NEPA MAY HAVE DRUG PROBLEM, BUT METHADONE WON'T HELP

Don't invite more addicts here by offering clinics.

Editor:

This is in response to the letter to the editor, "Statistics show NEPA needs
treatment for heroin addicts."

The Wyoming Valley needs more of the modernization some larger metropolitan
areas such as New York have, but one of the things we don't need is
methadone clinics. Methadone is simply the substitution of the use of one
drug for another. We do not need further incentive for drug addicts to
locate to our area. Drug addicts are not "victims" who deserve "sympathy;"
they are criminals plain and simple who are disruptive to themselves, their
families and their community.

We do have a drug problem here, but the solution is not to invite more
addicts in by offering clinics which will devalue and disrupt neighborhoods
and struggling business districts, but rather by investing in programs to
discourage drug use in the first place, and to rapidly target and swiftly
and severely punish those who sell and use drugs and cause harm to their
communities. If the writer is so gung-ho on the benefits of methadone
clinics, let her charter a bus, come down here and pick them up and take
them back to New York with her.

David Hines