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Thursday, March 06, 2003 Page: 7A
OPINION
FEAR IS A powerful emotion. It prompts people to behave irrationally, to
even abandon compassion and mercy. That is what is happening in Luzerne County
when fear provokes people to turn away the sick and the dying.
Plains Township is the latest community to be suggested as a location for a
methadone clinic. It would be located on Laird Street, removed from schools
and churches and not in a dense residential areas. But it would still be in
Plains Township, and officials there have vehemently protested the clinic.
It is the height of hypocrisy for a Plains Township supervisor to be
indignant that a methadone clinic even be proposed for the community.
Certainly Plains Township shares in the problem: it has dealers, users and
victims.
It is ironic that the proposed clinic would be across the way from the
Woodlands Inn & Resort, which sells a huge amount of wine, spirits and beer.
The clinic would be close to the Downs horse racing track. Drinking and
gambling are controlled, but they can lead to addition. We don’t let those
people fall away.
The opponents in Plains Township are horribly wrong, though no more than
officials in every other community where there has been adamant resistance to
a clinic.
Every community shares in the fallout from substance abuse, addiction and
the drug trade. These problems are not in some other back yard. You can be
sure that drugs, including heroin, are on the streets of Wilkes-Barre, the
tree-lined neighborhoods of Kingston and Forty Fort and anywhere in the
toniest enclaves, from Mountain Top to the Back Mountain, West Pittston to
Nanticoke and all of Luzerne County.
Several dozen people have died from overdose deaths in the past few years,
from young teenagers to people almost 60. Most were residents here. All of
Northeastern Pennsylvania shares in this big-city problem. We need a big-city
cure. Methadone, a synthetic opiate to control withdrawal and cravings, would
be a part of that. Think of the cold-turkey failure for addicts trying to quit
smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol. What chance to heroin addicts have?
It is not surprising people continue to cower in fear of methadone,
considering the behavior of officials who should be leading to a solution, not
hiding from the cure or pushing the clinic into the neighbors’ lot. This is
our problem. According to the National Institutes of Health, untreated heroin
addiction costs society $20 billion a year. It’s that big.
Yet the response in Luzerne County is so close-minded it’s frightening. Law
enforcement officials warn that a methadone clinic would increase crime, but
that is contrary to research and officials in communities with clinics who say
crime doesn’t increase. Shame on them. They rely on gut instinct while the
people of our community die. Those addicts can be sorrowful and decrepit, yes,
but they are professionals too. Homemakers, parents. Future achievers. They
all deserve are care.
It’s blind to worry about falling property values because of a
tightly-regulated clinic designed to help people when our neighborhoods are
already threatened by drug-related crime and entrenched dealers.
And it’s cold-hearted to think of values when the dying could be saved.
This opposition to the methadone clinic is beyond the pale. If you turn away
the dying, how can you possibly face your God or your neighbor or the mirror?
Where is your conscience? Where is your heart?