MYTH VERSUS METH

First, let me thank you for your opinion piece on drugs and children .
[Commentary, "Failed Drug War Won't Protect Our Children,"
(http://www.mountainx.com/opinion/2005/0406hanrahan.php) by Clare Hanrahan,
April 6]. Although we share dramatically differing perspectives, I
appreciate anyone who attempts to shine some light on our serious drug
issues in Asheville. As a point of secondary interest, your assertion that
I in any way solicited crack cocaine is untrue and represents a repeat of
an urban myth largely perpetuated by my fans at the Mountain Xpress. While
we are on that subject of urban myths and drugs, may I share a few more?

Urban Myth One: Most drug dealers live in public housing.

No, in truth, the victims live in public housing, and it is the hard-drug
dealers and users from other places who consider public housing a safe
playground. That means that the families and children who live in public
housing are persistently exposed to danger, confusing role models, harmful
temptations and a disrupted quality of life because those of us who live
elsewhere turn away and live with our comfortable assumptions. I will leave
it to you to advocate for hard-drug dealers and users.

The voices of the moms, dads, senior citizens and children they affect more
dramatically capture my concern.

Urban Myth Two: First-time drug offenders get long jail sentences.
First-offense crack or meth dealers rarely receive any jail time. It takes
repeat offenses and numerous failed efforts to rehabilitate an offender
before he goes to jail. You portray a judicial system without heart or
concern - when in fact the lengths [to which] our courts go to [salvage]
drug offenders is extraordinary, so extraordinary that the benefits and
temptations of dealing drugs (money, power and opportunity) too often
overshadow the fear of consequence found in our judicial system.

Urban Myth Three: The drug war is a failure and it's time to surrender. I'm
not a personal fan of our country's drug-enforcement strategy. It is my
sense that we put too much energy into marijuana and not enough into hard
drugs.

I also wonder if we are spending too much time and money on a futile quest
to dry up the sources when the real drug war is on our streets.

I share your concern for those who are addicted to hard drugs, but my
greater interest is in those they affect (through thievery, abuse, neglect
and violence) and those we can prevent from becoming future hard-drug addicts.

The more we turn away and make excuses for hard-drug dealers and users, the
more training grounds and opportunities we allow [that support] the
cultivation of new dealers and users.

Urban Myth Four: Minorities and the poor are being singled out for
attention. In reality, our city's black community and the poorest of us are
suffering the brunt of the harmful impacts of hard drugs.

Our police, many of whom are minority officers, arrest without prejudice
anyone who deals hard drugs.

Most of those dealers arrested are in fact serving white buyers who leave
their neighborhoods (in and out of Asheville) and come to poorer sections
of town, including public housing, where it's easier to hide their
activities. That's wrong, and it my personal belief that we should do
everything in our power to inconvenience and impair hard-drug users and
dealers in their abuse of poor neighborhoods and unprotected minorities.
Predators, and all hard-drug dealers and users, become harmful in some
fashion [and] tend to prey most enthusiastically on those least able to
protect themselves - minority groups, children, older folks and the poor.

Urban Myth Five: If we pile on enough ridicule, threats, falsehoods,
vandalism and dirty cartoons, this guy will give up fighting hard drugs.

Not a chance ... .

Carl Mumpower, Vice Mayor City of Asheville