Dear Editor,

Neglecting and therefore failing people struggling with debilitating drug addiction should never have been an acceptable or preferable political option. But the more callous politics that are typically involved with lacking addiction funding/services tend to reflect conservative electorate opposition, however irrational, against making proper treatment available to low- and no-income addicts.

It really is as though some people, unlike most other people, are actually considered disposable. Even to an otherwise relatively civilized nation, their worth is measured basically by their sober ‘productivity’ or lack thereof. Those people may then begin perceiving themselves as worthless and accordingly live their daily lives and consume their substances more haphazardly.

Tragically, many chronically addicted people won’t miss this world if they never wake up. It’s not that they necessarily want to die; it’s that they want their pointless corporeal hell to cease and desist.

Though not in the ‘hard-drug addiction’ category, I have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known, enjoyed and appreciated the great release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. Yet, I once was one of those who, while sympathetic, would look down on those who’d ‘allowed’ themselves to become addicted to alcohol and/or illicit ‘hard’ drugs.

Fortunately, the preconceived erroneous notion that drug addicts are simply weak-willed and/or have committed a moral crime is gradually diminishing. We now know that Western pharmaceutical corporations intentionally pushed their very addictive and profitable opiates – I call it by far the real moral crime – for which they got off relatively lightly, considering the resulting immense suffering and overdose death numbers.

Still, typically societally overlooked is that intense addiction usually doesn’t originate from a bout of boredom, where a person repeatedly consumed recreationally but became heavily hooked – and homeless, soon after – on an unregulated often-deadly chemical that eventually destroyed their life and even those of loved-ones.

Frank Sterle Jr., White Rock

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