More than two decades later, another drug wreaks havoc on a town
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
On a late, warm and muggy night in the summer of 1989, a friend and I walked up and down Bryden Road in Columbus, Ohio, believing we could change the world.
The friend, Cornell McCleary, was a street-savvy individual who grew up on the tough streets of Philadelphia. Cornell understood better than most how the criminal mind works and the challenges faced by law enforcement that was trying to outwit it.
I, on the other hand, was a fairly new arrival of six months from New Orleans, a place where the greatest fear for me was the neighborhood bully with a water pistol. This particular night, I was getting to know Ohio's capital city and the Near East Side neighborhood where my office was located.
We were out late into the early morning hours when most people in Columbus were asleep. We chose Bryden Road, a Columbus street close to downtown and laced with stately old homes, to seek out individuals involved in illicit drug activity. Our mission was clear.
We were looking for drug dealers.
It was part of a larger news series by the Columbus Dispatch titled, "A Week on Crack Street," an in-depth look at how the drug had made its way into Columbus, a once sleepy cow town known more for the Ohio State Buckeyes knocking heads than people becoming crack heads.
That was 21 years ago. Columbus is no longer a sleepy town but a bustling metropolitan area suffering the same endemic social ills that plague other large urban areas.
For Cornell, none of it would be a surprise. He often battled with city and business leaders, local clergy and others he felt were not doing enough to address the city's growing drug problem. Even now, he would in his vintage affable but firm manner be impressing upon me how he saw it all coming.
This week in Northwest Montana, Cornell's message resonated. What he told me then was that a drug called "crank" would make its way into the nation's rural communities much the same way crack cocaine had infiltrated urban areas. This new drug was also known as methamphetamine outside of its blunt five-letter colloquial description, and he predicted it would wreak havoc wherever it landed. No one would be immune.
Today, meth is a four-letter word. A more descriptive version of it can be found on a big sign at the intersection of Main Street and U.S. Highway 93 in Ronan, where the words "Not Even Once" are inscribed in the foreground of burial spots in a cemetery, the image of the Grim Reaper kneeling over the tombstones.
It's all part of the Montana Meth Project’s statewide art competition called Paint the State, which, according to its mission, promotes artistically inclined teenagers to paint signs depicting the horrors of the drug. It's not only a visually assertive sign. It carries a poignant message. Drugs are sending too many people to an early grave.
We've had the war on drugs. We've had 'Just Say No!' We've watched celebrities - from athletes to singers to actors to musicians to comedians - have their lives cut short by the pervasiveness of drug abuse. Now we're banking on a Picasso-in-waiting relaying a message that will connect with other young people.
Cornell and I never changed the world. I'm not sure we came close. Cornell never had the chance to say he told me so, as another friend in Columbus told me this past week that Cornell passed away in 2009 from complications from diabetes and high blood pressure. I can only assume that Cornell probably felt our walk on "Crack Street" never quite made it to the end of the block.
This much is certain. Whether it's the big city or the small town, drug abuse and the suffering it brings to so many young people and their families are dangerous intersections we all must cross together.
In so many words, Cornell did tell me that.
