If you were in their position, you would want help. Everyone is human. They had a childhood, dreams, and ambitions one day. They made a stupid mistake and now their entire existence is fear and dependence. Mercy is their only hope, and a system full of or ran by people like you, people who think that mercy is for the weak or that mistakes can reduce one's humanity, are less worthy of it than those willing to admit they're helpless and in need.

You see, this is the path that you suggest: they're drug addicts, so they're not worth helping.

By this logic, in order for someone to become unworthy of help, they need to be a junkie. Being a drug addict most primarily effects the addicted individual and has generally unintended side effects towards those around them. They're also often unable to break this addiction on their own. Not only are they unable to break the addiction, but it also messes with their emotions and their hormones and their outlook on life in general. Many of them are too hopeless to even try. By this logic, this deems someone unworthy of help in your eyes. They are people in need who, due to the nature of their need, are unworthy of receiving.

So if it's okay to look at it that way, then where does the line get drawn? At what point does humility and human care kick in and tell us that someone is worth caring about? Do they need to be slightly less addicted? What if someone murdered someone? Does it make it different if they did so in self defense? What if they pulled the trigger without even attempting an alternative solution to the situation?

We have a problem in America where people assign good and bad, right and wrong, based on antiquated black-and-white situations that ignore the truth about humanity. That truth is that we are all equal. The criminal and the lawyer, the addict and the doctor. Every life has value, no matter how broken, and the only thing that can truly detract from the value of one's life is the condition of rejecting this truth and failing to respect the humanity of every human.

Steps like this clinic are the first stride on a long road to a much needed shift from a fear-driven and ineffective punitive system to a care-driven system that protects society instead of terrifying it.