BOTH SIDES IGNORING CENTRAL-CITY REALITIES, CRAYTON TELLS CROWD

Welcome to my neighborhood, First Ward Councilwoman Almeta Crayton said
yesterday to opponents and supporters of Proposition 1 and a White House
appointee who spoke against the effects of marijuana.

"Now the chicken has come home to roost at your house," she told members of
the luncheon audience. They had just heard three students talk about the
drugs they said prompted classmates to drop out of their local private
school and the marijuana one woman said crushed her daughter's motivation
to play flute.

"It's been at my house for 30 years," the central-city councilwoman told
the quiet crowd. "That's why our neighborhoods look like they do."

Speaking at a Peachtree Banquet Center event organized by opponents of
Proposition 1, Crayton also chastised a few proponents who were there.

Designers of the pot referendum, which is on Tuesday's ballot, intend in
part to prevent college students found guilty of possessing marijuana from
losing federal aid.

"I've got young ladies who, if their young kids get caught out on the
street, they could be evicted from public housing. No one's talking about
that," Crayton said. "What happens to that mother? She had nothing to do
with it, but she could be put out. You didn't put that in the" ballot
proposition.

So rose a representative of Columbia residents about whom supporters and
opponents of Proposition 1 have had little to say. Crayton's aim didn't
stop at city limits, though.

Speaking to Scott Burns, an appointee of President George W. Bush and a
director at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Crayton asked
rhetorically about federal support for treating drug users.

"You talk about treatment. The majority of the people in my neighborhood
aren't in treatment," she said. " ... I want the president to know that my
community needs to be in treatment. O What about my neighborhood that
should have been in treatment 35 years ago?"

If a simple majority of Columbia voters approve Proposition 1, it would
make possession of 35 grams or less a municipal offense and therefore,
proponents say, save college students caught in possession of such amounts
from losing their federal student aid.

An impassioned opponent of the proposal, Crayton voted against it in
January when it came before the Columbia City Council. Because the council
rejected the measure, it was forwarded to voters.

Burns, the White House appointee, was the first featured speaker at
yesterday's luncheon. He said the federal government applies a three-prong
approach to fighting drugs - preventing their use in the first place,
dismantling their distribution systems and treating drug users.

Marijuana "is the cornerstone of the drug czar's strategy," Burns said.

It's also the gateway drug, though one that, relatively speaking, doesn't
seem so terrible anymore, Crayton said. "If that's the only thing you've
got to worry about is Susie smoking a joint, get ready for the rest of the
stuff that goes with it," she said.

Asked if Crayton was implying that the white, middle-class people who
seemed to make up most of the audience yesterday didn't care about drugs so
long as their kids weren't using them, another speaker said she didn't
think so.

"I interpreted her as saying, if you pass" Proposition 1, marijuana "is
going to show up in your neighborhood," said Eve Pearson, president of the
Mid-Missouri Coalition on Adolescent Concerns.