COMMUNITY MUST STAY ALERT CONCERNING DRUGS

If a clear message emerges from last week's tragedy on Henderson Street, it is this: ~Illegal drugs are here in Cape Girardeau, and they bring with them a potent danger. While this message should have long been understood in our community, it was given an enhanced significance and, sadly, a human dimension by three ghastly killings. The lesson from this, just as readily understood but with a new urgency, is that our community's efforts concerning illegal drugs, either in enforcement or education, can not be allowed to waver.

While the police investigation is ongoing, all indications are these slayings connect in some way with the use of illegal drugs. Hopefully, the whole story will be revealed when the killers are brought to justice. In the meantime, some myths have been proven erroneous:

Drugs are a limited problem in smaller communities. Traffickers in controlled substances go where the business is. In Cape Girardeau, there is, unfortunately, a market. If anything, drugs might have the potential to be even more damaging in a confined circumstance.

Only those who use drugs run the risk of getting hurt by them. Nothing suggests that two of the people killed ever used illegal drugs. Statements from those who knew them indicate they were innocent victims.

Illegal drugs are a plague on the poor. The head of the household who died in this incident had a good job at one of Cape Girardeau's foremost companies. The crime scene was a house in an established residential neighborhood.

Casual users of drugs don't run the risk of violence associated only with trafficking. Those who use drugs inevitably encounter the fiscal hierarchy of contraband merchants. Where cash deals, illegal activities and often stoned individuals are involved, violence is frequently the result, regardless of the level of the transaction.

Last week's brutality was a wake-up call. We can't assume drugs play no role in this community's life. Efforts are afoot in schools to warn students about the dangers of drugs. Work is under way in the law enforcement community to halt drug activities. Those labors were not enough in this case. But we have seen the cruel outcome of drug involvement and are sufficiently warned that our guard must be up.