Pubdate: Mon, 04 Aug 2003
Source: Clarksdale Press Register (MS)
Copyright: 2003, Clarksdale Press Register
Contact:  http://www.pressregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1656
Author: Charles Dunagin, McComb Enterprise-Journal

DRUGS DESTROY THE FAMILY UNIT

McCOMB - In the movie The Godfather a group of Mafia chieftains are 
discussing the pros and cons of getting into the illegal-drug business.

One of the fictional crime bosses asserts that in his regime drugs will 
only be sold "to the coloreds" and will be kept away from schools and nicer 
neighborhoods. That movie was set in the late 1940s, and much has changed 
for the worse on the drug scene since. Illegal drugs are so pervasive now 
that a growing number of school districts in rural Mississippi are planning 
this fall to drug test students, black and white, who participate in 
extracurricular activities. This is more of a preventive measure than an 
attempt to catch drug users. The theory is that if kids know they are going 
to be tested and have to pay a price for using drugs - such as not being 
able to play sports or in the band - it will give them another reason to 
say no to experimentation. Illegal drugs, contrary to the expressed will of 
the old Mafia chief, have not been restricted to the "coloreds." Drug abuse 
and trafficking is an equal-opportunity plague, observing no racial or 
social barriers. But it is evident that its biggest toll is on 
African-Americans, at least in Mississippi. Law-enforcement personnel say 
that much of the crime in this state is related directly or indirectly to 
drugs.

Addicts steal to get money to buy drugs.

Dealers kill each other over turf wars. It is not unusual for innocent 
people, including children, to get killed in the crossfire. Watch any 
Mississippi television station and you can see reports of it, almost daily. 
Not all but a majority of the perpetrators and the victims of the 
drug-related violence are African-American. Former McComb Mayor J.C. Woods 
called my attention to an opinion piece in the Aug. 4 Business Week 
magazine that calls for the decriminalization of drugs to help blacks. 
Woods was appalled by the suggestion, and I don't agree with it either. 
Gary S. Becker, who teaches at the University of Chicago and is a fellow of 
the Hoover Institution, wrote the column, which makes some valid points, 
such as: "Black families were quite stable until the '60s, if not quite as 
stable as those of whites.

Although divorce and unmarried motherhood have increased throughout 
American society, they have exploded among blacks. Well under half of black 
children are in two-parent families, sharply down from about 75 percent in 
1950, although there has been a little improvement since the mid-1990s." 
Becker points to the huge increase in the number of black men in prison, 
asserting they make up more than 40 percent of male prisoners although they 
are only 12 percent of the overall population. "For those incarcerated on 
drug-related charges, the black share is 60 percent. "There's reason to 
believe this shortage of desirable male companions discourages black women 
from marrying or staying married for long," Becker wrote. So, one of his 
solutions is to decriminalize drugs, taking the profit motive out of the 
trade. "Trafficking in drugs attracts young blacks mainly because it offers 
much better pay (provided they don't get caught) than do the legal 
alternatives which tend to be low-wage jobs," he wrote. I don't buy the 
theory, although an argument can be made that it is the lure of the money 
that is more tempting to some than the drugs themselves. But the drugs are 
so devastating that they must be outlawed.

You don't get rid of murder by legalizing it. I do think Becker makes a 
good argument in another part of his article on the stability of the black 
family. From the 1960s until the mid-1990s, when some reforms began to be 
made, the welfare system encouraged deterioration of the family by making 
it more profitable in many cases for a mother not to be married to someone 
with a low-paying job. We've had it backward for too long. More thought 
should be given to providing incentives and benefits, either directly or 
through tax breaks, to those who work and raise their families in 
traditional homes.

Charles Dunagin is a retired editor and publisher of the McComb 
Enterprise-Journal.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom