Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs

[Montag]

Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs
Jan 15, 2008

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080115/D8U6KGE80.html

excerpt:

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

[Montag]

Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs
Jan 15, 2008

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080115/D8U6KGE80.html

excerpt:

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

[Montag]

Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs
Jan 15, 2008

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080115/D8U6KGE80.html

excerpt:

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

[Montag]

Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs
Jan 15, 2008

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080115/D8U6KGE80.html

excerpt:

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

[Montag]

Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs
Jan 15, 2008

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080115/D8U6KGE80.html

excerpt:

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

[Montag]

Rust Belt Cities See Rise in Drugs
Jan 15, 2008

By RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080115/D8U6KGE80.html

excerpt:

ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) - Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.

Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs - the L's and the G's - deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.

In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.

In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.

The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, 'I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"

Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.

Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.

Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.

In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.

Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.

More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.

[sweetheart]

The medical monopoly on dispensing drugs; given that only the rich can afford the
service; puts the poor off-system where they must obtain their drugs elsewhere.
Then millions on millions demanding cheaper medical treatments (pain killers),
get supply from the black economy. Any time you have a state monopoly, you always
have an underground market, bet it foreign exchange, weapons, food or news media.

What is so amazing is that they are to undereducated and stupid to know this universal
economic principal. Then they blame the market participants rather than the market
structure. And now, without contraception and family planning, a boom of babies
comes from underage pregnancies and whatnot - anotehr generation of slaves to grease
the wheels of war. Oh what a brave new world we live in.

[sweetheart]

The medical monopoly on dispensing drugs; given that only the rich can afford the
service; puts the poor off-system where they must obtain their drugs elsewhere.
Then millions on millions demanding cheaper medical treatments (pain killers),
get supply from the black economy. Any time you have a state monopoly, you always
have an underground market, bet it foreign exchange, weapons, food or news media.

What is so amazing is that they are to undereducated and stupid to know this universal
economic principal. Then they blame the market participants rather than the market
structure. And now, without contraception and family planning, a boom of babies
comes from underage pregnancies and whatnot - anotehr generation of slaves to grease
the wheels of war. Oh what a brave new world we live in.

[sweetheart]

The medical monopoly on dispensing drugs; given that only the rich can afford the
service; puts the poor off-system where they must obtain their drugs elsewhere.
Then millions on millions demanding cheaper medical treatments (pain killers),
get supply from the black economy. Any time you have a state monopoly, you always
have an underground market, bet it foreign exchange, weapons, food or news media.

What is so amazing is that they are to undereducated and stupid to know this universal
economic principal. Then they blame the market participants rather than the market
structure. And now, without contraception and family planning, a boom of babies
comes from underage pregnancies and whatnot - anotehr generation of slaves to grease
the wheels of war. Oh what a brave new world we live in.

[sweetheart]

The medical monopoly on dispensing drugs; given that only the rich can afford the
service; puts the poor off-system where they must obtain their drugs elsewhere.
Then millions on millions demanding cheaper medical treatments (pain killers),
get supply from the black economy. Any time you have a state monopoly, you always
have an underground market, bet it foreign exchange, weapons, food or news media.

What is so amazing is that they are to undereducated and stupid to know this universal
economic principal. Then they blame the market participants rather than the market
structure. And now, without contraception and family planning, a boom of babies
comes from underage pregnancies and whatnot - anotehr generation of slaves to grease
the wheels of war. Oh what a brave new world we live in.

[sweetheart]

The medical monopoly on dispensing drugs; given that only the rich can afford the
service; puts the poor off-system where they must obtain their drugs elsewhere.
Then millions on millions demanding cheaper medical treatments (pain killers),
get supply from the black economy. Any time you have a state monopoly, you always
have an underground market, bet it foreign exchange, weapons, food or news media.

What is so amazing is that they are to undereducated and stupid to know this universal
economic principal. Then they blame the market participants rather than the market
structure. And now, without contraception and family planning, a boom of babies
comes from underage pregnancies and whatnot - anotehr generation of slaves to grease
the wheels of war. Oh what a brave new world we live in.

[sweetheart]

The medical monopoly on dispensing drugs; given that only the rich can afford the
service; puts the poor off-system where they must obtain their drugs elsewhere.
Then millions on millions demanding cheaper medical treatments (pain killers),
get supply from the black economy. Any time you have a state monopoly, you always
have an underground market, bet it foreign exchange, weapons, food or news media.

What is so amazing is that they are to undereducated and stupid to know this universal
economic principal. Then they blame the market participants rather than the market
structure. And now, without contraception and family planning, a boom of babies
comes from underage pregnancies and whatnot - anotehr generation of slaves to grease
the wheels of war. Oh what a brave new world we live in.