STATE SENATOR SLAMS KEATING FOR COMMENTS ON DRUG USE BY AP WIRE SERVICE

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A state senator called on Gov. Frank Keating to
apologize for remarks he made during a conference on methamphetamine use in
Oklahoma.

"Those kind of comments are inappropriate and offensive for anyone to use,
especially the man who holds our state's highest office," Sen. Larry
Dickerson, D-Poteau, a former district attorney, said Friday.

He was referring to Keating's remarks that methamphetamine is "a
white-trash drug" and crack cocaine is "a black-trash drug."

A Keating spokesman said the governor stands by his statement.

Dickerson cited a transcript of Keating's remarks at a methamphetamine
conference in which he said:

"It's a white-trash drug ... methamphetamines largely are consumed by the
lower socio-economic element of white people ... and I think we need to
shame it ... just like crack cocaine was a black-trash drug and is a
black-trash drug."

Dickerson called the comment callous.

"Referring to low-income Oklahomans as white trash or black trash is
degrading," he said. "Just because someone may not have the best
opportunities in life is no reason to look down on them or brand them with
negative, stereotypical nicknames.

"It's hurtful behavior that damages both the people of Oklahoma and the
image of our state."

Dickerson noted that the drug problem cuts across all racial and economic
lines and to imply that "only one race or one economic level has a problem
is an inaccurate, oversimplification of a very complex issue."

Keating was out of state but his deputy press secretary, Phil Bacharach,
said Dickerson was playing politics and obscuring the "real message of the
methamphetamine summit -- that Oklahomans are being poisoned by meth."

"What the governor was saying was the people who abuse methamphetamines,
whether for profit or for addiction, that is a trashy thing," Bacharach said.

Keating "stands by his comment," Bacharach said.

The press official said it was Dickerson's prerogative to be too "timid" to
use the term in describing those who manufacture and sell methamphetamines
and crack cocaine.

At the summit, law enforcement officials said Oklahoma ranks second in the
nation in the per capita use of methamphetamines.