DRUG USE LEADS TO HEARTACHE

Gail Leslie doesn't look nearly old enough to be a widow. Yet the
attractive young Burnt Church woman, who is pregnant, is just that,
having lost her husband Lonnie Simon in what is believed to be a drug
related death.

Simon's body was found last week in Eel Ground. Police have released
few details of what happened and have not confirmed the death was drug
related, but Leslie and most of the residents of the First Nations
community of Burnt Church know what killed Simon and they are angry
about it.

On Wednesday night members of the community held a public meeting to
discuss Simon's death.

It was organized by Burnt Church Band councilor Curtis Bartibogue, who
said the death was the third in a month related to drug use in his
community and something needed to be done.

Bartibogue is to be commended for taking action in this matter.
Community leaders must be the ones that take the lead on these matters
and must use their position to rally people together.

The anger and frustration of the citizens in Burnt Church spilled over
to the streets after the meeting as a group gathered in front of a
suspected drug dealer's home, yelling and preventing cars - being
driven by people the crowd suspected were customers - from pulling
into the driveway.

While it was a brave and powerfully symbolic move for the people of
Burnt Church to stand up to dealers and users, it likely had little
impact on the sale of drugs in the community.

Drug use continues to be a plague on our society. It continues to
cause pain and suffering and death.

Our court system is clogged with drug-related cases. It's not just the
buying and selling that brings people before the courts. Users,
desperate for a fix, often resort to stealing for money to buy their
drugs, women resort to prostitution, people are killed in drug-related
disputes and people who see no way out from under their addictions
sometimes take their own lives to escape the vicious cycle.

The simple truth is we will never be rid of drugs. They have been
around in one form or another for as long as humans have walked the
planet.

But that doesn't mean we simply give up. We need to continue to
educate our children on the dangers of drug use and we need community
leaders, like Bartibogue, to keep raising the alarm and rallying
people around the cause.

We need better addiction programs to help people get off drugs. If an
addict gets to the point where they want to get clean, they should be
able to check into a facility that same day, before the need for a hit
takes over again and they change their minds.

And we need to show that communities are not willing to just stand by
while drugs are being sold. Rallies, like the one Wednesday night,
send a message not only to the dealers and the users but to the
authorities as well, and lets them know they will be supported in
their efforts to put dealers behind bars.

Because nobody should have to go through the pain and the suffering
being felt by Simon's family and his widow. She is already a mother,
and her pregnancy should be a joyous time. Instead she will now go
through it without her partner and her children will grow up without a
father.

This is what drugs do.