When the average American thinks about Christmas or other holiday cooking, he or she usually has visions of cookies by the dozen and homemade cakes and pies. Large roasts of meat and tender steamed vegetables sit side by side on the table with delicious rolls and butter. Happy faces surround the table as the family enjoys the fruit of someone’s cooking.
But there’s another kind of cooking going on that is not so happy. It generally takes place as hidden as possible, and there are no luscious fragrances associated with it. A man from Little Rock just pled guilty on December 21, 2011 to cooking cocaine into crack cocaine at least twice a week, and often twice per day. He dealt with quantities around 21 grams, about ¾ of an ounce of cocaine.
Sedrick Trice and his accomplice worked out of several businesses in Helena-West Helena, including one that was across the street from a junior high school. He is described by federal authorities as being one of the leaders of a local drug trafficking operation. By pleading guilty, he will avoid a life sentence and receive a 40 year sentence instead. Trice is 27 years old.
Unfortunately this case also involved the arrests of five law enforcement officers, who have all pleaded innocent. Time will tell whether they were involved in an unethical fashion or not. The charges from the investigation include trafficking of illegal drugs, bribery, money laundering and racketeering.
It is encouraging to see men like Trice arrested and taken out of their illegal kitchens, stopped from selling their hallucinogenic goodies. One can only hope that law enforcement officials will continue to arrest such traffickers and not be lured into being the “chef’s helper” themselves.
Our country will be better, overall, when we can restrict the Christmas cooking to the traditional kind that includes food, not drugs. Though they help, it’s not going to be curtailed by law enforcement but rather by therapy to those already entrenched, and by prevention which includes people finding purpose in life.
