We celebrate the unanimous vote by the Washington state Legislature approving $13 million for a 16-bed drug treatment hospital in Sequim.
This overwhelming bipartisan vote was a triumph of common sense and science over ignorance and bigotry.
Our family, friends, and neighbors struggling against addiction need loving care and treatment not stigma and hate.
We should thank the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe for their leadership, standing for the healing spirit in first building the Jamestown Family Clinic that serves 18,000 people, then the opioid treatment clinic and now the opioid hospital.
Calmly, with dignity, they pushed forward despite fear-mongering that these drug treatment facilities would ruin Sequim.
The clinic is open helping heal people in Clallam and Jefferson counties.
The clinic is state-of-the art. It is also beautiful, among the handsomest buildings in Clallam County.
A center of opposition to the Healing Campus was the Sequim City Council then dominated by extremists including an outspoken admirer of the crazed QAnon cult.
The November 2021 election removed four of these naysayers. It was a landslide sweep for supporters of the clinic who won nearly 70 percent of the vote.
The year 2023 is again an election year.
We must elect candidates who uphold the healing spirit.
The council must approve the zoning regulation so the hospital can be built.
We urge the city council to approve it immediately.
Tim Wheeler
Acting Chair, Voices for Health & Healing
Sequim