given in interviews and other contributing materials. Therein lies the subtle omissions of information by the interviewees.

I’m speaking about last Sunday’s front-page article in the Frontiersman concerning the Shell Lake sockeye restocking program. Here’s some background that wasn’t included in the article:

The Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association (CIAA) is a non-profit group that receives significant funding from a tax paid by the commercial fishermen of Cook Inlet. I know the drift fleet pays this tax, I’m not sure if the setnetters do.

The drifters have maintained that the reasons Northern District sockeye stocks have declined are: northern pike, beaver dams, culverts, and to a lesser extent, disease. They will not acknowledge that intercepting as much as 80 percent of returning Northern District adults in the commercial fishery has any bearing on return strengths and the ability of the fish populations to remain healthy over time.

The article didn’t mention culverts because that has been debunked as a viable contributing factor. Pike do have a negative influence in a few selected drainages in the Susitna River system, but that problem is being addressed by Fish and Game with netting eradication programs.

Beaver dams can impede returning adults, but they also provide habitat for early life stages of salmon as well. On a case-by-case basis, beaver dams are seen as beneficial, especially for coho salmon fry and fingerlings. With coho using hundreds of both large and small tributaries in the Susitna Drainage, the net effect of beaver dams could very well be positive. That aspect was not mentioned in the article.

Overall, the article was well done and CIAA is, generally, a reasonable organization. Readers, however, need to know that causes of our Northern District salmon declines are not black and white, occurring only in the local Valley environment.

Intercepting the overwhelming majority of returning adults in the commercial fishery is arguably the largest contributing factor to a declining run. That factor wasn’t even mentioned.

The second story discusses a heretofore unreported aspect of the recent so-called mass shooting in Santa Barbara, Calif., and other similar events over the past 20 years. This article, found on the MSN news website page this past weekend, lists pages of young people, primarily males, who were using psychotropic drugs when they went on their killing sprees.

Most of the events ended with the death or suicide of the individual. Some of the incidents only involved the individual’s suicide. Other events involved people who didn’t need the prescribed drugs, but were being treated with them anyway.

In virtually every case, there was a concern about the mental stability of the shooter. However, simply prescribing a powerful, mind-altering drug and calling the situation under control obviously didn’t work. The article lists the drug(s) being used in each case. For some of the incidents, Ritalin, either alone or in conjunction with other drugs like Zoloft or Prozac were used.

In other situations, drugs like Paxil, Effexor, Celexa, Welbutrin and the like were involved. Some of these drugs I’ve heard of, others not. I do know these are not drugs to be casually used like an over-the-counter cold remedy. They are very serious medications.

You will hear an outcry for more and tighter gun controls as a result of the Santa Barbara killing spree. Three of the dead were killed by knife wounds and the killer tried to run others down with his BMW, yet there’s no call for either knife or automobile control. Trying to regulate an object when the problem is behaviorally caused is insanity. Mental health issues in this country need more serious attention. The use of mind-altering drugs to treat specific mental illnesses needs tighter regulation and monitoring as well.

Mentally unstable people should not have access to firearms. However, denying 99+ percent of the population firearms access to achieve that goal is ridiculous and unacceptable.