Pastoral Poverty: The Seeds of Decline nytimes.com
[ on the general interest front, this story is sort of an ironic counterpoint to all the "red map" blather that was popular among certain factions after the y2k election. (see usatoday.com & attached story for example ) Clip: ]
Around the country, rural ghettos are unravelling in the same way that inner cities did in the 1960's and 70's, according to the officials and experts who have tried to make sense of a generations-old downward spiral in the countryside. In this view, decades of economic decline have produced a culture of dependency, with empty counties hooked on farm subsidies just as welfare mothers were said to be tied to their monthly checks. And just as in the cities, the hollowed-out economy has led to a frightening rise in crime and drug abuse.
But unlike the cities' troubles, which generated a national debate about causes and solutions, the rural collapse has been largely silent, perhaps because it happened so slowly.
Crime, fueled by a methamphetamine epidemic that has turned fertilizer into a drug lab component and given some sparsely populated counties higher murder rates than New York City, has so strained small-town police budgets that many are begging the federal government for help. The rate of serious crime in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Utah is as much as 50 percent higher than the state of New York, the F.B.I. reported in October. . . .
In Nebraska, nearly 70 percent of all farmers rely on government largess to stay in business. Yet the biggest economic collapse is happening in counties most tied to agriculture — in spite of the subsidies.
Unaffected by the downward trends are cheap labs used to make methamphetamine, a synthetic form of speed that the White House calls the fastest-growing drug threat in America.
Nationwide, meth use has nearly tripled since 1994, and there are now far more regular users of meth than crack, according to the annual survey of drug use done for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
In WyomIing, the least populated state, officials estimate that 1 out of every 100 people needs treatment for meth addiction. Users of meth tend to be white and rural. There were 300 times more seizures of meth labs in Iowa in 1999, for example, than in New York and New Jersey combined, the Drug Enforcement Agency found.
Like crack, meth drives up all the other problems in these communities. Meth users tend to be erratic, violent and in some cases, borderline psychotic — especially when on a sleepless binge or "tweaking" episode. Small-fry dealers steal and war among one another. Users abandon families, lose jobs and batter spouses and loved ones.
"Meth seems to be everywhere in Nebraska right now," Mr. Curtis of the Nebraska Crime Commission said. "It's mostly Beavis and Butthead labs, with poor white kids making meth out of their cars." |
