NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE

I'm not going to take issue with the content of what your readers have
written about having needles in prison, but rather the logic of their argument.

Let's change a few words in letters from two of your readers [Heather
Hepburn and Frank C. Wirrell].

I'll use their words, but substitute people who are similar in their
'affliction,' that is, tobacco addicts and the overweight.

Hepburn: "Smokers are going to get health treatment. These people should
have to take their chances, and if they get cancer, all the better because
they will die prematurely and my tax dollars will no longer have to feed,
clothe, or pay for the many wonderful amenities in our laughable hospitals."

Wirrell: "Randy White is absolutely correct in stating overweight people
should not be coddled and that includes not funding or supplying fat people
with food. Such action simply enables the individual and virtually destroys
any desire to break from the addiction of food."

The newspaper: "Over-eating in and outside of home is wrong and should
never be condoned."

If this statement is genuine, you can hardly suggest taxpayers should fund
health care for obese people.

My point is there are other preventable, self-inflicted health care
problems for which society pays, apparently with no complaint.

John Anderson

Nanaimo