In your March 20 editorial, you stated that we need law enforcement and treatment to stem the tide of the opioid epidemic (“Our View: Trump off track on opioid plan”). Yes, addiction treatment and law enforcement are what needs to be changed so that we can turn the horrific tide of death. We have to respect the laws, and I mean the laws that govern people’s everyday moral choices. And we do need the treatment that will help us all to change, from depending on all the stuff that the consumer world and the government offers as a means to fill the emptiness and hunger in our lives.

We are made to fill that emptiness with giving and receiving love and life in our family and with neighbors. Expanding our jails and spending more on health care doesn’t seem to be working. We have been doing that for too many years. In fact, it is making everything worse. We need to get back to our spiritual communities and grow together relearning and remembering what it means to love and care about each other.

In cyber-isolation we cannot grow spiritually. Prisons and health care are institutions, not families. We want the love we had in our families. We want it back from whomever stole it from us.

Robert Swegart

Rome


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