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Kroger offers pragmatic words on a sobering issue
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The day before he oversaw the state’s settlement with its college savings plan’s manager OppenheimerFunds Inc., Oregon Attorney General John Kroger addressed a regional quagmire that is also having a national and global impact: drug trafficking.
Speaking at the Portland Building’s auditorium the same night as former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change lecture at the Keller Auditorium, his audience was rather petite. However, those in attendance were treated to some of the most sensible ideas from one of the more practical officials in the state. Kroger particularly emphasized the overwhelming influence the drug trade has over criminal activity in Oregon and the rest of the country, as well as terrorism abroad.
“When you work in the criminal justice system, you see that almost the entire thing is driven by substance abuse, by drug addiction and alcohol abuse,” Kroger said. “As a benchmark in most counties in Oregon, 70 to 80 percent of the property crime we see is committed by drug addicts, who were stealing to pay for their addiction.”
He also pointed out that drug addiction was the number one cause of child abuse in the state, and that there is a drug addict in about 70 percent of the homes from which a child has to be removed and put up for adoption.
Drug abuse is also having a crippling affect on the state’s economy and ability to create jobs, a category where Oregon currently ranks 49th in the country. Kroger demonstrated this through a discussion with top officials at Fred Meyer, and how they’ve spent millions of dollars to train people only to fire them due to substance abuse.
A major point he stressed, though, was regarding the issue’s international impact. “Last year 6,000 people were murdered in Mexico as a byproduct of the drug trade, most of them in Northern Mexico and we’re on our way to surpassing that mark this year,” Kroger said. On top of that, 200 judges have been murdered in Columbia by drug cartels over the past 15 years. “Think if it was a routine matter for our judges here in Multnomah County to be murdered as a result of the judgments they were making,” he added. “An enormous impact on the ability to have the rule of law and courts that are fair and transparent and just.”
While those international drug matters are certainly profound, the region where drugs are particularly having an impact on American policy is Afghanistan and its status as a major producer of opium and heroine. “The number one product that fuels the Taliban, how they make their money which allows them to co-opt citizens and buy arms, overwhelmingly is the drug trade.” Kroger explained. “So drugs that are in demand in the United States and Europe help fund the very organizations that we are trying to fight.”
This disheartening reality was directly linked to Kroger’s overall message. “If you think about why we need to do more about drug trafficking and drug abuse in the United States, it’s not just for our own well being…it’s a major factor in our international relations. All the data we have backs up the perception amongst the citizens and amongst people in law enforcement that the current strategies aren’t working very well.”
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