The murders and shootings into homes and cars in Batesville and Panola County since January mirror, unfortunately, similar activity throughout the country. Whether it be Memphis, or New Orleans or Kansas City or — insert the city name of your choice here — or Batesville, the cycle of drug-gun-gang violence follows a familiar pattern.

And our response also mirrors those communities. Friends and family grieve loudly and emotionally over the victim of the latest senseless, tragic death. Witnesses see nothing, clam up or disappear. Concerned community leaders rally to denounce, urge peace and call for an end to the violence. They lead prayer vigils and talk about ways to reach out to people and break the deadly cycle. Law enforcement pledges stepped up enforcement utilizing undercover informants, investigation and interdiction against drug activity. Some among us wonder aloud, “What in the world are we coming to?” Others wonder less loudly, “Will they all eventually just kill each other off?”

Meanwhile, in homes of black people all across this county and this country family members look at their boys and young men — their sons, grandsons, uncles, brothers — and wonder when they walk out the door if that will be the last time they see them alive.
It happens over and over again.

Much of the blame for the tragedy we see spreading exponentially in our society can be laid at the feet of a failed drug war. Starting in the late 1920s and really ramping up in the 1970s and ‘80s, the nation and its states have passed an overlapping patchwork of laws prohibiting and regulating drugs to the extent that in today’s society these laws have produced the unintended outcome of driving contraband drug prices higher and higher. Artificial price supports, if you will.

Drug law policy in this country hinges largely on eliminating illegal drug use by harsh punishment. Federal and state laws have given law enforcement broad search, arrest, and confiscatory powers coupled with strict sentencing laws, the idea is to punish the guilty and discourage those who might be tempted. The laws have nowhere succeeded in the goals those who wrote them intended. Instead, they have turned the black market drug trade into a lucrative, international big business.

What we have really done is to hand law enforcement an impossible task. They spend hours and hours trying to enforce these laws, placing officers in personal danger and consuming huge portions of local and state law enforcement budgets. When they make arrests and seize cash and/or drugs, officers announce, but not now without some hint of resignation that has become increasingly noticeable over the years, that they have “put a dent” in the drug trade.

Unfortunately, illegal drugs are such big business that “dents” — whether by local officers or multi-national jurisdictions — are simply absorbed as overhead, written into the price of doing business.
And within the workings of this swirling, profitable black market, down at the street level in Batesville or Clarksdale or Grenada, when a young entrepreneur/user gets ripped off, what’s he going to do? Call the law and file a complaint?

Instead, he’s going to seek redress in what he deems the most effective means at his disposal. Gang affiliation simply lends strength of numbers to give him some protection through affiliation with like-minded compatriots.

So the cycle of rip-off and retaliation begins, and once begun where does it end? It obviously has not yet ended in Batesville. And as long as this country struggles with a drug policy that does not address price and demand, it is likely to continue.