Monday, July 27, 2015
The heroin trade today clear- ly ranks among the most lucrative growth industries in our region, state and nation. The fundamental microeconomics law of supply and demand demonstrates that the industry, if left unchecked, will not slow its meteoric rise anytime soon.
On the demand side, the Ohio Department of Health estimates the number of heroin addicts in the Buckeye State at more than 200,000 and growing. That roughly equals the total number of men, women and children in Mahoning or Trumbull county.
On the supply side, despite a series of recent highly publicized busts in the Mahoning Valley, drug dealers are like roaches. Even amid aggressive efforts to crush them, they rise again and multiply to plague public health and safety.
As Youngstown Police Chief Robin Lees quickly will tell you, their motivation is simple: greed.
Or as Greg Wilson, a detective with the Poland Township Police Department who led the most recent investigation for the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force, puts it: “It’s easy money.”
How easy? Drug Enforcement Agency officials estimate a courier driving five kilos of heroin from Chicago to New York can earn $5,000 for that one-day delivery or teenagers hired as independent contractors can clear $1,000 per week.
Clearly, the lure for quick cash can be just as strong as the craving for a quick fix. That’s why coordinated efforts to weaken the supply chain must continue unabated. This month’s 76-page 261-count indictment against 37 dealers and users in Greater Youngstown coordinated by city police, Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Heroin Unit and the Mahoning Valley LETF is but the latest example of the effectiveness of such joint investigations.
Last December, a similar sting netted 57 heroin-related arrests in the Valley, and two months ago, the multiagency Operation Warren Shield led by the Ohio State Highway Patrol logged 60 arrests and massive drug seizures in the largest patrol- organized drug sting of its kind in history. As of Sunday, the OSHP stopped 383 vehicles this year in Trumbull County for drug violations, the highest number of any county in Ohio, even those with 10 times Trumbull’s population.
TARGET DEMAND SIDE AS WELL
Despite such success stories, however, such coordinated crackdowns yield only limited results in lessening the supply of the killer drug. Any coordinated fight also must target the demand side. Thanks to efforts by DeWine’s Heroin Unit, progress there continues as well.
In a meeting with The Vindicator’s Editorial Board last Friday, the attorney general outlined several initiatives that hold promise, including a more comprehensive education program.
“This country is doing a very poor job at drug education and prevention,” he said.
In addition, judges should listen to the pleas of police and prosecutors for longer prison terms and less unsupervised probation for offenders.
In the long term, the glorified culture of acquiring prestige and riches associated with pushing smack also must be quashed. That culture, according to Lees, is akin to attainment of advanced educational degrees. With their first arrest, pushers earn their high school diploma, he said. With arrest No. 2, they receive their bachelor’s degree, and every subsequent arrest is another rung on the ladder of “higher education,” Lees said.
Replacing those riches and bling with retribution and the brig have begun to crack at the edges of the anguishing heroin epidemic gripping our community and country. Intensifying such campaigns can go far toward instilling a sobering lesson among dealers that any short-term achievement and gain lead only to long-term failure and pain for themselves and their hapless drug-dependent victims.