Joe Ditto asks “somebody please explain to me, if somebody decides to turn to drugs and mess up their lives, why I have to fund their recovery with my tax dollars at a detox center I will never use?” (Chilliwack Progress, Nov. 27). I would like to attempt an answer.

First, we ought to have compassion for others. Most people entering drug rehab are trying to again become responsible citizens. They are not running away from their responsibilities; they are embracing them.

Slaying the monster dubbed “addiction” is very hard, and those trapped by this monster often lack the resources needed to fund their own treatment. We must help them help themselves. We cannot know what influences a person to first take up drugs. Many suffer from various mental disabilities, and many more grew up experiencing abuse too horrific to mention. Some are addicted to legal medications, and become addicts without ever breaking the law. Compassion always has its beginning in humility. We all suffer from human weaknesses, we all make mistakes, and we are not in a position to judge anyone.

Second, you are going to have to pay one way or another. Drug addictions cost the public coffers huge. Detox centres help some people break the cycle of addiction and become functioning, productive, tax-paying members of society. It is often more cost efficient to help people get off drugs than to continue to pay the long-term costs associated with their addictions.

Third, as tax-payers we all collectively pay for services we ourselves will never draw benefit from. Are we really going to gripe about every such program or service? Are there even enough column lengths in this paper to list them all?

Mr. Ditto, I am not a socialist, but neither am I indifferent to the pain and suffering of Canada’s most vulnerable.

If you want to sit in self-righteous judgment and dismiss drug-addicts as lawless junkies deserving only our contempt, I suppose you have the right. You present yourself as an “honest, law-abiding, non-drug using citizen,” so if you have never broken a law, never told a lie, never taken a drug, I suppose that entitles you to cast the first stone.

Rob Bogunovic