How many businesses have failed because of addictions issues?

Editor:

I must admit that in my 74 years on the planet I have never been told I should provide dignity and respect to someone who defecates in public, commits crimes when broke to support his/her habit, and slowly destroys a society that has been built over decades!

Society is changing far quicker than I can obviously comprehend, or is it? Is it a select group whom promotes this attitude and everyone else must comply? Or is it time that phrases like “if one life is saved, it’s worth it” are questioned?!

I would like to ask a rather complex question of those that profess that addicts deserve dignity and respect.

How many business owners in Alberta have died of a heart attack or mental stress due to a failing business because of addicts? How many landlords and building owners? How many employees were let go because the business was failing?

How many of those people had to remortgage their home, lost their home, incurred debt to the point they will never be able to retire?

How many landlords/businesses/employees/residents must die, or be crippled up from stroke, or destroyed financially, lose their home before the “if one life is saved then it’s worth it” is appropriately evaluated against this woke logic?

Is the life of a law-abiding dead business owner/landlord/employee/resident who contributed to society worth far less than a addicted person who lives off society? How much blood must be shed from a community’s lifeblood before an evaluation of this attitude is appropriately assessed?

Wokers seem to have numbers at the tip of their fingers when it comes to dead drug addicts but no one tracks the misery and death suffered by society to properly the evaluate “if one life is saved...” war cry”!

Comments like 38 new businesses opened up in the downtown (by BRZ) seem like another “woke” comment.

I personally did not see 38 empty buildings that were suddenly filled, so how many businesses failed during the same period and why?

Start saving lives in cities with the same enthusiasm that you do addicts, but I am sure there is no government money for that task so it won’t happen!

I am sure all of this is the new woke culture (which I do not understand or appreciate), but even the “wokers” at some point will be questioned.

I just hope I am still around to participate in that conversation!

Dennis Bremner

Lethbridge