A rehab facility in Cherry Hill isn't something to fear

I'm a proud Class of 2007 rehab graduate, so I wince when proposals to build the sort of place that saved my life make headlines. Which they almost always do.

Like Haddonfield and Gloucester Township in 2015, Cherry Hill is up in arms about the prospect of an addiction treatment center opening within its borders.

My colleague David O'Reilly reports that some residents of the township's Brookfield section are alarmed about the possibility that the former USS New Jersey Masonic Lodge No. 62, located on a rather isolated stretch of property along I-295 just off Haddonfield-Berlin Road, could become the site of a 90-bed rehab facility.

With the battle so far focused more on the process than the proposal, I must say I share some of the concerns expressed on Cherry Hill United's Facebook page and elsewhere about a municipal government that trumpets "transparency" handling this rehab matter so . . . opaquely.

But I don't buy the notion that a medical facility for people who have addictions - as opposed to, say, people who have cancer or dementia - inevitably constitutes a menace to children using the adjacent Little League ball field, or living nearby.

A rehab is not a crash pad, flophouse, or drug den where people wander in and out at all hours; properly licensed and operated, such a facility need not disrupt, much less, damage, a neighborhood.

I would also suggest that the untreated alcoholics and addicts who already live in Cherry Hill, like those in other communities, represent a far greater threat to public safety than does a professionally staffed treatment center.

All sorts of people in South Jersey drive drunk, steal to support drug habits, patronize suburban and urban dealers, and cause havoc in households in the fanciest and humblest of zip codes alike.

So rehabs don't just belong in Camden, as an online commenter proposed. Law enforcement sting operations consistently find that half if not more of the illegal drug buyers apprehended in the city don't live there.

And as South Jersey high school students will tell you, the heroin epidemic among the young is a substantially suburban phenomenon.

To say that substance abuse is a medical and not a moral issue is not to magically absolve alcoholics and addicts of responsibility to get well.

And a rehab is not a cure, a requirement for recovery, or an end in itself.

But for someone willing to do what it takes to stay clean and sober, a rehab can be a beginning.

Don't take my word for it; ask a friend or relative who's part of South Jersey's wonderfully vibrant recovery community.

Look, not every alcoholic or addict in treatment is noble, and residents who are against having a rehab in the neighborhood are not necessarily uncaring.

Nor is every rehab proposal a good one, much less, a good fit for a proposed location.

Which is why I opposed constructing such a facility on the Bancroft campus in the heart of Haddonfield.

The Cherry Hill site appears more suitable, at least at first glance, and I disagree with those who believe a rehab there will automatically blight the neighborhood.

But I do empathize with Brookfield neighbors who feel sucker-punched by the abrupt surfacing of what seems to have been an under-the-radar municipal process.

And the township's supposed intention to purchase and preserve as open space this expanse of ground hard by the I-295 sound barrier strikes me as wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, a few overheated comments by worried residents do not invalidate larger public concerns about how the township has dealt with this particular planning board application.

Perhaps that process itself is in need of rehabilitation.

kriordan@phillynews.com

856-779-3845 @inqkriordan

www.philly.com/blinq