Marc Lamarre’s sudden fall from grace at WSLS-TV Channel 10 is a sad story about an all-too-common problem in society — drug abuse and attempts to hide it from friends, employers and others.

Lamarre, a meterologist at Channel 10 until he nearly died from a heroin overdose on February 2, has a long-running cocaine addiction that was among the worst-kept secrets in Roanoke but everyone — including Channel 10 — ignored the problem.

Now Lamarre’s problems are out in the open and a lot of questions need to be answered about how and why it happened. It’s also not the first time Channel 10 has had a problem with a weatherman and drugs. Back in the late 1960s, another on-air personality, Floyd Countian Marty Hall, was arrested for marijuana possession and canned by the station. Hall went on to other jobs, including a stint as a partner in an ad agency, and died in 2004.