Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Like the Gazette-Journal editor, I, too, am distressed by the increasing drug problems in the Gloucester/Mathews region. As one who has never felt the need for drug use, I am unable to understand the allure to those who use them. However I am familiar with the results of drug use.

Prior to moving to Gloucester, my home in Newport News was burglarized by youth searching for things to sell to buy drugs. If you’ve never been the victim of a home burglary you can’t know the feeling of being violated that you suffer, or the desire that the guilty be punished. The Gazette-Journal says resources should be shifted from punishing users and low-level dealers and used to cure addicts. I’m all for curing them, but only after they receive a real punishment for their crimes.

Users don’t finance their buys from their savings; they commit crimes, like home burglaries, to get the money. They deserve jail time. In jail, they might have a chance to get ...