by Dr. Carl Mumpower
Letter to the Editor
Mountain Xpress
April 20, 2005
First, let me thank you for your opinion piece
on drugs and children ... [Commentary, "Failed Drug War Wont Protect Our
Children," by Clare Hanrahan, April 6]. Although we share dramatically
differing perspectives, I appreciate anyone who attempts to shine some
light on our serious drug issues in Asheville. As a point of secondary
interest, your assertion that I in any way solicited crack cocaine is
untrue and represents a repeat of an urban myth largely perpetuated by
my fans at the Mountain Xpress. While we are on that subject of urban
myths and drugs, may I share a few more?
- Urban Myth One:
Most drug dealers live in public housing. No, in truth, the victims
live in public housing, and it is the hard-drug dealers and users from
other places who consider public housing a safe playground. That means
that the families and children who live in public housing are
persistently exposed to danger, confusing role models, harmful
temptations and a disrupted quality of life because those of us who
live elsewhere turn away and live with our comfortable assumptions. I
will leave it to you to advocate for hard-drug dealers and users. The
voices of the moms, dads, senior citizens and children they affect more
dramatically capture my concern.
- Urban Myth Two:
First-time drug offende!
rs get l
ong jail sentences. First-offense crack
or meth dealers rarely receive any jail time. It takes repeat offenses
and numerous failed efforts to rehabilitate an offender before he goes
to jail. You portray a judicial system without heart or concern - when
in fact the lengths [to which] our courts go to [salvage] drug
offenders is extraordinary, so extraordinary that the benefits and
temptations of dealing drugs (money, power and opportunity) too often
overshadow the fear of consequence found in our judicial system.
- Urban Myth Three:
The drug war is a failure and its time to surrender. Im not a
personal fan of our countrys drug-enforcement strategy. It is my sense
that we put too much energy into marijuana and not enough into hard
drugs. I also wonder if we are spending too much time and money on a
futile quest to dry up the sources when the real drug war is on our
streets. I share your concern for those who are addicted to hard drugs,
but my greater interest is in those they affect (through thievery,
abuse, neglect and violence) and those we can prevent from becoming
future hard-drug addicts. The more we run away and make excuses for
hard-drug dealers and users, the more training grounds and
opportunities we allow [that support] the cultivation of new dealers
and users.
- Urban Myth Four:
Minorities and the poor are being singled out for attention. In
reality, our citys African-American community and the poorest of us
are suffering the brunt of the harmful impacts of hard drugs. Our
police, many of whom are minority officers, arrest without prejudice
anyone who deals hard drugs. Most of those dealers arrested are in fact
serving white!
buyers
who leave their neighborhoods (in and out of
Asheville) and come to poorer sections of town, including public
housing, where its easier to hide their activities. Thats wrong, and
it is my personal belief that we should do everything in our power to
inconvenience and impair the hard-drug users and dealers in their abuse
of poor neighborhoods and unprotected minorities. Predators, and all
hard-drug dealers and users, become harmful in some fashion [and] tend
to prey most enthusiastically on those least able to protect themselves
- minority groups, children, older folks and the poor.
- Urban Myth Five:
If we pile on enough ridicule, threats, falsehoods, vandalism and dirty
cartoons, this guy will give up fighting hard drugs. Not a chance ...
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