Friday, June 4, 2010

Meth(adone) comes to Salem

Apparently, the Salem Mission, oops, that wasn't klassy enough, so now it's Lifebridge, isn't enough do-gooding for Salem, so the city will soon be home to a methadone clinic as well.

As you can imagine, residents of the city, especially those in the immediate vicinity of the Canal Street location, aren't happy about this new development. We're seeing one of the best examples of NIMBY-ism around right now.

On the plus side for all of us, Polly Wilbert's head will likely explode soon. That's always fun to watch. Regina Flynn, Meg Twohey and Michael Coleman will likely follow suit. Good show! To bad we aren't putting this thing next to Derby Lofts. We haven't heard any good caterwauling from them recently.

The treatment of this story is extremely interesting. The Salem News article took the extremely inflammatory, neighbors up in arms at this terrible development, approach, while the Salem Gazette article seemed to be much more balanced, devoting some space to the motives and sense behind placing the clinic at this location.

Methadone is klassy, so we're keeping Salem klassy again.