It was with great disappointment that I read in the paper that Gov. Le-Page is calling for an escalation of the state’s “war on drugs” (“With drug crackdown, LePage favoring enforcement over treatment,” Feb. 6).

Maine has a growing heroin epidemic that is reaching into families everywhere.

It is our children, our wives and our husbands being destroyed by these opiates, and unfortunately, the governor’s only response is to cut funding that supports drug intervention and treatment programs and spend up to $3 million hiring new prosecutors, judges and Drug Enforcement Agency employees.

Someone has a drug problem? Lock him up with the rest of the “criminals.”

I would ask the governor that if he can’t care enough about people to take the time to study drug addiction and its treatments, then at the very least he may appreciate that it costs more than $1,000 a week to imprison drug offenders, while weekly treatments cost a tenth of that.

Drug treatment is not some wild liberal theory. It works. Drug addiction knows no political party or financial stratum. It destroys everyone it touches, and that includes the family members of the addict.

We are all at risk. Please, stop playing at politics and start really caring about Mainers.

Peyton and Chake Higgison
Brunswick