With reference to Franco Farrugia’s letter, Society is the victim (TMID 19 June), I have a few points to make which I’m sure Mr Farrugia will interpret correctly. The young ones of today are very vulnerable and prone to follow others just to be part of the gang. What starts as an experiment ends up as a vice? True, he or she allows him/herself to become an addict as we are all accountable for our own actions but we have to allow for circumstances, peer pressure, the “feeling” of belonging, even if one is copying others who are playing with their lives. As for taking time and will to be an addict, the correct phrase should be that it takes time and weakness to become an addict. Drug addicts are victims of themselves and what is worse, when they refuse to go into rehabilitation it is only because they are so deep into the drug trap that they cannot foresee a future without drugs thus the necessity for “us” to pity them. Take if from me Mr Farrugia, no drug addict is happy being an addict. I don’t think there is a person who smokes who does not rue the day he smoked his first fag, no alcoholic who wishes he did not have his first drink, no gambler who would rather have cut his hand than play his first poker game.

Drug addiction, Mr Farrugia, definitely is a form of mental illness because who in his right mind would settle to committing a slow or sometimes fast suicide? Don’t you see that refusal to seek help is already an illness in itself? Whether self-inflicted or not, would you deny drug addicts the welfare state? Many people have slung as much mud as they could at drug addicts until their own children fell prey to the drug net. When that happens, they start singing a different tune, something like “Please help my son/daughter?” Do not be so quick to condemn Mr Farrugia because I repeat, no drug addict really wants to remain a drug addict. They are unhappy people whose thirst for drugs has made them unaware that should they seek help, they would find it. That is why as stated before, it is an illness in itself.

Valerie Borg

MLP Councillor

Valletta