Letters to the Editor – January 3, 2013

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Only Viable Methods

The Geauga County Probate and Juvenile Court judge has suggested in Glen Miller�s article in the Dec. 27 Maple Leaf that local churches and church members are needed to intervene with drugs and alcohol addicts instead of trained professionals and governmental agencies.

In addition, it is suggested, "this is not something that the government can solve."

There is further suggestion that a "connection with God and family is missing" in addicts.

I strongly disagree with these apparent assumptions regarding mental health and the disease that is addiction. The judge indicates the addicts "don't have a family to fall back on or they don't have religion and the moral guidance it provides to fall back on."

There are many families across the United States that have"done everything right" and yet their children, their teenagers and other family members have become addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Ministers, professionals, working men and women, politicians and judges are also not immune from the possibility of addiction. Their morality is not questioned, but we question the morality of the "young 20-35 year old parents" and "broken people."

The mental health community and medical research have established many times over that addiction is a disease and not a moral weakness or a lack of a belief in God, or an absence of an individual's association with a religious community.

Addiction is not a "morality issue" as a local clergy member is quoted as saying.

If addiction is truly identified as a growing local and national concern, there needs to be professional programs and sufficient funding to address this issue, not volunteers, albeit well-intentional individuals, who are not trained in the disease that is addiction.

The false, but well-worn dictum, "anybody can teach," is applicable here in this form: "anybody can treat a drug addict." Both of these dictums are false.

Government agencies, private agencies and trained professionals are the only viable methods that are truly capable of addressing the disease known as addiction.

Sheldon Firem

Hambden Township

Immoral and Destructive

Why don't we call the NRA what they are: an organization that seeks to protect and expand their own membership regardless of how many innocents are killed daily, weekly, annually by the weapons they protect?

This kind of thinking is immoral and destructive to our society.

After every bloodbath such as Newtown and the others, they insist that any restriction of guns "automatic and semi-automatic" is an attack on our Constitution.

We don't want to take away your guns, just the ones intended to murder innocents quickly.

We must continue to protect the right to own weapons for hunting, collecting, and self-protection.

When the Second Amendment was drawn up, the Founding Fathers had only to deal with single-shot muskets, not semi-automatic assault rifles and handguns. If they had the ability to see the future, they would have written this amendment differently, I'm sure.

Elliott Berenson

Chester Township