Editor, The News:
I recently listened to a newscast on how Delta was handling the fentanyl crisis in its community. It is supplying its police officers with antidote injections.
It may be helpful for the moment, but it is not the answer.
The answer lies in what we have created with our vocabulary. Drugs are now recreational. It has made them equal with swimming, hiking, dancing, singing, badminton, skating, curling and a hundred other ways of entertaining ourselves.
Taking drugs are no more recreational than walking a tight-rope over Niagara Falls.
The sooner we stop joining the word recreation to drug use, the sooner we will be able to get a handle on it.
I do not see anything benign about a drug someone buys on the street from a vendor who is breaking the law by selling it.
Yet, by labeling it ‘recreational,’ we are sending the message that the occasional use of drugs is a fun way to entertain ourselves.
Perhaps if we restore the true meaning of recreation, our young people would once again get high on pursuing a sport or an art with the same zeal that they now pursue buying fentanyl today and some new equally destructive drug tomorrow.
Karin Breuer
Pitt Meadows