Valentine's Day in the Inner City

IT was a modern Valentine's Day Massacre. On February 14, 13 persons were shot dead or wounded in Washington, D.C.

To nobody's surprise, drugs played a part in each of these shootings. Thanks to a competitive crack market, Washington's murder rate has climbed to a national high of almost two per day. There have already been 75 D.C. homocides this year.

Also to nobody's surprise, Washington's troubles are not unique. America is losing the war on drugs fast; in the 1980s, cocaine use in this country has quadrupled, billions of dollars have been siphoned from the economy and thousands have lost their lives.

Why have government efforts failed so miserably to slow the drug trade? Easy answers such as bureaucratic ineptitude and "they're all corrupted by drug money" aren't convincing. Many other countries have succeeded in preventing drugs from becoming a national catastrophe. But our government, as the Washington case demonstrates, has failed because it is unwilling to attack the source of the nation's drug problems: the hopelessness and poverty of the inner city.

AMERICAN cities are among the most racially segregated in the world. The number of Black neighborhoods suffering from extreme poverty has grown steadily for the past 20 years. These ghettos have terrible schools, few job opportunities and high crime rates. Although ghetto residents comprise a small percentage of the nation's poor, they account for approximately half of federal welfare expenditures.

America's drug problem begins in this urban ghetto. When children cannot fathom an escape from their horrible environment, they turn to drugs. When a minimum-wage job brings ridicule because it won't lead anywhere, they turn to drugs. As long as segregated, impoverished ghetto neighborhoods are shut off from the rest of society, children will turn to drugs.

As Dorothy Gilliam of The Washington Post recently wrote, "In the long run, of course, nothing will change until we cure the material and spiritual poverty that has been allowed to settle deep in the heart of our city's poor."

LITTLE government action has been addressed to this fundamental problem. Washington Mayor Marion Barry recently mustered the energy to propose hiring more police officers to work in particularly dangerous neighborhoods. He has no urban renewal agenda. George Bush, meanwhile, is still in the shadow of Ronald "drugs are out of style in the U.S." Reagan, as evidenced by his budget's bias towards supply-side drug intervention.

This policy, aimed at stopping drugs from entering the country, can only dent the drug problem. Even if a substantial amount of cocaine were prevented from crossing U.S. borders (which experts consider an almost impossible task), American-made drugs such as PCP could shift to meet the demand.

Bush is unwilling to attack the demand side of the drug equation, cleaning up the inner city, because it entails renouncing many of his conservative principles. He would have to advocate ending residential segregation, investing much more in inner-city schools and expanding substantive economic opportunities for ghetto residents. While he may be slowly breaking out of the Reagan mold, he still has a very long way to go.

The real drug crisis may be that Americans don't want to clean up the inner city. Drug abusers are viewed by many as morally repugnant, and few voters want to spend precious tax dollars on the urban poor. According to Dr. David Musto of Yale, "Middle class Americans may become so absolutely disgusted that all they will want to do is arrest everyone or wall up the inner city."

Eventually people must realize that the costs of inaction are borne by more than the poor. Extremist groups such as the Nation of Islam have cleaned up drug-infested areas and earned the support of many local residents. If the government cannot help the prisoners of the urban ghetto, hate groups will.