GOOD INTENTIONS ON ATTACKING DRUGS SHOULDN'T LEAD US TO WRONG SOLUTIONS

In the last few weeks, Asheville City Council and the Buncombe County Board
of Education dealt with separate but related plans to deal with illegal
drugs. City Council rejected Councilman Carl Mumpower's proposal to
allocate up to $1 million for a new drug interdiction program in
Asheville's public housing, and the Buncombe Board of Education passed
Roberson High School Principal George Drake's plan mandating drug testing
for students who participate in sports and extracurricular activities. Now
these groups are debating what to do next. In both cases, leaders should
give careful consideration to the complexities of the issues involved and
the real people's lives their proposals will effect. Seeking alternatives
Last year, I served as a mentor to a child who lived in Pisgah View
Apartments. Almost every day, as I pulled in to pick him up, dealers in
their teens and twenties approached my car and aggressively tried to sell
me drugs. But even though the experience often felt threatening, I didn't
perceive these dealers as the agents of evil Mumpower described in his May
12 AC-T guest commentary, as much as people struggling to get by in an area
of tough circumstances and limited opportunities.

Among them, I saw a good-natured old friend of mine from elementary and
middle school who dropped out of high school.

It's no surprise that school dropouts like him choose dealing drugs over
minimum-wage jobs. Any plan to stop drug dealing needs to include funding
for programs that increase this area's 75 percent graduation rate.

Mumpower's original plan focused solely on hiring more police officers even
though the police department already has a special 10-officer public
housing unit conducting drug stings.

The majority of City Council - Mayor Charles Worley, Councilman Brownie
Newman and Councilwomen Holly Jones and Terry Bellamy - are right to
advocate a more "holistic" approach that addresses issues like jobs and
education, funds mentoring, counseling and enrichment programs. People like
Dawn Jones, a 32- year resident of Pisgah View, understand the folly of
arresting more dealers without addressing the sense of desperation that
causes them to sell drugs in the first place. "If you arrest one, there's
another one coming along right behind him," she said. "You want to help
these kids, give them something to do."

Any viable plan to deal with drugs must have the support of the people it
will directly effect, not just the support of politicians. Directing police
to intimidate and arrest dealers in housing projects without a mandate from
the residents themselves will only stoke racial tension and cause fears of
drug dealers to transform into fears of cops. Council owes it to the police
and taxpayers to take the time to make sure this doesn't happen.

They should develop strategies to address the root cause of hard-drug
problems, not just the symptoms.

Drug testing students Roberson High School Principal Drake and the Buncombe
County Board of Education certainly had no mandate from students to start
drug testing them next year. The plan wrongly targets the school's 200 most
actively engaged students - the athletes, musicians and Honor Society
members least likely to abuse drugs in the first place.

Testing these motivated teenagers is a humiliating invasion of their privacy.

It fosters a sense of mistrust and suspicion when they deserve
encouragement and praise. Even worse, the tests may scare students who use
drugs from participating in the very extracurricular activities that could
help them overcome their problems. Like the users in the projects, they
need more motivating reasons to replace drugs with sports, jobs and clubs,
not less. The plan suspends students from extracurriculars who test
positive for drugs more than once. Taking away a fulfilling thing in their
lives is not a solution to their addiction.

If anything, it will just give them more time for drugs.

The first and only major federally financed study of drug testing in public
schools concluded that testing does not deter drug use. To the contrary, it
showed that drug use actually averages 1-2 percent higher in schools that test.

The old friend I saw on the street in Pisgah View used to play sports -
until he got kicked off the team for issues related to drugs - and
subsequently dropped out of school.

If principals and board members want to prevent other students from going
down similar roads, they should rethink drug testing.

Like the City Council, they should not let their good intentions and desire
for speedy action blind them from seeing and addressing drug problems in
more effective ways.

An Asheville native, Jake Frankel is a student at UNC Asheville, currently
serving as an intern in the AC-T editorial department.