Steve Johnson was known as the robin hood among the treatment industry, in Palm Beach County. He was the guy you called when nobody else could help, he offered tons of scholarships, and there are many who attribute their sobriety to him. He was the owner of Palm Beach Recovery & Wellness, known for doing a lot of good in the community. The facility that was raided and he was charged with patient brokering. It was the facility that left many questioning their morality in the industry. How can they acknowledge that he was was the bad guy?
The question here is if you do tons of good should you still be punished for your wrong doing? Does 48 charges of patient brokering mean you should go to jail if you helped a 100 people get clean on scholarship? How does the community react when good people do bad things? What prompts people in this industry to act dishonorably: is it that they think they won’t get caught, does greed consume their thinking, or are they just plain justifying?
Did this person lose sight of what initially mattered did their altruistic endeavor at some point take a turn when their tunnel vision saw money? Did they feel that the good deeds out weighed the bad ? We can’t know for sure what happened, but how can we process this. If a doctors saves 1,000 lives, but performs an operation drunk should he be prosecuted? I believe the answer is yes. If you choose to behave unethically you must face the consequences, and provide a standard for people in the community to know that what you are doing is indeed wrong.
