“The heart-wrenching tragedy of drug addiction is an evil that threatens every man’s dignity and freedom of action”: a “plague” to “be firmly condemned as fuelled by unprincipled men, who, giving in to the temptation of easy gains, sow death, nipping hopes in the bud and destroying lots of families”. The alert was given by card. Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, prefect of the Ministry for promoting integral human development, in a message he sent to coincide with the International Day against drug abuse and illicit trafficking. “About 250 million of people across the world have used drugs, and 29.5 million of them suffer from disorders associated with drug abuse”, this is the figure for 2015: in particular, “of the 12 million people who use injectable drugs, over one half (6.1 million) suffer from hepatitis C, and 1.3 million live with hepatitis C as well as HIV/AIDS”. “Many are the damages caused by drug use and abuse, not only for health but also for development, peace and security, in all the regions of the world”, points out Turkson, who thinks “drugs are a wound inflicted on our society, which trap many people into a spiral of pain and alienation”. “Many are the factors that drive people into drug addiction”, writes Turkson, who mentions “social exclusion, estranged families, social pressure, the traffickers’ propaganda, the wish to have new experiences”. Hence the importance of “promoting a culture of solidarity and subsidiarity for the common good; a culture that will oppose selfishness and utilitarian, economic arguments, but that will stretch out to others, listening to them, in a process of listening and relating with our neighbours, especially when they are more vulnerable and fragile, as drug abusers are”. As the Pope points out, “every drug addict has his own personal story, which must be listened to, understood, loved and, as far as possible, healed and purged. We cannot fall into the injustice of cataloguing drug addicts as they were things or broken toys; to be healed, every person must be valued and appreciated in their dignity”.