Sept. 5, 2007 — The recent headlines tell of the growing battle against the drug epidemic, which has been rampaging through Eastern Kentucky.
• Carter County sweep results in over 100 arrests
• Pike County considers suing maker of Oxycontin
• Candidate for Governor in primary proposes attacking all manufacturers of misused prescription drugs
• Local group forms anti-drug committee and plans rally
• Oxycontin maker fined millions
• Dare program makes comeback
• Manchester ministers monitor courts
These and more headlines merely hint at prevalence of the problem and contain hints of the solution.
When my office, which went thirty years without a burglary, has suffered three burglaries in the past year, something is bad wrong. In our small town a rash of burglaries has been traced to need of cash to buy drugs. When over and over we look at the obituaries expecting to read of 83 year olds and instead read of 23, 28 and 33 year olds dying from no listed cause, we know they represent drug overdoses or suicides induced by drugs. Something is bad wrong.
Can something be done? Are we doomed to a decimated population of our younger generation? Can we afford to turn our collective heads, the Appalachian fatalistic attitude the “what will be, will be.” Neither is a survival of the fittest attitude tolerable to any but the hardest hearted.
Here is my proposal. I am of an age with memory of Red Sox star pitcher Mel Parnell in full colored back pages of magazine ads touting Camels. A second string movie star, Ronald Reagan, was there also to push Chesterfields. Most all magazines featured doctors testifying there was not a cough in a carload or that their cigarette was gentle on the “t” zone. Not only do I remember when “everybody” smoked and that it was socially acceptable, but those who did not smoke learned to keep any protests to themselves lest they be hooted down as wimps. All public buildings were equipped with ash trays (and some with spittoons). Likewise, I am old enough to remember when every wedding party, cocktail party (of which there were many in those days) every social hour following the club meeting, featured most in attendance drinking not one, but two, three or more drinks about as fast as they could consumed. Those same people then hopped in their cars and drove home without giving it a thought.
Over the past several years have you, as I, noticed that if you can even find a cocktail party most in attendance nurse drink one for the whole evening. And have you all not noticed slinky smokers shivering outside the hospital or restaurant or in the alley grabbing a puff on a work break.
What happened to everyone smoking and everyone drinking, with cultural hindsight, to excess? The answer is that each of these substantial changes in acceptable behavior took all of society’s “movers and shakers” to reach a point of what is no longer acceptable behavior. A tipping point was reached. It definitely took government intervention. It took industry cooperation. In dram shop cases and tobacco settlements it took jury verdicts and the plaintiff’s bar. It took the MADD mothers. It took the medical establishment. It took the educational system. It even took Miss Kentucky, for pity sakes. And ultimately it took immediate and extended family, church organizations and millions of individual Americans putting down that cigarette or that second highball. These two societal changes have saved thousands of lives snuffed out or greatly shortened by cancer, heart disease, cirrhosis and accidents. Folks, if it can be turned around as to acceptance of smoking and acceptance of driving after drinking, it can be done as to use of street drugs or abuse of prescription drugs. But it will take government, business, non-profit, schools, the medical establishment, anti-drug committees, and ultimately you and me and each of us doing our small part to push illegal drug use past its tipping point into oblivion.
Robert L. Caummisar
Attorney at Law
301 West Main Street
Grayson
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