Childcare at Florence Blvd. Belle Foods/More E-Mail

I saw your recent Blog about Belle Foods and certainly appreciate all the press we can get. While we are an Alabama company, we do not have the big budgets of a Publix to flood the airways about who we are. I noticed in your blog, that you were uncertain if any of the Shoals stores would be getting a Belle Jr. Childcare area. I wanted to let you know that the Florence store on Florence Blvd in fact did receive a Belle Jr.

If you ever have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at your convenience.

Thanks so much!

Paul McLaughlin

Advertising and Public Relations Coordinator

800 Lakeshore Parkway

Birmingham, AL. 35211

SS: We're hearing nothing but great things about Belle Foods in the area. We're especially glad to know child care is available. We wish you great luck in bringing quality foods to the Shoals.

***** 

Please don't use my name. I have a young friend who works at a Shoals plant that has something like 40 work release from Decatur, and maybe some from Hamilton. One of the Decatur prisoners offered my friend 15 cc's of morphine for 8.00. My friend just laughed, but how's the best way to report this?

SS: First I would look at it logically. Where would a man in work release get morphine? I'm pretty sure we can rule out prison medical facilities since there are none at Decatur, and even in Hamilton we would doubt any serious narcotics are present. When a prisoner in Hamilton becomes that ill, he's paroled to family, as we understand it.

Of course, the prisoner could have purchased it...somewhere. We're pretty sure he would have paid more than 8.00. We checked the street value for 15 cc's of morphine and are disturbed at what we found. We're going to guess what the man had for sale was 15 mg. of morphine in tablet form. They seem to sell in large cities for 7.00 a pop.

If the man has only one for sale, just be glad he didn't have more...and just hope none of them is drugged up on the job and endangering your friend and others. We understand drug tests are given monthly and randomly at work release, so I would not be too concerned. If you want to report this incident (or if any readers want to report this), here's the contact info:

Alabama Department of Corrections Contacts

***** 

We're going to add some opinion to the the above e-mail question. If you randomly picked 40 individuals off the street, odds are you would find at least one who, if not dealing in illicit drugs, is engaging in some sort of illicit activity. For those who oppose work release at any level, this is a prime example that such employees are no worse than those pulled from a free world job pool and are often much better. 



Shoalanda