Pubdate: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY) Copyright: 2005 Lexington Herald-Leader Contact: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240 Author: Larry Webster Note: Larry Webster is a Pikeville lawyer. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) NEW TONIC FOR HOPELESS, NEW CALL FOR OUTRAGE Back in the '70s, Pikeville was the nation's per-capita leader in the sales of Woodbury After Shave. Delivery trucks would stop on Main Street and unload dolly after dolly of the sweet-smelling stuff, which the drunks drank because to buy illegal stuff like whiskey you also had to buy justices of the peace and high and low sheriffs. But a bottle of Woodbury and a Coke cost a dollar, and those were the only two things that storekeeper John Lloyd sold, and both were perfectly legal, so I should have gone ahead and used his last name too. But Woodbury was preferred by the connoisseur because of high proof and a nice fruity aftertaste and not too much menthol. The after shave was chased by Coca Cola, which reportedly no longer had cocaine in it, but certainly owes its original market share to the farmers of the Andes. So the whole downtown area smelled like cologne and you certainly did not have to turn your head away when one of the alkies came up to beg the dollar. Selling legal stuff that somebody might misuse to boost their spirits is soon going to be illegal, which means that most Eastern Kentucky sheriffs will go to jail over Sudafed or match heads, which are two of the ingredients in meth. We did not have the recipe for methamphetamine until recently when the drug police put pictures in the paper of all the stuff you need to make it and explained its effects to those seeking to become 10-foot tall and bulletproof. Before drug education, we thought Sudafed was an Italian's way of taking the government to court. But there is no doubt the UNITE money will help, and not just to fight the pill problem. One of the benefits of congressional seniority is that people Republican enough and with the capacity for ever-increasing outrage can make as much money as a drug dealer. In one county, which will go unnamed like John Lloyd mostly did, but which rhymes with the governor's last name, the money to hire a couple of football coaches is reportedly coming from Congress through the drug fight. Somebody ought to trace back to the source the drug problem, which is in fact a pill problem. The source is more likely than not another congressman and his idea of how to get federal money into the mountains. The Republicans called him "Culled Punkins", but his real name was Carl D. Perkins and he was a central-casting liberal whose vision led to millions of dollars of money being mailed to families for no apparent reason other than he was able to get it done. In the mountains, disability was subsidized and production was taxed. Now two or three generations of people who draw but are not artists have been born and their current young are swallowing Lortab and snorting Xanax and running labs with no white coats and no microscopes. These youth have been raised in a culture where your income depends on a doctor certifying that you are worthless and prescribing you something for it. You can outlaw everything and they will still drink Woodbury, at least until somebody with policy-making power has the courage to sort out the dangerous from the safe. What's safe can be grown outside a lab, right in the mountains but is now being imported from Mexico in broccoli trucks. - ---