ESSAY/COMMENT
Iowa View / Robert V. Morris
Drugs: No place left to hide
During the 1980s, the effects of crack cocaine brought a new
level of violence and terror to America's inner cities.
Crack provided a cheap but powerful addiction to thousands of urban
residents who became its victims. The crack epidemic affected the impoverished black
and Latino communities of large cities particularly hard and led to unprecedented crime,
gang activity and other social ills. The crack epidemic eventually spread to
medium-sized cities like Des Moines and even small towns across the Midwest.
By 1997, crowded court dockets and prisons reflected the
criminal-justice system's inability to handle growing juvenile delinquency, much of which
is the direct result of crack trafficking or addiction.
To combat the crack-related turmoil, cities like Des Moines built
barricades and basketball courts and nonprofit groups sprung from every nook and cranny
mopping up the fear and guilt flowing from the corporations. Somewhere lost in the
corporate philanthropy was the principle of self-help based on economic empowerment.
The American dream of self-determination would require patronizing urban businesses
that could hire, train and supervise their own people. Unfortunately, a gift to a
non-profit group and a tax write-off remain more in line with the local corporate
mentality.
Just when many middle-class whites fled to the suburbs and thought they
were safe from the perils of the inner city and the brown folks who lived there, a new
monster was hiding in the corn. A monster drug with a cheap but powerful addiction
that was ideal for the countryside and the white folks who lived there.
The methamphetamine epidemic is having the same effect on rural America
that crack had on the inner cities and is sitting at the elbow of suburban sprawl.
Coupled with the anti-government "militia" growing in the
same rural environments and the resulting trafficking potential of methamphetamine for
these groups and others to fund their activities, rural law enforcement and residents are
facing an unprecedented wave of crime and terror in their fields of dreams.
Although the news media have attempted to educate Iowans about the
evils of methamphetamine, the average citizen, as with crack, cares or knows little about
it until it touches their family and then the outcry begins.
It is fascinating how state and local government can hypocritically
advocate gambling and tolerate alcohol and cigarette addictions and denounce marijuana,
crack and methamphetamine usage in the same breath. These vices are all having a
devastating and disproportionate impact on impoverished Iowans of all colors, and have
invaded the city, the suburbs and the countryside. It leads to a plethora of social
ills from domestic violence and teen pregnancy to criminal activity and juvenile
delinquency.
What crack cocaine has done to the black and Latino people of the inner
city is being duplicated by methamphetamine in the white suburbs and countryside.
But, unlike crack, methamphetamine is only beginning to reach its potential of social
destruction.
The growing hostility and isolation between whites, blacks, Latinos and
Asians defeats the ideal of collective community action and cripples our ability to deal
with the issues of drugs, crime, juvenile delinquency and race relations that affect us
all.
Unfortunately, with the methamphetamine epidemic, it looks like
suburban and rural Iowans will have to learn the hard way that it's a problem that will
only grow with apathy. There is no place left to hide.
ROBERT V. MORRIS is an entrepreneur and writer in Des Moines.
Robert V. Morris
Thursday, September 18, 1997, Page 13A
The Des Moines Register
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Des Moines, Iowa 50304
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