On a Scourge Facing the Youth of Texas

The death toll has already begun. One teenage victim has already died this year. I am truly saddened by this and my heart goes out to his friends and family.

While K2, a synthetic form of marijuana, has caused some 250 hospitalizations in Texas this year, the carnage from this scourge is far worse: averaging more than 250 any given weekend.*

It is as heinous as anything we have seen in the past with gangs from each school proudly adorning their colors like the Crips and the Bloods while the violence continues.

It has been said that teachers and school administrators even encourage this behavior granting license for some to egg on crowds of non-participating bystanders including other students and parents. It is rumored that parents of Allen voted for a $60 million bond issuance to provide a space to “enjoy” this horrid spectacle of what must be called child abuse as entertainment.

I am talking, of course, about high school football. And, no, I do not favor dismantling it.

My point is that if all this talk about K2 and other issues that are positioned as being about the safety of the children is true, how can letting football continue not be seen as hypocritical.

It is not about the children, it is about judging one potentially harmful activity as morally better than another.

(*Note: my calculation of 250 is based on a report that an estimated 130,000 high school athletes in the U.S. annually suffer concussions. As Texas is 6.25 percent of the U.S. population I estimate that 8,125 of these occur in Texas. Annually this works out to 156 per week. This is just concussions. If anything, my guess is that I am under estimating. My guess is that during the 20-week season there are about 406 concussions per week alone.)