Cutting the budget (nose)

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

California will become the only state without a poison-control system if the Legislature adopts budget cuts proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the network’s officials said yesterday.

The system, which includes a center at UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, offers advice on everything from medication overdoses and snakebites to eating batteries and swallowing weedkiller. It fields about 900 calls per day, with many involving young children.

Schwarzenegger’s spending plan would wipe out the $5.9 million in annual funding for the network.

[…]

Partly by reducing the number of ER visits, the poison control system also helps save about $70 million annually, [Iana Simeonov, director of program development] said.

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