Ja: Drug kingpins and the underclass

Mark Wignall's column is must reading. Here is an excerpt.

Sylvia Brown (not her real name) is a member of the permanent underclass in Jamaica. When she was 14, her uncle attempted to rape her but during the ordeal she used a knife to cut him up.

He went to Kingston Public Hospital, she ended up in reform school, her mother took to the bottle and her father, absent most of the time, chopped up his brother (her uncle) the very day after he was discharged from the medical institution.

Sylvia had twins at 17 but she ran away from the maternity ward the next day, abandoning the infants. She is now 29 and has also taken to the bottle, drinking white rum like normal folk take coffee. She sells illegal numbers in and around her ghetto community, but she also hustles crack cocaine from a stall where she sells beer, stout, bun and cheese and juice.
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The hard fact is, as long as the drug kingpins exist, the underclass will have reason to maintain its permanency.

Until the society as a whole decides on what sort of future it wants for its children, until the political will overrules the political instinct and, until the bosses in our national security institutions deal a body blow to the illicit trade in drugs, the subculture which permeates the underclass will continue to show its ugly face.