Pubdate: Fri, 04 Mar 2016
Source: Kamloops This Week (CN BC)
Copyright: 2016 Kamloops This Week
Contact:  http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1271
Author: Christopher Foulds

DEAR DRUG DEALER ...

The letter is powerful, raw, searing and brutally honest - and it 
apparently never made it into the hands of the one person who needs to read it.

Since the letter writer seems to have discarded the neatly written 
message, here's hoping the intended recipient reads it - an 
unrepentant Kamloops drug dealer whose callous disregard for life led 
to at least one death.

A KTW reader found the letter and was impacted by its power.

He gave it to me.

The letter is written by the sister of a man (youth?) who died from 
using drugs.

She talks to the dealer in a straightforward manner.

She is angry. She is hurt. She is frustrated. She wants him to stop 
killing people like he killed her brother.

"Everyone has to make a living," she writes. "I get that. But why 
this? Why sell drugs to people and watch them die because of it? How 
can you do that?"

She is angry and in pain, but even while carrying that weight, she 
understands the reality of the dealer and addict relationship.

"I don't blame you for what happened to him because I know everyone 
makes their own decisions, but I just have to tell you I hate what 
you do to people. I don't know how you live with yourself. I really don't."

What she cannot fathom is how cold, hard cash can trump the sight of 
a life withering away with each illicit purchase.

"How can you sell drugs to people and watch them get addicted and 
continue to sell to them?" she asks. "I know you told him to be 
careful, to not get addicted to oxy, but you probably knew he already was.

"I just hope that if you have a soul at all, a heart that beats in 
your chest, that you will stop doing this. Why sell drugs to people 
and watch them die because of it? How can you do that?"

That's the eternal question, really. What behavioural defect allows 
the parasitical drug dealer to wake up every day - in mind a 
businessman; in fact a killer - and not be drenched in the guilt of 
his homicidal actions of trading hard drugs for money?

A normal person, a person possessing minimal conscience, would fail 
at such a vocation.

She wants the dealer to know the agony, to feel the torment that has 
permeated her family, the death of a brother and son shattering their 
lives forever.

"I just really want you to know how much pain you have caused me, how 
much pain you have caused our mother, how much pain you have caused 
to his friends and family. I want you to feel the weight of that pain.

"You deserve to feel this pain. You need to know the part you played 
in this, the part you probably played in the pain of so many other people.

"Sucks, doesn't it? I'll tell you what sucks - to have to hold my 
mom's hand as we say goodbye to [his] body."

The storm of her anger can be felt when reading the curve of each 
handwritten letter of each word, yet she rises above blunt fury in an 
attempt to appeal to whatever empathy may be lurking in the core of 
the dealer who killed her brother.

"Most of all, I hope you stop selling drugs, stop hurting yourself 
and others. Maybe if you realized what it does to other people, what 
it's done to my brother, my family, maybe you would understand."

But he won't stop selling. The body count does not affect the cash 
count and that is all that matters to serial killers firing oxy and 
fentanyl as their weapons.

Deep down, she knows this.

She knows the letter is a way to vent and nothing more - even if he reads it.

"I don't want to hate you," she writes. "But I do. I hate you for 
selling drugs to him, for the part you played in his death. If you 
have a soul, you will understand. You will stop doing what you do."

He won't, of course.

But maybe her words will compel another dealer, someone still 
connected to their conscience, to take a look in the mirror and do 
the right thing.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom