CARNAHAN, ASHCROFT UPSTAGED AT FORUM ON DRUGS

So here we are, at this panel discussion on the drug problem and the
way the criminal justice system responds to it.

A pertinent topic, to be sure. But that alone wouldn't have filled the
auditorium at the Pioneer Campus of Penn Valley Community College on
Friday afternoon.

A lot of us were there to see two of the panelists in action. U.S.
Senator John Ashcroft and Gov. Mel Carnahan, opponents in a contest
for the U.S. Senate, going head to head on the red hot issues of drugs
and crime.

They came. They talked. And the winner was...

Well, it was Stephen L. Hill Jr..

Carnahan was a little slow getting into the discussion. Ashcroft
wanted to talk about methamphetamines, which ran cold with an urban
audience more concerned about crack cocaine.

Of the seven panelists invited by the community group Move Up, it was
U.S. Attorney Hill -- more eloquent than Carnahan, more relevant than
Ashcroft -- who made the point that resonated with the audience.

Politicians compete for the "tough on crime" mantle, Hill said. But
the problems, and the solutions, begin long before a person shows up
in court:

"Why did this person turn to drugs in the first place? Where was Mom?
Where was Dad? Where was Grandma?"

It was Hill -- more aggressive than Carnahan -- who rebutted
Ashcroft's not-so-veiled suggestion that the meth problem was out of
control in Missouri and that he, Ashcroft, not the governor, was
taking action to contain it.

"If you put the politics aside, we can contain this thing," Hill said.
"We've made great strides with the meth problem in Missouri."

After the panel discussion he provided details. In Independence, once
a methamphetamine hotbed, police seized 36 labs last year, a steep
drop from 109 labs seized in 1998. The number for this year probably
will be lower still, he said.

Methamphetamine continues to ravage the Cape Girardeau, Mo., area,
Hill said. Closer to Kansas City, the law enforcement focus has
shifted to crack and powder cocaine carried in from Mexico.

Well, maybe it's not surprising that a prosecutor could outdo a
senator and a governor in a discussion on crime. And Hill, a
Democratic political appointee, may be job-hunting if Republican
candidate George W. Bush becomes president. It never hurts to impress
a crowd.

Carnahan talked about the mandatory sentences for violent crimes
enacted under his leadership. Ashcroft talked about crime victims and
said that if prisons were needed to keep people safe, we should have
them.

Two judges on the panel, Jay Daugherty of Jackson County Circuit Court
and Fernando Gaitan of U.S. District Court, voiced a yearning for
options other than prison for some drug offenders.

Gail Beatty, a neighborhood leader, said that communities could fight
drug dealers but that they need help -- and money. Missouri Rep. Terry
Riley made friends in the audience when he, too, challenged Ashcroft's
lack of discussion about the crack problem.

Little was said about alcohol abuse, and the subject of the
disturbingly high level of marijuana use by area teen-agers never came
up.

In the end, neither Carnahan nor Ashcroft claimed the drugs-and-crime
issue for his own.

The campaign will go on, however. And so will drug dealing, substance
abuse, arrests, prison sentences and all the grief and dilemmas
associated with them.