WJ oversimplifies heroin addiction

The one face of Wednesday Journal's article "The two faces of Oak Park's heroin trade" [news, Jan. 21] left me somewhat concerned. While I have multiple objections, what concerned me most was the blatant disregard of the biological, environmental, and social-psychological influences in addiction.

While Police Chief Limon may find it easy and "safe to say" addicts are not "thinking about their future" or concerned about prison and death, had the author familiarized himself with the pertinent scientific studies on the subject or perhaps talked to an individual victimized by addiction, he may have realized addicts' incredible awareness of the negative consequences of their habitual drug use. This habitual use in the presence and recognition of such negative outcomes is precisely why scientists have come to study the overwhelming environmental and biological influences in addiction.

What the literature also suggests is that individuals who stigmatize and blame addicts for their disease, as I would argue this article does, often inhibit addicts from seeking help. Addiction is not a moral deficit; the same policies that enforce harsher and harsher penalties for drug addiction greatly marginalize addicted individuals and force them into high risk scenarios and illegitimate forms of income such as the crimes this article seems so concerned about. Similar to U.S. policy, perhaps this article would do more justice to the problems of addiction if it placed less emphasis on persecuting addicts and more emphasis on helping them.

Patrick Janulis
Oak Park

OP: Real community, real problems

Wow! A few more stories like that one on the Oak Park heroin trade and I might start taking you seriously as a real newspaper instead of an entertainment rag. This article - instead of the constant lauding of our community as a bastion of elite, squeaky clean interracial liberalism - shows us as a very real community with very real problems. It's all well and good to be interested in our historic past, but I am more interested in our very real present.

As a final thought, I was a Chicagoan and it doesn't seem like a "weird coincidence" to me that the heroin trade is going on "under the noses" of the Oak Park police. Let's push a bit harder here, Wednesday Journal, and do some deeper investigating as to why the proximity of the police department is having "no effect" on this trade. If the Oak Park police are innocent, as I certainly hope they are, then let's investigate and demonstrate that.

Mary Kay Ryan
Oak Park

East OP isn't that bad

As an Oak Park resident who lives down the street from the McDonald's in question, I took great interest in the article because I pass by the place and eat there frequently, perhaps more frequently than I and my doctor would like. I can say with some authority that, although it apparently suffers from a drug issue, you wouldn't know it from a casual glance or a short visit. I have to frequently pass through the high-crime areas of Austin for my line of work (not drug-dealing) and don't see any obvious cues at the McDonald's that drug activity is present. No lookouts, no graffiti, no glares from strangers, no huddled loiterers on the sidewalk shielding their dealings from observers, no intimidating behavior, etc. It looks and feels like any normal, somewhat urban McDonald's.

I have taken my children there and have never sensed a threat to anyone's wellbeing, except for what might be in their beef. If there are any catatonic people, they could be heroin users, or they could have just overdosed on a Big Mac, large chocolate shake and super-sized fries. It's a similar look - know what I mean?

In other words, I don't doubt the well-researched article. But except for the high drama that you might experience when you are waiting with police looking for culprits with their professional eyes, you typically won't know anything is amiss. A drug exchange is simply the passing of a hand and a stepping into a car. No high drama there. Fortunately, these users are mostly of heroin - a drug that typically does not make a person hyper-aggressive and belligerent.

Not that I am excited about this drug dealing, but I don't think readers should lump together drug-infested images from the West Side of Chicago with the east side of Oak Park. That could be an impression left by the article, and it would be an erroneous one.

A. Garcia
Submitted to WednesdayJournalOnline.com

McDonald's should police its parking lot

I'm curious - does McDonald's have any responsibility to police its own parking lot? They own it; drug deals are constantly taking place there - should they not bear some of the responsibility and cost of maintaining surveillance or patrolling their own parking lot? If I owned a business where drug dealers or users were constantly being arrested by the police, I assume that I would also be held responsible for allowing it to continue at my place of business. Am I wrong about this? 

Elizabeth Rees
Submitted to WednesdayJournalOnline.com