Pubdate: Mon, 11 Feb 2002
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2002 Cox Interactive Media.
Contact:  http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: Fox Butterfield (New York Times)

RURAL AREAS FIGHTING DRUGS

Police Call Problem 'Beyond Epidemic'

Prentiss, Miss. --- The trophy houses, with wrought-iron gates and 
grand-columned entryways, keep popping up on little country roads here, in 
clearings in the piney woods and near doublewide trailers. Sometimes, there 
is a Mercedes or two in the driveway.

In the affluent suburbs of Boston, New York or Dallas, these fake chateaus 
might belong to successful doctors, lawyers or software company owners. But 
Prentiss, a small town in south-central Mississippi, has no industry or 
affluent professional class in the conventional sense. The last sizable 
factory moved to Mexico three years ago, leaving an unemployment rate of 25 
percent.

Instead, the police say, these houses belong to drug dealers made rich by a 
flourishing business in crack, methamphetamines, marijuana and OxyContin, 
the prescription painkiller. They are the most visible manifestation of an 
explosion of rural drugs and crime that is overwhelming local law 
enforcement agencies and bringing the sort of violence normally associated 
with poor neighborhoods of big cities. The upsurge has been felt across the 
United States from Maine to Oregon and from Georgia to Texas, even as drug 
use in most cities has been declining.

In December, for example, Ron Jones, one of five members of the Prentiss 
Police Department and the son of the police chief, was shot to death as he 
entered an apartment to serve a search warrant for drugs.

It was the most recent of 14 homicides in the last two years in Jefferson 
Davis County, which has 14,000 residents, giving the county a homicide rate 
of 50 per 100,000.

That is higher than the rates of Detroit, Washington and New Orleans --- 
cities that regularly have the highest homicide rates in the nation.

Nationwide, while the rate of arrests in drug crimes has fallen 11.2 
percent in cities with more than 250,000 residents over the last five 
years, it has risen 10.5 percent in rural areas, according to the FBI.

Even more striking, from 1990 to 1999, the last year for which figures are 
available, the percentage of drug-related homicides tripled in rural areas 
but fell by almost half in big cities.

To measure the problem another way, a continuing survey of drug use among 
junior high and high school students by the University of Michigan has 
found that crack is now more widely used among eighth-, 10th- and 
12th-graders in rural areas than among those in metropolitan areas.

Methamphetamine use is now highest in rural areas among all three grades, 
and heroin use is about equal in urban and rural areas, the survey found.

The spread of drugs in the countryside is uneven, the experts say, with 
heavy concentrations of certain drugs in some counties.

In Washington County, for instance, at the far northeastern corner of 
Maine, prosecutions in crimes involving OxyContin are 10 times what they 
were in 1998, say law enforcement officials, who estimate that at least 
1,000 of the county's 35,000 residents are addicts.

"It's gone beyond the epidemic stage," Sheriff Joe Tibbetts said. "I can't 
think of a family in Washington County that hasn't been scathed by it in 
some way."

His officers' families are among those who have been affected, Tibbetts said.

One reason for the growth in rural drug problems, federal officials say, is 
that aggressive prosecution in cities has led dealers to seek safety in the 
farms and forests of rural counties, which have far fewer law enforcement 
officers.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager