Treatment center approvals a step in the right direction

We applaud the Wasilla Planning Commission’s decision to approve a pair of new businesses that hope to treat Mat-Su drug addicts.

When it was announced the businesses, a counseling center and a methadone clinic, hoped to set up shop here, some local business owners expressed trepidation about the kind of clientele the facilities would serve. Concerns were raised — in online forums, through phone calls to the Frontiersman and in Tuesday’s public hearing — about the potential for bringing dangerous people into residential neighborhoods and near a childcare facility.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the owners of the planned facilities addressed these concerns and were able to convince the commission, along with most nearby property owners, that the businesses wouldn’t present a danger to the public.

It’s unfortunate that we’re having this discussion at all. After all, you don’t need drug treatment facilities if you don’t have a drug problem. But we do have a drug problem — a big one — and in order to fight it we’re going to need a lot of help.

Counseling and medicine for addicts is one way to fight back against the scourge of alcohol, heroin and meth that has ruined the lives of so many Valley residents in recent years. These facilities are desperately needed in an area that has far more addicts than it has treatment options. While no programs are 100 percent effective in getting addicts clean, any step in the right direction has to be looked on as a positive.

The idea that these facilities will somehow present a danger to the public is not based on reality, but fear. Drug addiction is highly stigmatized, and many people believe addicts belong behind bars rather than walking among us in the community.

But the fact is that they are here. As one member of the planning commission pointed out, we shop shoulder-to-shoulder with them every day at the grocery store without even knowing it. And because they’re here, we might as well take steps to help them get clean. These facilities will do just that.

The owners of both the counseling center and methadone clinic have given assurances that they’ll make security a top priority, and there is no reason to doubt them. After all, their businesses will fail if they become a nuisance, so they have a powerful motivation to make sure they run clean, safe establishments.

And it’s also useful to keep in mind that the people who will use these facilities aren’t nameless, faceless junkies. They’re brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers and friends who are simply trying to pull themselves out of the hell of addiction. The vast majority of them desperately want to overcome their demons, and these businesses will offer a ray of hope in an otherwise dark world of despair.