To the editor:

If the summer of 2017 has taught us anything it must be that addiction and carelessness will overcome common sense every time. The recent conflagration raging up in the Aberdeen Plateau is just another example.

Looking over our shoulders, Rock Creek, Barriere, Ashcroft, Lytton, Carrs Landing and now Black Mountain, all fires that started on a clear summer day without a cloud in sight.

Our government is currently spending millions on attempting to stop drug addicts from committing suicide, by ingesting fentanyl and other opioids. After being revived by overworked paramedics, they run like lemmings to find another dose and repeat the process endlessly until they finally succeed.

Our mobile arsonists cannot, or will not take stock of their surroundings and insist on hanging their cigarettes out the car window so as not to foul the interior with tobacco smoke. The results continue to be same, a casual non-thinking flick of the smelly cigarette butt to the road side and drive on.

The disconnect is alarming as they do not equate their addict motivated actions with the panic stricken homeowners, the wide-eyed and terrified livestock, crying children and the roaring inferno in the background.

Untold millions of hectares of marketable timber, homes, businesses, whole communities wiped out. Millions of dollars spent on ground crews, aircraft and firefighting equipment plus the un-scaled risk to lives and families. All for what?

So that we do not offend our smoking friends by insisting that they butt out? I think the time has come.

Brian R. Mellis,

West Kelowna