By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

As if the target of all of this law enforcement focus is a buffet table of drugs, we continue to deny ourselves the need to name this conflict of interest properly. For people in the drug business, business is good, but competition is keen. Tax breaks abound. Right here in Kansas City, the underground economy flourishes. Why?

One reason for the flourishing is that we have a distinct lack of business savvy planners and operators directing our efforts to shut down the businesses. No further use of the w-word here. Irrelevant term. Our efforts to face the drug business is to begin treating it as such.

In some instances, the citizens merely ask that the businesses be contained. One reason for social malaise in this area is that the majority of citizens do not experience the toxic business effects, or if they do, they don't understand it…otherwise, why would people be pleading for COMBAT funds?

Our local counter-drug business programs lack sophistication and cunning. We hire gym-maintained urban commandoes where we should be hiring accountants, chemists, and tax investigators. Shut down the underground economy of tax evasion, save the taxpayers the pain of band-aid investments year after year.

Confront the drug houses with a tax bill instead of a battering ram.

The drug business is a complex supply chain, an underground untaxed economy that we instead mischaracterize as a military-like struggle.

Happily, our Federal agencies are getting it right, with a highly educated force who spends less time in the gym and more time building cases, with a growing appreciation of the counter-business strategies against the business aspects of crime.

In the meantime, our state and local level law enforcement agencies possess the wrong people to shut down the drug business. Time for a culture shift in law enforcement which begins with higher education and calling it a business problem.