First Posted: 3/25/2015
I have had the painful displeasure of living with a family member with a drug addiction.
I can remember being 17 years old, staying out until 5 a.m. trying to find my brother to ensure he had not overdosed or killed himself. While my friends at school worried about what college they would get into next year, my main concern was whether my brother would survive and why he struggled with this drug problem.
On March 20, The Lima News featured the article “Suspect has history” (Page 8A) about a man named Ryan Giroux and the charges of murder he is facing after a spree of home invasions and carjackings in Phoenix. The subhead of this article, “Man charged in Arizona shootings has convictions, drug problems,” implies the man’s ultimate problem is his drug use; however, the article mentions only that Giroux had been arrested for a marijuana-related crime sometime within the last 20 years.
Can the authors rightfully deem Giroux as having a “drug problem” and on what grounds?
I worked as a psychological technician for an addiction rehabilitation facility, and in my time there I was able to experience the true effects having a “drug problem” can have on an individual.
Depending on the authors’ interpretations of a problem, a drug problem to me is more than an unwelcome or harmful situation; it is life consuming, deadly, and far worse than can be described in any article or letter. Thus, it seems unfair to cast such a serious condition on Giroux without mentioning a proper examination of his psychological status within the article.
Using information provided solely by the article, I do not see a correlation between the man’s marijuana-related charge and his involvement in the shooting.
