UNFORTUNATE LEGACY OF PABLO ESCOBAR WILL LIVE ON

Pablo Escobar was a violent man who died a violent death last week. Leader of a brutal cocaine exporting enterprise, Escobar used bombs and bullets on his fellow Colombians to build a financial empire. Our instinct, savage as it sounds to speak that way of the dead, is to say, "Good riddance." In the case of Escobar, however, he is not quite gone, either in Colombia or in cities like Cape Girardeau. His unfortunate legacy lives beyond his gruesome death.

People in our region might have taken only a minor notice of Escobar's death in a rooftop shootout in Medellin, a city that gained international infamy as a cocaine capital. It should never escape the notice of people here, however, that Escobar and the countrymen who engage in his line of work have left a deep imprint on life in this country. Cocaine ruined many American lives before a merchandising change in the mid-1980s -- the arrival of less expensive, highly addictive crack cocaine -- made this illegal substance available to the masses.

In Cape Girardeau and some surrounding communities, crack cocaine began to be sold in open-air markets, drawing scores of users and swelling the profits (after the procession of middlemen) of types like Escobar. Along with this came the accompanying problems of financial ruin and physical addiction. These inevitably gave way to a run of ancillary crimes (robberies, assaults, domestic violence) perpetrated to accommodate drug habits, spreading the misery to those who never came near a controlled substance and further taxing the criminal justice system. The network of human suffering, once accelerated by cocaine, is vast.

Still, nothing in the American experience with this illegal drug can compare to the changes inflicted on Colombia by Escobar. So ample is the money made available by drug trafficking, Escobar stood untouchable for years. Those he couldn't bribe, he killed. Bombs were detonated in grocery stores, banks, restaurants and hotels, meant as messages for those who resisted him and claiming numerous innocent lives. Children practiced bomb drills at school. Judges whose rulings damaged the cartel were assassinated. Those elected officials who could not be intimidated were similarly gunned down; three presidential candidates, a justice minister and an attorney general were murdered by hired killers. It was a coup not based on political purposes, but commercial ones. The sale of cocaine ruled all aspects of Colombian life.

And those who continued to fight the drug lords in that nation, including those who finally ended the life of Pablo Escobar, asked a legitimate question of Americans: Why can't you cut off the demand? A good question, one that we, in this area and in this nation, must continue to address.

Law enforcement officials in Cape Girardeau and its environs have made progress in battling the intrusion of cocaine, fighting courageously to cut off the supply. Considerable work is being done on the demand side as well, with educational efforts aimed at instructing young people about the dangers of such substances. Still, the cocaine war grinds on, an allegedly "more businesslike" cartel from Cali, Colombia, having supplanted Escobar's empire as the world's largest supplier of the drug.

Evil remains a relentless opponent, and the steps we must take in opposition are the ones we can take. We can't take on the Pablo Escobars of the world, but we can fight the small skirmishes at home and know it makes a difference.