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You've Got
To Want To
One mother's experience with crack doesn't offer any easy answers

Playing for Keeps
Taking money and property has become a major part of the War on Drugs. Who is it helping?

In 1981, there were 58 felony drug charges filed in Knox County, and 54 misdemeanors—a total of 112. In 1996, the numbers were 703 felonies and 1,516 misdemeanors, which adds up to 2,219. What produced an 1,800 percent increase in drug arrests during those 15 years? Two things: the explosion of crack cocaine, and the equally explosive growth of law enforcement efforts to fight it.

Knoxville, like the rest of America, is well into its second decade of Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs." The county is locking up more people up than ever before and spending $90 million on a new jail to hold them. Funding for the narcotics divisions of the Knoxville Police Department and Knox County Sheriff's Department has more than doubled in the last decade, and that's not counting the substantial money both of them pull in from drug-related property seizures.

But the drugs are still right where they've always been—on the streets of Knoxville's poorest neighborhoods and in the homes of addicts and casual users across the county. Police, judges, and lawyers estimate that anywhere from 75 to 90 percent of crimes are somehow drug-related.

So who is the War on Drugs helping? The two following stories examine different aspects of that question: Has drug enforcement become a profitable enterprise itself? And what are the lessons of one woman's successful recovery from 17 years of crack addiction?