Let’s heed call for more addiction services

The Walls family of Lewes recently wrote a letter about the loss of Christopher Walls to heroin addiction. One paragraph in the poignant letter bears repeating, several times. "No one should have to bury their child or a loved one from drug addiction. We need to bond together to have more programs to prevent this terrible, epidemic disease from growing any bigger. Sussex County does not have enough programs for our loved ones."

While law enforcement is working hard to disrupt the supply chains that keep a steady flow of cheap heroin coming into Sussex, whenever one group is arrested and taken off the streets, another group jumps in to take advantage of those already addicted and those who are only a day or two away from developing an expensive and devastating habit. On top of that comes news, this week, that more heroin is being found laced with the extremely dangerous fentanyl which frequently leads to lethal overdoses. Drugs being peddled on the street are outside the protection of the law and often lead to more heartache.

It's clear that the heroin problem will continue despite enforcement efforts. The Walls letter reaffirms much of the findings presented in a recent series of articles in the Cape Gazette about growing heroin use in Sussex County and elsewhere.

There is a serious lack of addiction services here. If efforts to balance Delaware's budget come by steadily cutting social services that provide help to those caught up in addiction, that shortsightedness could certainly lead to more expensive medical treatments related to overdoses, more heartbreaking funerals, more crime, more incarceration, and more broken families.

Surely the cost to our society of not providing more accessible treatment opportunities to those seeking help far outweighs the cost of providing more services.

Let's heed the plea of the Walls family members who forthrightly called on all of us to recognize the evil power of addiction as a disease and bond together as a community to bring more treatment options to all of our brothers and sisters in need in Sussex.