To the editor:

Re: John McDonald's column, Feb. 8, headlined: Cream of the Rehab Crop Make Stats Look Good.

Addiction is a complex, chronic, progressive, physical, mental and spiritual condition, with a high relapse rate, and experience bears out that release from its grip requires total abstinence at the onset of treatment.

Society will not bear the cost of providing holding facilities for those addicted to alcohol and drugs, so they can eventually decide to achieve the necessary clean time to permit treatment to take hold and become a new way of life.

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