COMMENTARY : Leaders and Citizens Have Mandate to Solve Drug Problem

The robotic Abraham Lincoln at Disneyland repeats the warning for our generation: “We can’t be defeated by a foreign army. The only danger of invasion is an ongoing internal moral collapse.” If the Happiest Place on Earth can whisper such an unhappy prospect, then there is hope. And hope is what propels the 19 churches that constitute the Orange County Congregation Community Organizations.

The more than 50,000 families represented in these churches know what Lincoln was talking about. They look around their neighborhoods and see people who want to live productive lives but are surrounded by internal corrosion brought on by drug dealers and an attitude by some that says, “Well, this will be a long process to stop this problem.”

Their children go to school and pick up hypodermic needles and other drug paraphernalia along the way. Older children bully them into buying drugs. A well-intentioned public official recommended to one church member that she sell her house and move to a “nice” neighborhood, as if the virus of the drug epidemic could be solved simply by moving.

The 19 churches represent a cross-section of Orange County, from Buena Park in the north to San Juan Capistrano in the south. Most are in Santa Ana and Anaheim. There is no area that is immune. It is not an inner-city problem or Latino problem. The plague is no respecter of persons, socio-economic class or position in society. The driver in the car next to you may be a drug abuser. Police report that 80% of all street crime is drug-related. The epidemic is out of control.

Over the last two years organization has decided to do more than simply be another hand-wringing group that moans and complains to government officials about the problem. We want to be part of the solution. Church members began meeting with police chiefs, superintendents of schools, city council members, judges and county health officials to see what their perceptions were. The congregations organization sought to educate itself about what efforts were under way to fight the epidemic. What we learned was both frightening and hopeful.

The frightening part was that more than 74% of the cases in Superior Court are drug-related and that because of the overcrowded jail conditions and caseloads of judges, four out of five convicted drug felons are placed on probation. The average sentence for a first-time dealer is 60 days. Clearly a message was being sent to prospective drug dealers, “Don’t worry about doing time. It won’t happen!”

More frightening was the increasing mortality rate of drug users. From 1988 to 1989, drug deaths rose 20%, some of them in families of our church members. The estimate is that there are more than 27,000 drug addicts in Orange County. If one of these wanted to receive treatment and couldn’t afford the $1,000 a day for rehabilitation services, he or she would have to compete to be one of the 347 who receive publicly funded residential treatment in the county. Funding for treatment from the county and state has not increased in six years.

On the part of public officials, we found concern about these realities, but a sense of paralysis that the picture would brighten in the future. We realized that there was no coordination of efforts between prevention, treatment and law enforcement. Each governing authority, whether it be the police, school districts, city or county, had its own programs, with its own funding. But there was no strategy for evaluating the effectiveness of these programs in light of a general plan.

In short, there was not a perceived “war” or “epidemic” going on that would do what a general war footing did in World War II: bring all elected officials together, put all their collective programs on the table, and decide, apart from parochial “turf” concerns, how they could be coordinated to produce the maximum results.

The church organization’s research found that this was exactly what the grand jury in 1987 mandated in its recommendation to the County Board of Supervisors: Bring together all elected officials, mayors, council members and school boards to develop a framework by which all future programs and decisions would be evaluated. Such a “summit” meeting would be a visible “declaration of war” on drugs, sending a message: “No longer is it business as usual.” The latter attitude has resulted in increasing deaths and a sense of hopelessness in the neighborhoods where our church members reside.

On June 18, 2,500 representatives from the 19 congregations met to hear the research reports. There was hope and excitement about what has been accomplished so far. Two cities, Santa Ana and Anaheim, have enthusiastically endorsed resolutions supporting the need for a comprehensive strategy to fight the drug epidemic. The Board of Supervisors has likewise approved such a resolution.

But there is not yet the resolve or ability to move beyond this except to wait for yet another report from another task force about its latest recommendation, and its most recent deploring of the problem. We are beyond that stage.

We need our most visible leaders to step forward and say in clear tones, “Drugs are the harbinger of the kind of moral decay that Lincoln prophesied about. The fight to prevent their use, to treat the ones who have fallen into using them and the need to punish severely those selling them, must take precedence over every other issue.”

The Orange County Congregation Community Organizations is looking for the kind of leadership among our elected officials that will take this stand.

Yes, we know that there is congestion on our roads, that there are other pressing problems besetting our cities. But none are draining the lifeblood of people and killing the dreams of families like the insidious presence of drugs.

The churches in group were chartered as witnesses of Christ to bring hope to their constituents and light to their communities. They are fulfilling that mandate in a way that transcends the differences of whether they are Protestant or Catholic.

Likewise, everyone in Orange County, whatever their race or religious belief, has a mandate to create an atmosphere of hope that permits families to raise their children in peace, without fear of death or injury every day of the year from drug-crazed drivers or others under the influence.

We believe that the time is right for us to begin asking our leaders to lead. May they surmise that the only reason for us to fail is the lack of moral courage to do the right thing. Our prayers are that they have that courage.