Our children and neighbors are dying from a preventable disease. As a community, it is incumbent upon us to stand beside our brothers and sisters in pain and provide them with the support they need to fight this deadly disease rather than throwing them in a jail cell and leaving them to rot while we cruelly judge them from afar.
Alaska Dispatch News has just started an occasional series titled "Overdosed: Heroin in Alaska." Michelle Theriault Boots' first piece in the occasional series, titled "Juneau's Heroin Heartbreak," ran in print Sunday, Saturday online. Heroin is a growing problem in Alaska, and right now it is one of, if not the, most popular drug in the state. The problem grew, sources in the report said, when addicts of the prescription drug Oxycontin went looking for a cheaper fix, but also found a stronger and deadlier one.
Reading these firsthand accounts of addiction can help one to understand the strong grip that heroin can have on those in its clutches. Many like to pretend that this problem is a "junkie" problem. They imagine people sitting in the alley among other junkies amid needles and rats. That's just not the case. This is a societal problem. It doesn't only happen to them -- it can happen to anybody.
It's very easy to look in from the outside and take a judgmental attitude. "They have it coming," someone might say, or, "They put themselves in this position, now they have to suffer the consequences." However, let's consider a couple of points. Many addicts grew up in households of parents who were addicts. Many can tell you stories of things like walking in diapers across the living room, running their fingers across a line of cocaine and putting it in their mouths. Others can describe what seemed like hours of reckless partying by their parents. They never knew any other kind of life. What else were they supposed to do when they grew older -- that is all they knew.
While it is still difficult to help people understand the issue, it really warms my heart when a seemingly hard-nosed Republican like Gov. Chris Christie really gets it. Discussing his mother and cancer at a recent campaign town hall in New Hampshire, Christie said:
In 1964 and the Surgeon's General report had come out, and she was in her mid-30s, she knew that smoking was bad for you, and I'll tell you I watched her as a kid growing up. She tried everything she could to quit. She tried the gum, the patches, hypnosis, she tried everything. She couldn't quit.
Now, when she turned 71, a little after that, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. No one came to me and said, don't treat her cause she got what she deserved. We know the lung cancer was caused by the smoking, we know it was.
But nobody came to me and said, "Hey look, your mother was dumb, she started smoking when she was 16, but after we told her it was bad for her, she kept doing it, so we're not going to give her chemotherapy, we're not going to give her radiation, we're not going to give her any of that stuff, you know why? 'Cause she's getting what she deserves." No one said that, no one said that about someone that had cancer. Yet somehow, if its heroin or cocaine or alcohol, we say, well, they decided, they're getting what they deserved.
Gov. Christie said it perfectly there. He went on to tell a story about a friend of his, from law school, and attorney that had it all, big house, nice car, beautiful family, and lost it all to an addiction to prescription pills. He told the town hall crowd of the story when he got the call he had been dreading, his friend was found dead in a hotel room with an empty bottle of pills and vodka.
"There but for the grace of God go I, it can happen to anyone." Christie says as he recalls looking at his friend's three daughters sobbing at the loss of their father, as he stood there as the governor of New Jersey.
He finished by saying, "We need to start treating people in this country, not jailing them."
Those are the most important words anybody can speak when it comes to addiction. We need to start treating addiction in this country, rather than criminalizing it. Once we, as a society, realize that, we will be able to start to heal soul and heal as a society. There but for the grace of God go I, it could happen to any of us, we are the lucky ones.
Mike Dingman is a fifth-generation Alaskan born and raised in Anchorage. He is a former UAA student body president and has worked, studied and volunteered in Alaska politics since the late '90s. Email him at michaeldingman@gmail.com.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com.