‘Yes’ on State Issue 1
Dear Editor: Starting at 17, I battled addiction for nearly a decade, and during that time I was in and out of county jails and state prisons without getting any real help for my problem. Local police officers, who knew me and my family, wrote me off as a lost cause and said that I would be found dead somewhere. They thought I was going to end up as another statistic. People in prison and jail, like I was, are not getting the proper treatment for their addiction and mental health problems. They are being penalized for having a disease, instead of treated for one. The system is ...