Don't be a heroin

A 6-year-old student got at least 10 packs of heroin into a classroom on Tuesday at Commodore John Barry Elementary School in Philadelphia. A first-grade teacher saw one of her students playing with the packets — two had been opened and one had been chewed open. “We do have one student saying that the young lady who brought the substance to school did have that packet in her mouth,” Police Lieutenant John Walker told reporters. Since heroin can be deadly, even if absorbed in small amounts, all 20 first-graders were rushed to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in a yellow school bus. Where would a child that young find heroin? Not necessarily on school grounds, of course. Though police said a school-wide search found no other narcotics, they also searched the child’s home and expect to file charges against the child’s mother and her boyfriend. Why would one have narcotics in the same house as a little kid? And why would gay conversion therapy still be considered acceptable in 2014? Short answer: it ain't. Therefore, New York's Democratic-led Assembly is set to take up a bill today banning licensed health officials from administering therapy to minors attempting to change their sexual orientation. Mathew Shurka, of Long Island, describes himself as emotionally scarred from five years of therapy to "cure" his homosexuality. The 26-year-old began the therapy at age 16. The American Psychological Association says that there is no evidence that the so-called gay conversion therapy can change someone's sexual orientation. Shurka was told to avoid women and surround himself with male friends in the hopes of learning to act like a heterosexual man. A therapist even advised he watch heterosexual pornography to curb his homosexual thoughts. Bans against gay conversion therapy have already gone into law in New Jersey and California. That's still 47 states too few, and I daresay Texas won't be jumping the bandwagon any time soon.