I’ve been following the kerfuffle over a proposed substance abuse addiction recovery center in Louisa with a high degree of interest.

One of the reasons I’ve been doing so is that as a reporter who covers crime and the court system, I’ve had a front-row seat to witness much of the devastation that the disease of addiction — prescription drug addiction, in particular — has wrought upon our communities.

Just last week, in fact, a Boyd County grand jury returned 36 indictments against 35 individuals. Of those, about a third were for specifically drug-related offenses such as a trafficking and possession.

I’m willing to bet that most of the others, especially those for crimes such as theft, burglary and forgery, had drugs as their underlying causes.

The court dockets in all of the other counties in our region look pretty much the same.

Drug addiction is filling our jail cells, straining our legal system to the breaking point and destroying families. It’s a cancer eating away at the very fabric of our society.

It’s bad out there, folks. In fact, it’s worse than I can ever remember seeing it in my nearly quarter-century in the news business.

And, it seems fairly obvious to me from the way this problem continues to grow that the methods we’re using to deal with it have been about as effective as applying a Band-Aid to a sucking chest wound.

We can’t arrest our way out of it, and here’s why: Locking up drug addicts without addressing and treating the underlying causes of their disease simply does not work.

Yes, they deserve to be punished for the crimes they commit while under the influence of drugs. However, without some sort of treatment, it is highly likely they’re going to right back to using and doing the same types of things again as soon as they get out.

Locking up dealers is well and good, too, but, as long as the demand exists for drugs, you can bet there are going to be people there to fill it.

One of the major weaknesses that is often cited in our area’s ability to stem the continually rising tide of addiction is a shortage of treatment and recovery options.

And that is why I am baffled that so many people — including the governing bodies of both Louisa and Lawrence County — have come out in opposition to the Odyssey recovery program proposed by Community Fellowship.

Baffled, but not particularly surprised.

It goes to show that a lot of people fail to understand that addiction is a disease, and that addicts, by and large, are not bad people, but very sick people.

Certainly, addicts do horrible things to get drugs and while under the influence of drugs, but, by and large, those are symptoms of the disease.

Would the community be in an uproar if someone wanted to locate a center there to treat people suffering from a sicknesses other than addiction? Doubtful.

Some have cited the fact that the center would be close to an elementary school as their principal reason for being against it. That seems pretty specious to me, especially when one consider that the Lawrence County Courthouse is no doubt filled with drug addicts every time court is in session and it is located within a stone’s throw of a school.

One opponent mentioned something about how his daughter stepped on a syringe at the site of the proposed recovery center.

I would ask that individual this: What more evidence do you need that your community has a serious drug problem?

That, I think, points to the real reason why this project has drawn such opposition.

Folks simply don’t want to be confronted with the reality that this sickness exists, and that it is rotting their community from the inside out.

I’ve always heard, though, that admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.

My hope is that the good people of Louisa and Lawrence County will eventually be able to muster the courage to do just that.

KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.