What clearly is not successful is our current, muddled legislation. We declare a War on Drugs, for example, yet allow advertising of legal substances which are even more addictive than the prohibited ones. We jail people of being addicts but deny them treatment after they have served their sen tences. The most powerful advocate for change in drug policies which we see in this series is a United Methodist pastor, the Rev. Alpha Estes Brown. Addiction cuts across racial and economic boundaries, he notes, but resources for recov ery are much more limited in the ghetto.
Poor ones go to jail.
The neighborhood cleanup Pastor Brown, a recovering addict who is also a social worker and a recent law school graduate, and the congrega tion he serves, Brightwood Park United Methodist Church, have worked successfully to reduce the number of liquor stores in their impoverished neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and is currently fighting to remove all tobacco and alcohol advertising from any location in which they might be seen by children. You often see illicit drugs being sold in close proximity to legal outlets. Declaring war, he maintains, has neither made drugs less available nor encouraged recovery. William Cope Moyers, the son of Bill Moyers and his wife and executive producer Judith Davidson Moyers, is one of the leaders in a growing movement to treat addiction as a medical problem rather than a criminal one. Moyers on Addiction is accompanied by the largest outreach effort in the history of public television.