MISSOURI WATCH: HIGH PRICE OF MISSOURI'S DRUG NEGLECT

Missourians have just finished voting on a referendum that was promoted as a crime-prevention measure, but the introduction of Proposition B to this state had less to do with fighting crime than the desire on the part of gun manufacturers to enhance their sale of weapons in the Show-Me State.

Not even advocates of concealed carry really believe that enabling more citizens to brandish more and more weapons could have a major effect on the lives of most citizens since the state's crime and incarceration rates are the result not of armed or unarmed citizens but illegal drugs.

If you read the police blotter in your hometown newspaper with any regularity, the first fact to be gained is the shocking long list of citizens in your community who are actively engaged in the manufacture, distribution or sale of illegal substances. Battling these drug activities now consumes the greatest portion of time of local police officers, county law enforcement personnel and even, in many instances, the state police.

Missouri is awash in drugs, our courts are literally becoming points of entrance and exit for thousands of our fellow citizens, and our jails and prisons are crowded with new arrivals every day. When we imprison one, two appear almost on signal, and before long the vast bulk of our justice system is engaged in tracking down and arresting dealers and users. Except in the case of drugs, as opposed to other crimes, we can never seem to arrest enough to drive down the arrest rates.

So unsuccessful are we in this goal that we now have one out of every 150 Missourians languishing in prison cells. America has become the largest per capita consumer of drugs in the world, and millions of us, living in what we boast is the most powerful and most successful country in the history of mankind, seem unable to reverse our drug proliferation. We have been able to reduce our disgraceful homicide rates, our burglary attempts and most other crimes -- but not drug distribution and addiction. This statistic continues to increase and we continue to search, unsuccessfully, for solutions.

The answers are not as complicated as we might first believe, for the solution lies in keeping young citizens, many of them still in school, from joining the number who seriously risk their health as well as the lives of those around them by engaging in the drug culture. If we can halt this trend, we will have tamed the drug beast in our society, and we will have reduced the number of destroyed lives as well as eliminated the need for more and more prison space to house more and more young offenders.

How do we do this? Well, first and foremost, we take the war against drugs to the very areas where it is being carried out: in our community's neighborhoods and gathering spots. The fight has to be waged on the enemy's homefront, in our very own neighborhoods, where trafficking is most prevalent and where the rules of behavior are written not by city councils or state legislatures but by the sellers of meth, cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

Communities should be divided into numerous neighborhoods where block-watchers patrol the streets and maintain vigil over illegal activities. Organized by local and county police, these volunteers can be an effective force in reporting and then preventing suspected illegal trade; fully trained observers can clean up the worst of any city's drug areas without authorities having to resort to more and more police and more and more jail cells.

Missouri has more than 25,000 men and women in its state correctional system, a fact that has seemingly been ignored far too long in Jefferson City. This year's General Assembly is the first session in years even to notice how many new prisons the state is building, and while most proposed remedies have little to do with eradicating the drug culture it is reassuring that someone has noticed that, despite all the new compounds being built, we have failed to reduce criminal dockets.

Our state's prison population has increased nearly 50 percent in the past decade, and the principal reason is that we have not been willing to do more than just say not to drugs. As prevention methodology, this stinks; even though it's relatively cheap, it's realistically ineffective.

Outstate Missourians once looked disbelievingly at urban drug use and drug violence, ignoring dire warnings that a similar fate awaited their presumably secure areas. Surely no one is gullible enough to believe if we isolate our families, our neighborhoods and even our communities from outside influences, we will be safe from the dangers of the crimes of addiction. The buyers and sellers among us are as mobile as the rest of society, and they are anxious to ply their trade anywhere and everywhere, willing to assume whatever risks there may be to gain the profits that are promised.

Leadership to inaugurate statewide programs that operate at the neighborhood level must come from elected officials in Jefferson City. Only these officials can muster and coordinate the efforts of all of the state's agencies that will be needed fro such a program, and only these officials can win widespread public support to fund the requisite services that must be offered. A state initiative is needed if Missourians are to realize any permanent reduction in crime and any relief from millions and millions of dollars for more and more prison space.

The cost of community programs will be only a fraction of what's now being spent, with saved tax dollars diverted to improving schools, colleges and health services. But the largest saving will be in human lives that otherwise will be lost in a battle we have been losing for the past quarter of a century.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.