War On Drugs

Carroll school suspensions are up, the number of county youths age 13 or younger entering the juvenile justice system has swelled and the number of county teen-agers seeking treatment for heroin use is among the highest in the metropolitan area. Members of a newly formed coalition called the Active Alliance for a Healthier Community are blaming poor child-rearing and have outlined a plan of action to combat these sobering statistics. "The faith community plays an important role ... [to]

BABORIGAME, Mexico -- In Latin America's war against drugs, the armies win some battles. Drug traffickers win others. But the most consistent losers are Indian families like those who live in this remote area of the Sierra Madre mountains.What happened last October in this Indian village of mud and wood huts is being held up as an example of how badly things can go wrong. Mexican soldiers stormed the village in a "marijuana raid," terrorizing the inhabitants, destroying their homes and killing their livestock.

WASHINGTON - Down in the warm waters off Central America, the drug war is a cat-and-mouse game that has gone on for decades. But since Sept. 11, the game has changed because the Coast Guard has been ordered back to American ports to guard the nation's borders from terrorism. And intelligence reports suggest that large shipments of drugs that would normally have been stopped in the eastern Pacific Ocean above Colombia are amassing just south of the U.S. border in Mexico. Coast Guard seizures of drugs are down 66 percent by weight from this time last year.

George Johnson and his friends like to talk about the futility of the drug war, about how the street pushers and the addicts are at the bottom of a flourishing business for which they go to jail and other people make the money. But the 54-year-old briefly stopped his discussion outside the Pimlico library branch on Park Heights Avenue to direct the driver of a silver car to the street where crack cocaine and heroin were being sold yesterday morning. Go down Garrison Avenue and turn left on Denmore Avenue, behind Park Heights Elementary School, five blocks from the Pimlico Race Course.

More than half of Baltimore's young black men were in trouble with the law on any given day last year, according to a study that criticizes the federal government for making enemies of black men and war zones of their communities.The 10-page report, to be released today by the Alexandria, Va.-based National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA), said 56 percent of Baltimore's black men between the ages of 18 and 35 were either in prison, on parole or probation, being sought on arrest warrants or awaiting trial on an average day in 1991.

The sad truth that colors every moment of "Traffic," Steven Soderbergh's distressingly clear-eyed take on the so-called War on Drugs, comes through most clearly in one of the film's last lines, as a shell-shocked veteran of the conflict tries to rationalize what's going on. "If there is a war on drugs," this fighter says, "then many members of our family are the enemy. And I don't know how you wage war on your own family." A scathing, wearying and ultimately frustrating dissection of the Sisyphean conflict, "Traffic" benefits from strong performances, sure-handed direction and explosive subject matter: It's every bit as thrilling and engrossing as the best spy thriller or cop flick.

"A politician normally prospers under a democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them." - H.L. MenckenSix months ago, what should have been a traumatic event in the life of a modern American city occurred in Baltimore and went almost completely unnoticed. There were no cries of outrage. No civic convulsions. An army of social scientists that should have descended to pick apart our municipal soul never materialized.What Baltimore did was to declare a partial cease fire in The War on Drugs.

Dozens of city workers swept through Mill Hill yesterday, clearing 25 tons of trash, slashing 16,000 feet of overgrown weeds and removing hundreds of feet of graffiti in an attempt to turn the tide in the Southwest Baltimore community's war on drugs and crime.The workers targeted a 13-square-block community sandwiched between Gwynns Falls Park and Washington Village to clear storm drains, bait for rats and board vacant homes that had become havens for drug users.Southwest District police officers aggressively patrolled the neighborhood of 750 homes in a search for prostitutes and drug dealers.

From dawn until dark, Kim Fuller paced the streets around Milton Avenue and Chase Street in East Baltimore, an emaciated, 5-foot-4- inch, 100-pound woman in a black baseball cap, selling about $100 of crack cocaine a day to support the habit that had taken her job and children. "My customers knew my face, and I would let them know, `Girl, I've got this stuff, and it's so good, it's bombin'," recalled Fuller, 39, a former Johns Hopkins Hospital billing clerk. "It's a competitive business."

MEXICO'S MOMENT of infamy quietly slipped by this month with the annual announcement of Mexico's so-called "certification" by the U.S. State Department in the war on drugs. In the past, this event has been marked by heated debate about the hypocrisy of such a process, and even scandal when Mexico's version of our drug czar was shown to have ties to one of the leading drug cartels. Not this year. The change has little to do with the actual state of Mexico's drug-fighting efforts, and everything to do with politics.