EASTERN KY DRUG PROBLEM GETS BAD PRESS

The Lexington Herald-Leader's continuing series on Eastern Kentucky's
difficulties with drugs has been very interesting, but less than prodigious.
Much of the info in the series, as it relates to the Big Sandy area, has
been covered previously by us, and others, but it doesn't hurt - much - to
see all that coverage packaged, repeated, and circulated to other parts of
Kentucky. We aren't going to gripe, either, that the Lexington paper is
taking another of its routinely one-sided potshots at this part of the
state, because this drug stuff is way too serious for us to get our backs up
over the Lexington paper's love affair with Eastern Kentucky negatives.
Meanwhile, we're not backing off our previous assertion that the H-L has all
but abandoned Eastern Kentucky as a routine news beat. Beyond this series,
there has been next to no coverage of the region, but we regular H-L readers
are getting plenty of stuff from northern Kentucky and Louisville that we
didn't get when the paper found our region more newsworthy. For now we'll
just have to be content with the paper's one-track mind on the drug thing,
with hope that it will generate some action among those who can detox this
part of the state. If that happens, we'll stand in the front row for a
standing "O" for the paper's community service work. Sadly, though, we all
know that any effect this series has on drug abuse here ... or anywhere else
... will be short-term. This war on drugs won't be won in our lifetime,
because it isn't just about drugs. It's about educational failures, economic
depression and hopelessness. Those are the root causes of drug abuse
everywhere, but here they aren't generational anomalies that fluctuate with
time. They have every appearance of being permanent.