Oct 16, 2014 3 min read

That we have a heroin problem in this area is well known. It’s been called an epidemic.

Last year, Washington County Coroner Tim Warco ruled 27 deaths in the county were a result of heroin overdose, and three others a combination of heroin and other drugs. This year’s death toll is expected to be considerably higher.

We must do something to reverse this trend, and throwing addicts in jail is hardly the answer. Heroin kills, sooner or later. It kills just as certainly as the Ebola virus, for which we demand our leaders to take extraordinary measures to contain and destroy it, and to protect us from it.

We may have sympathy for Ebola victims, but not so for heroin addicts, if the reaction to a treatment clinic in Charleroi is any indication.

New Leaf Recovery Services is doing business in a former Rax restaurant. Dr. Robert Belluso is subleasing the property, where he consults with addicts and gives them prescriptions for drugs like Suboxone. Trustees of the property are suing the leaseholder, Robert Hughes, for breach of contract, and seeking to evict the clinic.

Meanwhile, the borough wants the clinic gone as well, claiming it is in violation of the zoning ordinance. The clinic is in an area zoned for heavy industrial use.

“It’s right beside a Head Start building,” borough solicitor Alan Benyak said, citing one of the reasons Charleroi officials object to New Leaf’s location. His sentiments were echoed on social media sites.

“Trust me, I am all about drug addicts getting help, but it can’t be by a kids’ school,” wrote Robin Glover on Facebook.

The implications here are children are somehow in danger of people going to see a doctor for treatment for their addiction. What danger would that be? New Leaf is not a halfway house for convicted sexual predators.

We have to wonder, too, why Head Start would not also be in violation of the zoning ordinance if a doctor’s office is prohibited in a heavy industrial zone. A nitroglycerin factory would have to be in a heavy industrial zone, but would it be a better neighbor to a children’s center than a treatment clinic?

We have heard this before: Treatment clinics are fine, but not in my neighborhood. Or in any neighborhood, apparently.

Too many of us are quick to acknowledge heroin is a terrible problem here, but a problem to be solved somewhere else.