It would be one thing to depict a ravaged meth addict, if the object were to wake readers up to the horrors of addiction. But instead, you aimed for humor: Your caricature, dressed in a stained "wife beater" tank top, gives us her biggest, tarnished grin and cheerily displays a prescription that says her name is "Suzie User" and (this is so cute), "I want a new drug."
I can only guess that no one on your editorial board has ever experienced the devastation of addiction among his or her family or close friends. Otherwise, one would find such an image just as appalling and nauseating as any anti-Semitic, Nazi poster or "Little Black Sambo" cartoon — or should we look forward to those Gazette covers, also?
There is nothing cute about crystal meth nor anything witty about reducing meth addicts into mascots for a cover story. When we ridicule our peers, schoolmates and next-door neighbors and dehumanize the agony of drug addiction, it makes abusers out of all of us.
—Andy Behrens
Yukon
