Over the last couple of years reading the Butler Eagle is like reading Crime Digest. Rarely a day passes without a page or two with reports of arrests of drug dealers or crimes directly related to drug use.

Butler is not alone in this epidemic. It’s rampant across the whole country. Towns, large and small, are suffering from this pandemic of overdoses, murders, robberies, burglaries, and assault due to drug usage and drug dealing.

Butler has neighborhood watch groups and community organizations asking for the citizens to report criminal activity to the police.

The police, at risk of life and limb, are doing a tremendous job of trying to get the criminal element off the streets and keep our communities safe.

The problem lies with our courts, whose judges play catch and release with the drug dealers, often repeat offenders. Why would these judges release these criminals back into society to continue their murderous trade of destruction with a slap-on-the-wrist sentence? The only logical reason that comes to mind is that our jails are full and the counties and the state don’t want to spend the money to build more.

I believe the answer to curing the curse of the criminal drug World is to educate the children, treat the addicts, and eliminate the dealers.

By elimination, I mean a five-year prison sentence at hard labor for the first offense of hard drug dealing and a 25 year hard labor sentence for the second offense. I doubt there would be a third.

I suggest three such no nonsense, rock breaking camps be built across Pennsylvania. They could be built and operated by private corporations and paid for by criminal assets seized in drug busts. The prisoners would help pay by selling the crushed rock their hammers generate to road construction crews. Building the border wall is also critical in slowing the flow of drugs into America.

While this may sound harsh to some, the survival of our children and our nation is worth it. We need to contact our legislators and tell them we are sick of burying our children and having our communities and lives destroyed while these cretins receive a light sentence or no sentence at all.

The first duty a government has is to protect its citizens, and that is not being done.