America's Addiction To Cell Phones Unsafe

Cell phone use has become an addiction in this country, and the results haven't been good.

Even the President found his nicotine habit was easier to kick than his cell phone addiction. President Obama was unwilling to relinquish his BlackBerry after being elected, immediately commissioning a top-secret model to be designed just for him.

But not cellular use has been good natured. Cell phones have helped contribute to much worse than tasteless text messages. Teenage "sexting" has increased, mass transit accidents and car crashes have occurred, prison violence has increased and a witness was assassinated before trial by order of an inmate with a cell phone.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to ask the Federal Communications Commission for permission to jam cell-phone signals at one of its state prisons to demonstrate its effectiveness at shutting down the inmates cell phone use. Cell-phone jammers, which prevent cell-tower transmissions from reaching the targeted phone, are not to be used by state and local agencies per the Communications Act of 1934.

Cell phone use by inmates in the Maryland prison system apparently has become a big problem for the state. In 2008, 947 cell phones were confiscated by corrections officials by using specially trained dogs, according to Gov. O'Malley. Those numbers indicate a 71 percent increase in confiscations since 2006. Cell-phone use has helped inmates coordinate attacks on prison staff which have decreased by 32 percent over the same period.

Last week, a Baltimore drug dealer who used a cell phone in the city jail to plan the killing of a trial witness was sentenced to life without parole. A cell-phone related case also went down in Texas earlier this month, where a death row inmate was indicted in a purported cell-phone smuggling case that led to a statewide prison lockdown.

About 50 people were hurt in a Boston underground train accident. The conductor admitted he had been texting his girlfriend and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is now saying it will ban public bus and train operators from using cell phones.

In San Antonio, a bus driver was fired this month after he rammed his bus into an SUV. A camera on the bus revealed that he had been texting on his cell phone.

Cell phones are being banned in school districts as well. Some teachers even claim that texting is stunting students' writing skills.

Should the government step in even further to avoid costly and potential deadly incidents in the future?