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The Illicit Drugs Trade

Time for Community Action

Billy Mitchell

The evil trade in illicit drugs, together with the cost in terms of human misery that goes with it, has reached unprecedented levels across the Province. Those of us who genuinely want to bring this nefarious trafficking in human misery to an end must face some hard facts.

One of these facts is that paramilitary beatings and shootings will not solve the problem. Many of those responsible for this evil trade are as well armed as the paramilitaries themselves, and direct armed intervention will only lead to a spiral of tit-for-tat killings and beatings. We cannot afford another long war such as the one we have just come out of. More importantly we do not have the moral right to expect members of paramilitary groups, or anyone else, to take on a battle that is really ours.

Another hard fact is the inability of the police, on their own, to deal with the situation. There is a fear within many communities that dealers and others involved in the drugs trade are being retained as 'protected informers' against paramilitary groups and community politicians. If such fears are real rather than imagined there will always be a problem within the police and other security forces about priorities. One wonders why the same degree of surveillance and force that was employed so enthusiastically against paramilitaries is not being employed against the drug gangs. Is the silent systematic poisoning of our children any less heinous than the terror of the bomb and the gun?

A third hard fact is that if communities want to eradicate this evil trade from their midst they will have to do it themselves. This is not a job to be passed on to "the boys" or to be left to the police. The time for passing the buck is over. The trade in illicit drugs is not primarily a paramilitary problem nor is it primarily a police problem. It is a community problem, and it demands an effective community response. If those people who are affected most by the drugs trade refuse to act on our own behalf we have only ourselves to blame for the increasing rise in the trade. This is not a call for people to take the law into their own hands. It is a call for communities to exercise the inalienable right of self preservation against an evil and malignant, even satanic, force.

The drugs trade is a lucrative trade. It pays big dividends. Those engaged in this trade are not likely to be persuaded by moral arguments to give up the source of their high incomes and luxurious living. If the terror of direct action by anti-drug paramilitaries is not persuasive it is doubtful if moral reasoning will be any more effective. The question that confronts society is, how is the just struggle against the Warlords of the Drugs Trade to be conducted? If the violence of paramilitary groups is not the answer and if the police alone is not the answer, what persuasive force is left that the community might usefully employ?

Part of that answer lies, I believe, in a tightly organised campaign of silent non-violent picketing of those involved in the drugs trade. The moral alternative to violence is non-violent resistance. The picketing of trafficker's homes and other properties being used to further the drugs trade has been tried unsuccessfully on an ad hoc basis before. To be successful, picketing needs to be properly co-ordinated by local communities on a twenty-four hour basis with the intention of "picketing till they (the dealers) are rendered ineffective".

If it is legitimate for aggrieved workers to picket their workplace surely it is legitimate for aggrieved residents to picket the workplace of drug dealers.Effective picket lines need to be established outside every propertythat is being used to further this evil trade. Even more effective would be mobile picket lines that follow the dealers and their cohorts as they attempt to ply their trade. If they can't trade they can't move their stock and if they can't move their stock they can't earn. They become less and less economically viable and less and less of their poison reaches our children.

Such non-violent action will only be successful if it is supported and resourced by the whole community. Parents, Grandparents, Young People, Clergy, Teachers, Community Leaders and political activists. Indeed it is time for our professional classes to show leadership.

The alternative that I have called for demands personal action, even personal sacrifice, on the part of ordinary people. It demands leadership and co-ordination from the clergy and other professional people, and it demands a firm commitment to non-violence. The other alternative is an ever-increasing rise in the drugs trade together with sporadic outbursts of violence between the drugs gangs and members of paramilitary groups who decide to intervene on behalf of their families or others. This is not a viable alternative.

As I have already said, this is a community problem. Communities must make their choice. You must make your choice.

(First published in the North Belfast News)