Commentary

The shocking collapse of Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin on Monday night has renewed concerns about the dangers of football. While I certainly agree with the need to make football safer, that’s the wrong lesson to draw from this situation. Rather, Hamlin’s cardiac arrest highlights the need to make automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) readily accessible in all sports facilities, especially where youth sports are played. The scary moment occurred after Hamlin, 24, apparently slammed his chest into the shoulder of Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins. Hamlin stood up briefly after the tackle before collapsing on the field. His heart had stopped. Medical staff members rushed to perform chest compressions and used an AED to shock his heart.

Based on the many announced projects moving from drawing boards to groundbreakings, it should be a banner year for development in and around Baltimore in 2023. Despite expected economic headwinds and a pandemic that has not surrendered its grip on us, developers are moving ahead with a wide range of significant initiatives in Baltimore and beyond. I spoke to a representative of one of those developers earlier in the month. Drew Gorman is a Washington, D.C.-based partner with P. David Bramble of MCB Real Estate LLC. The firm has a growing portfolio of developments at a number of locations around Baltimore.

Correctional officers assisting in the assault and attempted murder of inmates by other inmates. Correctional officers knocking inmates unconscious, sodomizing them, and then dragging them through the prison unconscious with their pants around their ankles. Prison officials subjecting Spanish speaking prisoners to legal processes without interpreters, violating their due process rights, and then stripping them of good time credits that would see them released earlier. Prison medical contractors denying health care to prisoners and leaving them in excruciating pain for months or years on end. All done under the seal of the great State of Maryland and in the name of its citizens.

Next summer, the District of Columbia will begin offering free bus rides to anyone traveling within the city limits, making D.C. the biggest U.S. city yet to waive or significantly reduce fares to increase transit use and help low-income commuters get to jobs. The waiver, approved on Dec. 6, will not be cheap. It’s expected to cost the city an extra $43 million at a time when the region’s transit system has already been struggling financially.

This month President Biden signed into law the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act, and it’s a good first start. But as a board-certified emergency physician working directly with medical cannabis patients in Maryland since our medical cannabis law passed, I know we need to do more. First, the bill still does not allow research to be done on the cannabis products that almost 5.5 million patients are using legally in their state programs today. For the last quarter century, states have had to individually pass medical cannabis laws to help their citizens.

The year ended in Baltimore with a new commercial village emerging at the former Port Covington railway yard in South Baltimore. It’s been renamed the Baltimore Peninsula and, perhaps because it’s somewhat hidden by the Interstate 95 elevated highway, is not so visible. Skeptics wonder about The Peninsula. There is a precedent. What were once oil storage tanks and industrial sites in the part of Canton near the waterfront are now a new neighborhood that seems to enlarge and change month by month.

For some reason — perhaps for motivational purposes or just because it’s a newspaper tradition — I’ve again compiled a list of things I’d like to do and things I’d like to see in the new year. I’ve also made a couple of random predictions. I offer all this with one request: Please don’t hold me to any of it. Things I’d like to see: Ravens kicker Justin Tucker starring in a sitcom in the offseason, where he plays a peewee football coach, or something like that. The guy has real showbiz pizazz…

Each month, young Marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen are killed when their armored vehicles flip over. Those who survive can face amputations, traumatic brain injuries and a tough future. Today, more young people, some in their teens, die in training than in combat. Nearly all these lethal training fiascoes — outrageously labeled “mishaps” by military bureaucrats — are preventable.