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Crosscurrents

Connecting the Dots: Top news stories for Monday, April 9, 2012

Despite the growth of prescription painkiller abuse, only 86 of 30,000 doctors and pharmacists in the Bay Area are enrolled in California’s state prescription drug monitoring system. The system is optional, and drug prescribers say it is outdated, slow, and clunky. Prescription drug overdoses kill more than 11 people every day in California...

Despite opposition, San Francisco Treasurer and Tax Collector Jose Cisneros issued a memorandum last week applying the city’s 14% hotel tax to rooms and houses rented out through Airbnb, a peer-to-peer site where people rent out their homes for short periods of time. The website is a part of a new “sharing economy” developing through social networking and using business models outside of traditional commerce. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee recently formed a working group to discuss ways to tax and regulate these innovative efforts...

A recent proposal, supported by Mayor Lee, to enforce San Francisco’s parking meter fees on Sundays may make parking even more contentious and difficult than it already is in the city. A long-standing agreement with local churches allows attendees to park in the middle of the street during worship services, which can cause friction with non-churchgoers looking for Sunday parking...

Eliana Lopez, the wife of suspended San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, has written an open letter to the San Francisco Chronicle in which she reiterates her support for her husband despite the restraining order separating them, and in which she compares what happened to Mirkarimi to a golpe de estado, or coup d’etat...

After last year’s ban on shark fin sales, another popular Chinese food is being threatened. 5 million American bullfrogs are imported into the U.S. each year, but close to two-thirds are carriers of a fungus that is deadly to amphibians. American bullfrogs are an invasive species in California and have been linked to the destruction of native amphibian species, yet a ban on their sale has been opposed by some Chinese American politicians...

Truancy has long been an issue in Oakland’s public schools, yet the school district does not know how much it is costing them, according to a school official. The district seems to also be missing some records on truancy from recent years.

Connecting the Dots brings the day's news together.
 

Crosscurrents