INMATES TALK ABOUT DRUGS, PRISON

More than 80 people gathered on Tuesday at Pitt Community College to hear
four inmates from Seymour Johnson Federal Prison Camp talk about their
involvement in drugs.

Four prisoners of the minimum-security prison facility in Goldsboro shared
their experiences with members of the community, including probationers,
juvenile probation participants and adult GED students. It was the second
time the program has been presented at PCC, coordinated by Pitt County's
Criminal Offender Reparation Program (C.O.R.P).

"If we get through to one person in the audience, it's been worth coming
today. If we get through to all of you, then it's a blessing from God,"
said Dwayne Perry, 29, who is serving 10 years and one month for
distribution of crack cocaine.

Although they described what they went through and how bad it was, the
inmates insisted this was not like the scared straight-style program.

"With scared straight, you can eventually overcome your fear with someone
else helping you. But if we educate you, nobody can take that away from
you," said Les Mooring, a 47-year-old serving 10 years for the cultivation
of 257 marijuana plants.

In their prison-gray uniforms, the men were differentiated only by their
choice of shoes and whether they wore a watch. One man had dreadlocks under
a colorful Rastafarian knit hat. For effect, he took off his hat, exposing
hair well past his shoulders and announced that when he went to prison, he
was bald.

The audience seemed captivated by the straightforward presentation. Mooring
described his and another inmate's style as "the preacher and the
toastmaster." Barry Washington was the preacher.

Washington, 37 - known as "Beware" when he was a cocaine dealer in Raleigh
and Winston-Salem in the '90s - told of his drug involvement beginning in
the eighth grade.

Washington said he and a friend were almost caught by the principal smoking
a joint. She smelled the smoke and knew what they were doing, but he said
he swallowed the drugs and got away with it - that time.

"In the real world, they don't need any evidence that you deal drugs,"
Washington said. "They only have to prove that you associate with drug
dealers."

He was arrested for conspiracy to traffic five kilos of cocaine and was
sentenced to 15 years in prison. Washington was a self-described kingpin.
"I had Raleigh and Winston-Salem on lock-down," he said, meaning he was the
main supplier for both cities.

He said he was seduced by the lifestyle and was making $30,000 a week. In
the end, it was the money and power that brought him down.

When the police knocked on Washington's door, he said he was watching the
television show "Cops." The police searched his house and only found a
small amount of marijuana - a misdemeanor.

But they also found documents for property with the names of family and
friends. To avoid involving them, Washington said he took the charges. He's
been in prison for nine years.

Scott Lukse, 26, said, "I thought I was doing drugs, but the drugs were
doing me."

He said that in high school, he was on the national honor society, the Key
Club, played sports and got straight As. He was raised in an upper-middle
class family in Charlotte and got into drugs as a way to try to fit in.
When he went to college, he used cocaine and ecstacy and continued to make
the dean's list. Then he discovered heroin.

"It's all about choices," Lukse said.

One night while using heroin, he said he woke up soaking wet and sore in a
bathtub. He asked his friends what happened, and they told him that he had
died, and they had to revive him by beating on his chest and putting him in
a tub with ice to bring his body temperature down. That should have taught
him, he said, but he got high the next day.

Lukse said he got his start selling marijuana as a way to get himself free
drugs. He would buy an ounce and sell three-fourths of it - the rest would
be for him.

Soon, he had friends who wanted to do the same thing, so he was buying it
by the pound. He began dealing marijuana in larger and larger amounts,
eventually in the hundreds of pounds.

"Every weekend, my mother comes to visit me," he said. "And every weekend,
I get to see what I did to her."

Mooring was growing marijuana in his home in Arkansas. He said he had a
background in horticulture and a love for smoking pot. "I wanted to grow
the greatest marijuana in the world, which I did."

After his arrest, he and his wife fled the country and eventually were
incarcerated in Holland and extradited back to the states. Now divorced, he
said his wife didn't smoke marijuana or have anything to do with his
business but served 15 months in prison and had everything she owned taken
from her.

The reality, according to Mooring, was that the United States has only 6
percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prison
inmates and 75 percent of the world's lawyers. "So don't think any lawyer
is going to help you," he added.

Black men, said Mooring, who is white, are seven times as likely to end up
in jail.

"It's not fair, and it's not right, but I'm not here to talk about what's
fair or right. It's just the way it is."

Perry said he was out of the drug-dealing business for five years when he
was arrested in Charlotte. With a degree in communications, Perry said he
was working for himself cutting hair and promoting music events when his
brother cut a deal with prosecutors and gave them his name.

Perry said he has been transferred to several prisons. He described one in
Oklahoma City as "so big the plane pulled right up to the doors of it." He
said a prison in Atlanta was nicknamed "Castle Greyskull" because of the
smell of death it had.

"On the plane with me was a grandmother, mother and daughter. They don't
care. Anyone can end up in prison," he said.

The audience laughed at some of the stories and nodded in agreement with
the inmates' opinions of the justice system.

During a question-and-answer session, people asked for advice about what to
do with their troubled teen-agers. They asked about life behind bars. The
answers were delivered with no editing for the faint of heart.

Washington said the inmates' presentation was about "three C's": choice,
change and commitment. "If you start making changes in your life and commit
to these changes, you'll be surprised where you can be tomorrow," he said.

When the presentation ended, many audience members came forward to thank
the group. Hugs were given and prayers were offered. The inmates smiled and
thanked everyone for coming.

In the end, it would be another day in prison for the four as Reginald
Baker, counselor at the prison, herded them out the door. "If we hurry," he
said, "we can get back in time for lunch."