TAMPA BAY'S WAR ON DRUGS GETS A BOOST FROM DEA EXHIBIT AT MOSI

Whether or not you believe there is an actual "War on Drugs," if you live in Tampa, get set for an eye-opening exhibit which could convince you that not only does such a war exist, but that the fallout of that war is all around us right here in the Tampa Bay area.

A DEA exhibit entitled "Target America, Opening Eyes To The Damage Drugs Cause," opens at the MOSI September 16, and will run through September 3, 2012.

Conceived by the DEA and launched at the DEA museum and visitors center at Arlington, Virginia in 2002, the exhibit has visited museums New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and New Orleans and has created, if not an avalanche of  attention, well then, a stir in all of those cities.

As it should, being that this so called "War on Drugs" is not merely an abstraction, but in fact, an actual struggle being played out on nearly every street corner, in every neighborhood, in every town, city, hamlet and metropolis in this country  -  and abroad.

And the cost of that struggle, in dollars and in human lives has been enormous, and continues to rise.

One has only to read the papers every day to see yet another interdiction of drugs - especially in the State of Florida - and see the street values of the drugs and know that the interdiction has stopped merely a fraction of the drugs in transport to this country to know that the financial stakes are very high for the cartels who participate in the multi-billion dollar business of the production, transport and sale of those drugs.

One has only to read the papers every day to see yet another infraction of the law -many of them deadly - caused by a person who is under the influence of those drugs, either for personal use, or as a participant at the street level in the dispensing of them.

And one has only to read the misery in the lives of so many of the innocent victims - be they family, friends, or even a casual passer by -  whose lives are touched, indeed maimed by the use of illegal drugs to understand the true and horrid cost at the end of the complicated maze of the War on Drugs.

"Target America: Opening Eyes To The Damage Drugs Cause," brings all of that home, in a way no news story can by showing us the true fallout of the collateral damage of the drug war.

You have a year.  So go see this exhibit.  And take the children.

 The children who will  surely be exposed to this War on Drugs, in one way or another, and should be informed before they are forced into the fray.


MOSI  4801 E. Fowler Ave   Tampa  33617   813-987-6000    http://www.mosi.org/