DRUGS AND THE FAMILY UNIT

In the movie "The Godfather" a group of Mafia chieftains are discussing the
pros and cons of getting into the illegal drug business.

One of the fictional crime bosses asserts that in his regime drugs will
only be sold "to the coloreds" and will be kept away from schools and nicer
neighborhoods.

That movie was set in the late 1940s, and much has changed for the worse on
the drug scene since then.

Illegal drugs are so pervasive now that a growing number of school
districts in rural Mississippi, including McComb, are planning this fall to
drug test students, black and white, who participate in extracurricular
activities.

This is more of a preventive measure than an attempt to catch drug users.
The theory is that if kids know they are going to be tested and have to pay
a price for using drugs - such as not being able to play sports or in the
band - it will give them another reason to say no to experimentation.

Illegal drugs, contrary to the expressed will of the old Mafia chief, have
not been restricted to the "coloreds."

Drug abuse and trafficking is an equal opportunity plague, observing no
racial or social barriers.

But it is evident that its biggest toll is on African-Americans, at least
in Mississippi.

Law enforcement personnel say that much of the crime in this state is
related directly or indirectly to drugs. Addicts steal to get money to buy
drugs. Dealers kill each other over turf wars. It is not unusual for
innocent people, including children, to get killed in the crossfire. Watch
any Jackson television station and you can see reports of it, almost daily.

Not all but a majority of the perpetrators and the victims of the
drug-related violence are African-American.

Former McComb Mayor J.C. Woods called my attention to an opinion piece in
the Aug. 4 Business Week magazine that calls for the decriminalization of
drugs to help blacks.

Woods was appalled by the suggestion, and I don't agree with it either.

Gary S. Becker, who teaches at the University of Chicago and is a Fellow of
the Hoover Institution, wrote the column, which makes some valid points,
such as:

"Black families were quite stable until the '60s, if not quite as stable as
those of whites. Although divorce and unmarried motherhood have increased
throughout American society, they have exploded among blacks. Well under
half of black children are in two-parent families, sharply down from about
75 percent in 1950, although there has been a little improvement since the
mid-1990s."

Becker points to the huge increase in the number of black men in prison,
asserting they make up more than 40 percent of male prisoners although they
are only 12 percent of the overall population. "For those incarcerated on
drug-related charges, the black share is 60 percent."

"There's reason to believe this shortage of desirable male companions
discourages black women from marrying or staying married for long," Becker
wrote.

So, one of his solutions is to decriminalize drugs, taking the profit
motive out of the trade. "Trafficking in drugs attracts young blacks mainly
because it offers much better pay (provided they don't get caught) than do
the legal alternatives which tend to be low-wage jobs," he wrote.

I don't buy the theory, although an argument can be made that it is the
lure of the money that is more tempting to some than the drugs themselves.

But the drugs are so devastating that they must be outlawed. You don't get
rid of murder by legalizing it.

I do think Becker makes a good argument in another part of his article on
the stability of the black family.

From the 1960s until the mid-1990s, when some reforms began to be made,
the welfare system encouraged deterioration of the family by making it more
profitable in many cases for a mother not to be married to someone with a
low-paying job.

We've had it backward for too long. More thought should be given to
providing incentives and benefits, either directly or through tax breaks,
to those who work and raise their families in traditional homes.