Casualties of the drug war - Editorial

Ogdensburg Journal/Advance News (NY)
Saturday, March 17, 2001


Anyone who still wonders about the need for the St.  Lawrence County and Ogdensburg's drug task force should look no farther than the recent events that have shaken this community.  The alleged murder of 16 year old Andrew O'Marah is being described by those close to the case as directly connected with drugs.  The Grand Jury has alleged that Mr.  O'Marah was shoved into the river when he was intoxicated on drugs.

Wade Creighton, the 19 year old accused of the murder allegedly was on drugs at the time.  While he must be considered innocent until proven guilty, there are still lessons to be drawn from this tragedy.  OFA and Ogdensburg does have a drug problem.

The Ogdensburg Police Department deserves a great deal of credit for its hard work in this case.  Investigators had a difficult time sifting through conflicting stories and interviewing uncooperative witnesses.

St.  Lawrence County District Attorney Jerome Richards was recently criticized by several members of the pro drug lobby for suggesting that the county needs to continue its was on drugs.

Many of them suggest that making drugs legal and freely available to adults will some how miraculously solve the nation's problems.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that legalizing drugs and making them freely available to adults would have an even more devastating effect on our community.  Creating a larger number of addicts and mental, physical and emotional cripples would not make our communities a better place to live.

Even worse, it would send a strong message to our young people that they can find refuge from their problems and reality through artificial chemicals.

Pro legalization champions can claim that by legalizing drugs it would be easier to control their use and prevent access to young people.

But anyone who has bothered to look at our society's experience with alcohol and tobacco realizes that making such substances widely available and legal for adults is simply an invitation to teens to follow the already poor example set by adults.

Research has shown the kind of devastating effects that drugs can have on young bodies during their growing years.  Law enforcement officers, social workers and addiction counselors can describe the equally chilling effect that chronic addiction can have emotionally on children who spend those formative years zoned out from normal life.

DA Richards says that during the investigation, even hardened detectives were chilled by their interviews with some who just couldn't bring themselves to care about what had happened to a fellow human being.

We would like to commend city police and Mr.  Richards for their efforts in solving the mystery of what happened to young Andrew O'Marah.

But the sad conclusion of this affair should be to send a wake up call to the entire community that we must redouble our efforts to prevent the drug plague from making further inroads into our most precious resource, out young people.

There will be those who will claim that if we legalized drugs and took away the stigma against their use and abuse that all of our society's problems would magically disappear.

They may even suggest that it was because drugs were illegal that this tragedy happened.  The reality is far different.

Drug use helped deaden those involved to a callous disregard for the consequences of their actions.  It's a lesson that should not be lost lest this tragedy be repeated.