SOCIETY’S PROBLEMS DESERVE ATTENTION, NOT DERISION

Thank you for publishing Tina Comeau’s Thursday piece on drug addiction (My endless tears as people laugh). Thank you also to Ms. Comeau for the poignancy of her message and for her courage in being able to share it.

It was shocking to read about how people laughed as she detailed what happened to her late son, and how drug addiction claimed his life at 21. No right-thinking person would or even could do that.

What does it say about our society when some of its members can laugh about the deepest and darkest misfortunes of others? What does it say about us when we blindly support government after government that squanders our money on lavish salaries and benefits for public servants and politicians, on bombs, missiles, fighter jets and warships, the only mandate of which is to kill people as efficiently as possible, and on pipelines built at almost five times their projected costings but cannot “afford” to put in place supports and protective mechanisms such that people such as Justin Comeau need not die at young ages from drug addiction.

The American novelist Pearl Buck, a 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner for her book The Good Earth, wrote that “our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

Similar comments were reflected by former U.S. vice-president Hubert Humphrey when he spoke to the Democratic National Convention in New York City in 1976:

“The ultimate moral test of any government is the way it treats three groups of its citizens. First, those in the dawn of life — our children. Second, those in the shadows of life — our needy, our sick, our handicapped. Third, those in the twilight of life — our elderly.”

How much further into “the shadows of life” could Justin Saulnier have been when he became drug addicted at a young age? And who was there to help him? Certainly no government agency. All of them were too busy trying to figure out how to best squander the next billion.

Ms. Comeau heart-wrenchingly challenges all of us to think “about the beautiful people we lose along the way and the families left behind.” The same thoughts might well pertain to the mentally ill who cannot seem to get help, the homeless and underhoused who live among us in circumstances reminiscent of the Third and Fourth Worlds, the Indigenous who are still struggling to experience the moral promises made to them by countless governments over many decades, and the elderly forced to choose between shelter, heat, food and medications. The list of our dispossessed goes on.

So, with a federal election coming, let’s make it a point to demand something more from the candidates than empty promises of tax cuts and “a chicken in every pot.” Let’s demand some action.

Things like drug addiction, poverty, mental illness, homelessness and inclusion need attention. And they are not laughing matters.

Gavin Giles, Halifax