In 2021, nearly eight Marylanders died each day from an overdose. In my city of Baltimore alone, our community lost more than 600 people last year –– a stunningly tragic situation that demands action. These preventable deaths are the consequences of systemic discrimination and suffering rooted in the war on drugs. Decades of police violence and generations of mass incarceration have pushed people who use drugs into the shadows. Our family members, our friends, and our neighbors are disappearing into social and emotional isolation, where they engage in risky behaviors that put their health and that of others at risk. But in Baltimore, we’re charting a new course toward proven solutions to address the overdose crisis and save lives.

On the way to the last Orioles games of the 2022 season Wednesday afternoon, a day of work or school for most, a woman at the bus stop said she had just come from a job interview at the nearby nursing home. She needed a new position, she said, because her last — taking care of a heavy, elderly woman at home — had been too hard on her back. “I can’t wait to get home to take a Tylenol,” the woman said. And therein was heard the pleading of post-pandemic America: Anybody got a Tylenol? Health care workers, first responders, teachers, restaurant workers, social workers, trash collectors, people in tech support, cleaning crews, construction workers, bus drivers, owners of small businesses and all rational, democracy-loving people of progressive-to-moderate politics — we all need pain relief.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “if you want something done, ask a busy person,” to which comedian Lucille Ball later added “the more things you do, the more things you can do.” The point, of course, is that people who stay busy are more energetic, more organized and more motivated by nature. We observed the opposite over two years of monotony and incubation during the pandemic, which resulted in a jump in laziness and less desire for people to get out of their comfort zones. For the first several months of the pandemic, activities were limited, responsibilities at work lessened, and lives constricted. As energy levels declined, anxiety meters rose. In other words, the less you do, the less you do.

When I was growing up on the streets of west Baltimore — where there are no trees to climb — we crawled through dumpsters for fun. In autumn and winter, when the air was crisp and still, we rolled up our sleeves and pushed forward. My father caught me once. Suspended waist-deep in filth, I hadn’t heard the car engine as I closely examined what looked to be a perfectly good box of Captain Crunch. The sound of “Kenny!” shouted from the driver’s side window, shot through me like a slap. A year later we moved to a tiny house on a tree-lined street in the county. It was a revelation.

The big spike in gas utility bills that Maryland residential customers should expect this winter is just the tip of the iceberg. Without major policy changes, customers will see huge increases in their gas bills in the years and decades to come. These looming increases are not because of the cost of gas itself, the source of this winter’s bill hikes, but because of the gas utilities’ massive spending on their local distribution systems — the pipes, concrete, computers, and other infrastructure that utilities use to deliver gas. A report my office is releasing this week shows that the utilities are on track to spend tens of billions of dollars replacing their entire local distribution systems and expanding pipeline capacity, with the state’s largest gas utility this year spending at a rate of more than $1.2 million per day.

The widely watched hearings of the congressional Jan. 6 committee have turned Wyoming’s Liz Cheney into America’s most visible anti-Trump Republican leader. But Cheney still has some serious competition for that recognition — from Maryland’s Republican governor Larry Hogan. Hogan is now finishing up his second and final gubernatorial term in Annapolis. He’s been outspokenly anti-Trump for far longer than Cheney, and his attacks on Trump have gone far beyond the crimes committed on January 6. This past May, in a California address, Hogan blasted Trump’s White House stint as “the worst four years for the GOP since the 1930s, even worse than after Watergate.”

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, the 65-year-old anesthesiologist and former Baltimore County state senator who backs Donald Trump’s fraudulent election claims, once pledged to serve no more than six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Given that he is winding up that sixth term in the 1st Congressional District, it’s time to hold him to that long-ago promise. Fortunately, voters have an outstanding choice to replace Harris. Heather R. Mizeur, the Democratic nominee, has campaigned on a trait wholly foreign to her opponent: She has promised to listen, and she has our endorsement.

A recent letter to The Baltimore Sun (”Student loan bailout a slap in the face,” Sept. 26) has stayed on my mind. I’ve heard the sentiment that was expressed in the letter so many times lately. I understand the writer’s view, and I’m not unsympathetic. My wife and I scrimped and saved to pay college tuitions for our kids just like the writer. But I’m for loan forgiveness. Not because it will benefit me, my wife or my sons, but because I believe that removing the onerous burden of those loans from millions of my fellow citizens will be good for our country.