NEW DRUG INITIATIVE HOLDS GREAT PROMISE

Despite tough laws, untold tax dollars and law enforcement's best
efforts, drug use in Western North Carolina continues to increase.
Drugs take a toll on all of society, soaking up resources that might
otherwise be used to advance any number of causes. But nowhere do
they do more harm than to the neighborhoods drug dealers turn into
marketplaces. Poor communities are especially vulnerable to the
scourge that drives out business, makes people afraid to be in their
own yards and causes many to become the victims of robbery and worse crimes.

Cookie Mills told the Citizen-Times that drugs were destroying his
childhood neighborhood on Drucker Road. Although he no longer lives
there, Mills helped start a neighborhood council two years ago.
Community members are now reaching out to drug addicts, and Mills
said he's seen a marked improvement in the neighborhood with regard to dealers.

Such citizen efforts deserve the highest praise and, as the Drucker
Road neighborhood council demonstrates, they can be extremely
successful. Wanted: Effective tools While citizen involvement plays
an important role, law enforcement also needs more effective tools. A
program first tried in High Point deserves consideration as a way to
tackle the drug problem in our neighborhoods. Police in High Point
spent more than three months investigating about 20 dealers operating
in the city's West End neighborhood where crack cocaine was openly
sold on the street and in houses, according to a story published
Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, they cultivated relationships with the "influentials" in
the dealers' lives: their grandmothers, mothers and mentors. Once
they felt they had ironclad cases, police chief James Fealy invited
12 suspected dealers to a meeting at the police station, with a
promise they wouldn't be arrested that night.

Using 'influentials' With encouragement from their "influentials,"
nine showed up, according to the Journal story.

First, the suspected dealers met with about 30 clergy, social workers
and other community members who confronted them with the harm they
were doing, asked them to stop doing it and offered to help them. The
suspects slouched in their seats and seemed indifferent, but they
were then moved to another room where a gaggle of law-enforcement
officials awaited them.

On the walls of the room were photos of crack houses that had been
the suspects' headquarters and each one was presented with a binder
laying out the evidence against him or her.

The law enforcement officials gave them an ultimatum: Stop dealing or
go to jail. They were threatened with maximum sentences and federal
charges, which don't allow for parole. They were warned not to
relocate because their names were flagged on statewide
law-enforcement computers. An overnight success The West End street
drug market closed "overnight" and hasn't reopened in more than two
years, Chief Fealy told the Journal. He said he was "shocked" at the
success. Using the same strategy, police in the city of about 90,000
say they have since shut down its two other major street drug
markets. Police in Winston-Salem, where many officers initially
called the program "hug-a-thug," and in Newburgh, N.Y., have used the
strategy with success. The National Urban League wants to see the
approach replicated nationwide and police departments elsewhere,
including Tucson, Ariz., and Providence, R.I., are gearing up to try it.

"It's the hottest thing in drug enforcement," said Mark A.R. Kleiman,
a University of California, Los Angeles, professor who specializes in
illicit drug issues, in the Wall Street Journal story.

The program works, in part, because it obtains community cooperation
and because it targets suspects who haven't become hardened, violent
offenders. Those who have are arrested.

The goal of the program isn't to eradicate illicit drug use but to
shut down overt drug markets, which drive a significant amount of
crime. It's not a magic bullet, but its success suggests that it's a
tool worth adding to the drug-fighting arsenal.