I WOULD like to thank Christine Bride for sharing her story Mum’s Drug Pain (Gazette, 7 December).
From first hand experience, I ask what is the answer.
What is dead? My son is alive – I think.
After 10 years of putting up with drugs and drink, of lending money and never being paid back, of paying out a guarantor, I opted out.
Over those 10 odd years my son didn’t want to help around my farm; brought home a girlfriend with problems, and didn’t want to work.
He lived rent free in a small cottage which normally I rent out, then finally came home with a new girlfriend, a heroin addict, with five year old son.
Last I heard they were in Darwin.
In the last 10 years I’ve seen my son once for five minutes. He was skinny and dirty. He never writes.
What is the answer to these choices our children are making?
Yes I am sorry for Van Nguyen’s mother, but how many lives could have been affected with those drugs he was carrying? I don’t know what the answer is.
All I can hope for is this dreadful hanging can send a message to those who handle drugs.
We’ve had enough.
Sadly when a person is brain dead nothing can stop them; and such huge amounts of money involved only spur them on.
My husband was killed 33 years ago and my son was an only child.
To spend years in an Eastern jail to try to stop traffickers isn’t the answer either. They may as well be dead. Their conditions are not five star like ours.
Christine, I think you’ll have many letters like mine although many people these days are too lazy to bother to write.
You are not on your own.
Joan Sloan,
Pakenham.
Editor’s note: Christine Bride and Joan Sloan hope to start a support group for parents of drug affected children in the south east. Anyone interested in joining the group can contact Christine or Joan via the Gazette.
