Feds pencil another non-Appalachian county into their efforts to fight drug traffic in the region

When the Appalachian Regional Commission was created in 1965, it included for political and other reasons many counties that were not part of the poor, mountainous region but resembled it economically. Since then, Congress has added several such counties to the officially recognized region to make them eligible for ARC help. Some truly Appalachian counties grumbled that the pool of money was being diluted, and they are doing likewise now that the Obama administration has placed Kentucky's central crossroads town in the Appalachia High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, "a jurisdiction set up to fight the drug trade in the mountains," reports Roger Alford of The Associated Press, who once reported for the wire service from Eastern Kentucky.

"This is a place of rolling countryside, cattle farms and cropland," Alford writes."That's why some eyebrows arched when the Obama administration penciled Hardin County into Appalachia." (Wikipedia map locates Elizabethtown in Hardin County; map below shows the ARC territory, which is not affected by the anti-drug jurisdiction's boundaries.)

The Office of National Drug Control Policy said it added Hardin County at the request of U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader. McConnell told the AP, "The argument I made is that, even though this is not technically an Appalachian county, it's not too far away from Appalachia and it's right here with two interstates going north and south and east and west, and clearly is a transit point" for drugs. Louisville and Bowling Green, metropolitanm areas north and south of Elizabethtown on Interstate 65, had already been added to the area. At the same time it added Hardin County, the drug office also added Brooke, Hancock, Marshall and Ohio counties in northern West Virginia.

Some Central Appalachian political leaders say adding western counties to the list will make it harder for federal money to reach eastern counties that need it more. "Bringing on more counties only makes our situation less hopeful," Harlan County Judge-Executive Joe Grieshop told Alford. (Read more)