Methadone no answer to drugs scourge

What an excellent article by Kathy Gyngell (Yorkshire Post, June 22) on drug addiction. Not enough effort is put into getting rid of the drug dealers. Most dealers are known to the police and by most of the people in the communities they live in, where they are not reported, because the families concerned benefit by the many thousands of pounds of illegal money their sons bring in.

Most addicts have very busy lives deciding where they can get the money for their next “score” the vast majority of male addicts are thieves, shoplifters, housebreakers and burglars and involved in other forms of petty to major crime.

The females on the other hand turn mostly to prostitution and theft from punters, who never complain to the police for obvious reasons. Consequently a lot of night-time activity takes place especially the females who stop in bed late until there are people about to use their services.

The methadone programme does not work as most addicts will confirm who have only exchanged one drug for another, albeit cheaper and easier to come by than heroin. We are losing young people from leading a useful life by doping them with methadone.

The treatment centre in Halifax, CSMS (Calderdale Substance Misuse), is situated in the centre of the drug-dealing area of the whole district, how stupid is that? The care they receive is of a very poor standard, inconsistent and unreliable. I have yet to meet an addict with a good word to say about it.

Two to three years is the norm to be on a methadone programme. They pick up their prescriptions, say every two weeks, going into the area where the dealing activity is greatest, meeting all their old acquaintances who are also undergoing this same regime. What is the sense in that?

Complete rehabilitation is the only reasonable answer to getting people off drugs and teaching them how to live normal useful lives. They need to be taught how to communicate, how to look after themselves, giving them back some self-esteem, good hygiene habits, eating healthy food and living in communities without abusing other people after their streetwise experiences.

I have no doubt these so- called professionals will want to defend their positions but I know too many addicts who are still wandering aimlessly on street corners with no support whatsoever.

It may well take 18 months to achieve but it is far better that continuing giving them another Class A drug legally. How totally irresponsible is that?

Greece must quit euro

From: David Quarrie, Lynden Way, Acomb, York.

GREECE must leave the euro – no more delays, no more fudging, no more money wasting, no more kidding, no more false dawns, no more pretending that there is any other credible alternative.

Greece is bust, she can never pay back all her immense debts. Greece needs to devalue her currency, become competitive again, be able to export, hopefully trade her way back to some sort of solvency. Being in the euro prevents all this happening.

The Greeks must accept that they are largely to blame for what has happened, and therefore they should take the bulk of the losses and pain. Greece has a long record of corruption, the middle classes have never paid taxes like everyone else, and thousands of very wealthy Greeks live in other nations and do little to help their own country. They should never have been allowed to join the euro because they never met the criteria and never would.

Hopefully, this is now the end of the euro and the beginning of the end of the EU.

Campaign trail tales

From: Matthew Bennett, Redcar.

LIKE many, I went to the Cineworld Cinema in Middlesbrough to go and see the showing of ToryBoy The Movie by John Walsh, the former Conservative candidate for Middlesbrough.

My overall view was that this was a great piece of work that was more about community than politics.

The film has no specific genre and has elements including a comical aspect, and it serves as as a way of showing what it’s like to run a campaign, and also what life is like in Middlesbrough.

The film does not solely attack the MP Sir Stuart Bell, but simply shows how his opponent John Walsh lived and how he committed himself to run in Middlesbrough.

However, I will say this John Walsh has done more for the community of Middlesbrough in his 90-minute film than Stuart Bell has done in the past 28 years.

People of all political persuasions can enjoy this film, as one of the few that depict what it’s like to run for public office and how all MPs have to start off.

Settling the wind debate

From: David T Craggs, Sand-Le-Mere, Tunstall, East Yorkshire.

I WAS surprised to see that a quarter of your letters page recently (Yorkshire Post, June 22) was devoted to one side of the wind farm argument. I was staggered to see this repeated in the June 24 edition.

One can go on at length about visual impact, noise, flicker, TV interference, bird deaths and property values, all relevant to a greater or lesser degree, but this issue of wind farms comes down to the answers to three simple questions.

Will they result in lower or at least stable electricity bills in the future? Will they make any impact on the global climate change situation? Will they fill the energy supply gap that will result when the nuclear and coal-fired power stations are eventually decommissioned?

No. There is really no more to discuss on the issue.