Century of Lies, Sep 2, 2008

The failure of Drug War is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.
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Dean Becker: Hello, my friends. Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. I’m glad you could be with us. Today we’re going to have a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a man with twenty years experience in the trenches of the drug war and who has stood forth while on active duty calling for the end of drug war. And with that, I want to welcome our guest, Mr. Richard Van Wickler.

Hello, sir.

Richard Van Wickler: Good morning, Dean. How are you today?

Dean Becker: I’m good. I’m good. Rick, you know, I introduced you with the thought that you were an active participating spokesman...

Richard Van Wickler: That is correct.

Dean Becker: ...for the end of prohibition. Let’s talk about that situation, perhaps how it’s impacted your experience with your fellow officers.

Richard Van Wickler: Well, first of all, I have to tell you the decision was not very easy to come to, as you might imagine. I started my law enforcement career in 1987 and I’ve been a warden of the County Jail here in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, for the last fifteen years. And in the last few years I have been an adjunct faculty member at two colleges. And, you know, being a teacher of anything mandates that you learn probably more than your students will. And as I was looking at these new textbooks it pointed out in a subtle way to the failure of the drug war in this country as a national policy. And I think that’s what started to pique my interest. And then what had happened is I was approached by one of our state representatives who asked me, he said ‘Have you ever heard of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition?’ And I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ And he gave me a video that was just a few minutes long, it’s probably ten or twelve minutes in length, and I viewed that video and I was so intrigued that I had to call Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and request that they send a speaker to talk to my class at one of our largest state colleges here in New Hampshire. That lead to my going to a conference in New Orleans where LEAP was giving some presentations and also serving as one of the sponsors of this conference, and when I went there and I sat in these different seminars I learned so much about the drug war and its failure and how it impacts this country in such negative ways that I was compelled to become a member.

And as I said, it wasn’t easy because I thought, you know, I’m actively involved in politics. I am the superintendent of a county jail, I serve on committees with the state capitol, but you know what? It was so powerful and so meaningful and so important to me to say that this is one of those times in history when people who are bold enough and strong enough have to step up and take a stand. And so I did. And I informed my superiors of this action and gave them a presentation and said ‘I will not endorse any of these programs as the County of Cheshire but I certainly will exercise my rights as an American citizen, based on my experience, to view my opinions.’ And they were onboard with that one hundred percent. So it was a difficult decision. And then I became a LEAP speaker because the more I learned the more intrigued I was and the more fulfilled I became in having this knowledge.

So now it’s a quest of mine to go out and speak wherever I can. Last year I testified before the House and the Senate on bills to decriminalize marijuana in the State of New Hampshire, which by the way, is not a goal of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. We’re not suggesting that we should just decriminalize it but, in fact, we should legalize it for some very, very good reasons.

So there, Dean, is the beginning of my life with respect to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Dean Becker: Well, would that more active officers, servants of the court, would be so bold. And I do appreciate what you’ve done, Richard. You know, I have spoken to many organizations in the Houston area, Lions clubs, Democrats, you know, gatherings of various folks in this regard. But what I’m always, in fact still, surprised at is that the response to the presentation, the outlining of the reasons why we should end this drug war, garners eighty, eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five percent positive reception.

Richard Van Wickler: Absolutely.

Dean Becker: And it makes you wonder, I have a quest actually, to find out what it is that’s holding this together. It’s some sort of societal taboo you just don’t talk about even though you may believe that it needs change. Your thoughts on that?

Richard Van Wickler: Well, I’ve described it as a ‘political ether’ and I felt as though I were under this political ether and, you know, Dean, you’re a veteran of the United States Military and I’m a veteran. I had three years active duty in the Army and I retired after twenty-six years in the reserves. And, you know, when we go back to the basic training days, or when the police officers that are in your, among your listeners there, can remember going back to the academy. You’re in basic training, your in an academy and you’re getting programmed. You’re getting programmed to accomplish the mission. You’re not to question the mission. You’re to achieve the mission. And that’s what we do. And that has some merit to it but with respect to our laws in this drug war, you know, we were given a mission. And for the majority of the years that I was in law enforcement I was fulfilling that mission; not questioning my directives but just achieving what my superiors were putting me up to. And was until I came to a point in time that I said ‘You know, as an independent voter, as a free voter in one of the greatest countries on Earth I have the right and I have the responsibility to stand up and advocate for change where I think it is necessary in the appropriate forum to do so.’ And that’s what I’m doing.

Dean Becker: You know, Richard, I have on occasion heard the response, it’s more anonymous, you know, via the internet, perhaps, not very much in person, but the response is ‘Oh, you just want to get high. You just want to do your drugs freely,’ or something and that’s not at all my thought. To be honest, I have tried nearly every drug there is. I don’t want them. I don’t want them for my kids. I don’t want them for your kids. I don’t want them freely available, which is what we have now. And we’re the ones, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, we want to kill Osama’s cash cow.

Richard Van Wickler: Absolutely.

Dean Becker: We want to destroy those cartels down there fighting that real war south of the border. And we want to eliminate the reason that these violent street gangs exist. And yet we’re somehow disparaged for our thoughts. Your response?

Richard Van Wickler: It’s a two-faced policy that we have in this country. Anybody that’s in this business, the law enforcement business, knows that there’s a racial disparity with respect to oftentimes who gets arrested, how they get arrested, how much time they will do in jail. You cannot deny the fact that the drug war has created a significant employment opportunity in our culture in the development of the DEA. One of the things that I like to share with my students and throw out there to debate and I want people to question, is you look at the clearance rates of departments, you know, I go to my friends, the chiefs here in the county, and I ask them about their clearance rates. You know, the national average for the clearance rate of a property crime being unsolved is eighty percent. Eighty percent of property crimes are unsolved in this county. Now you look at the clearance rates for murders, rapes, domestic violence, all the other crimes that can happen that are not getting solved and you ask the chief, ‘Why can’t you solve these crimes that everybody in this country would consider a crime?’ And they will tell you that, ‘I don’t have enough resources, I don’t have enough manpower, I don’t have enough money.’ But yet, we have enough money to create a drug taskforce to go follow high school kids. We have drug taskforces that walk onto a college campus, that will arrest a college student in class for having sold some marijuana to one of his buddies who was earlier pinched and now they are getting him to turn other people in, and so on, and this entire bureaucracy just to put kids, who really could become wonderful citizens with an excellent contribution to this country, but instead have to face a criminal charge because of what they’ve done. That makes little sense to me. We’re not putting our money where it best could be spent in this country.

Dean, there are twenty-two million people addicted in this country to some substance. And what your police should try and understand is there’s a big difference between use, abuse, and addiction of anything. Those three different categories -- and twenty-two million people are addicted in this country. Seventy-five percent of that twenty-two million remain in the workforce. And only nine percent are getting treatment. And that’s sad. They can’t come forward and get treatment that they might want, that they might need to hold their family and their life together, because if they come forward with that kind of an admission based on the taboos we’ve created in this agency, they reveal themselves and everything falls apart. And that is not a humane approach. It’s not an approach that I have come to support in a country that claims to be free and helpful and humane and all those other things. It is terribly disproportionate to what we ought to be doing and what the United States should stand for.

Dean Becker: Well it, Richard, it really boils down to ‘what do we want to accomplish?’ I mean, this drug war has lasted ninety-three years if you go back to the Harrison Narcotics Act. Drugs are cheaper, purer, more freely available to our children than ever before. We’ve empowered the terrorists, the cartels, the gangs. What is the upside? I search the world looking for an answer to a simple question, ‘What is the number one success of this drug war?’ And no one can answer that.

Richard Van Wickler: There is no success to this drug war. You can only measure the success of this drug war in the creation of the bureaucracy and the people that it employs.

Dean Becker: The DEA.

Richard Van Wickler: The DEA. And the prosecutors who will prosecute drug crimes. And the police officers who just wait for an opportunity to go undercover and do the exciting work of the drug taskforce. You know, we’ve glorified this in our media. Movies and television shows just glorify the undercover work and they make everybody out, who uses drugs, to be a very nasty, hideous...

Dean Becker: Threat to society.

Richard Van Wickler: ...threat to society individual and it’s not. It’s your teenage kid. Boy or girl. It’s our teenagers, it’s the people that are in college. And you ask how many people went to college in this country that are now, have their degrees and they’re working in jobs and you ask them, ‘Were you ever exposed to an illegal substance on the college campus?’ ‘Did you ever try it?’ ‘Did it destroy you, did it destroy those people?’ And unless they were arrested, they’ll say, ‘No. You know, I tried it. I don’t do it today. I tried it then but...’ Well, great, you got over it but a lot of people don’t get over it. So the only way you can measure the success of this drug war is the fact that it’s created so many jobs. And has it gotten too big? Has it gotten too big, that the United States Government is going to say, ‘We can’t disassemble this. It’s too massive?’ But you know, I would submit to you, as a taxpayer, whose taxes are too high -- I don’t know how they are out there in Texas but here in New Hampshire our taxes are just outrageous -- and when you take a look at the taxes that you pay and you so ‘What is my money going to?’ I would rather my money, my tax dollars, to go towards solving some of these unsolved crimes and improving the clearance rates of these departments.

I’ll tell you a quick story, Dean. I was at a chiefs of police meeting a few months back and they invited a salesman to come there with some of the new technology that they have to put in our cruisers, you know, cameras that show out the windshield and show in the back seat and you can record all this video and audio to a CD and so on and so forth. And this salesman is doing a great job demonstrating his new products. And when toward the end of the presentation he pulled out this little device that was no bigger than a little pager that would hang on your belt. And this device, he said, ‘Now this you guys are going to love. However, only those of you, those of you who are in police departments, are not be going to be able to afford this. Only the drug interdiction folks will be able to afford this device.’ And it was a little hand-held camera that, when the police officer puts his hand inside the car he can show it under the seat and on the floor and anywhere around and it would record whatever that little camera sees. But he said, ‘This device is far too expensive. This technology is too expensive for regular police departments. We reserve this for the drug taskforce folks.’ And I thought to myself, ‘This is ridiculous that we can’t have that kind of technology and those kinds of resources for the police that are fighting the real crime, the dangerous crime that is out there.’ And as a jail superintendent, as a jail warden, I want the bad guys. I want to take care of people who are a threat to society, who are a threat of violence, who are a threat of escape. Those are the people I want to care -- I don’t want to take care of non-violent good people who got busted because they chose a particular substance to alter their consciousness. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Dean Becker: Exactly. Now, you mentioned you were at a gathering of police officials and just last week we had one of our LEAP officers was presenting, or manning the table, at, I think, it was the Asian Peace Officers convention, he was there the first day, he talked to the DEA and some other justice officials there at that conference. And the next day they kicked him out with no known reason. Now, they’re still debating what the basis for that expulsion was but, it kind of reminds me, Ghandi said ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.’ I think they’re fighting us now. What’s your thoughts there, Richard?

Richard Van Wickler: Well, I hope we’re that far along. I would like to think so. You know, last year in New Hampshire when some state representatives were brave enough to bring to the New Hampshire House bills that would take a good hard look at medicinal use of marijuana, that would take a good hard look at decriminalizing marijuana, everybody said, everybody said ‘There is no way in our lifetime that the House of Representatives in the State of New Hampshire will pass legislation like this.’ And I thought that is such a powerful statement from people who are in the know. And I went to the House of Representatives and I testified before the sub-committee and I wrote a letter. And I wrote that letter on Law Enforcement Against Prohibition letterhead and I sent it to every single member of the New Hampshire House, which is the largest House of Representatives in the country, we’ve over four hundred reps in the House of this very small state. And it passed. It passed the House.

Dean Becker: Wow. There’s another pat on the back there for you, Richard.

Richard Van Wickler: Not for me. It is not a pat on the back for me, it is a pat on the back of every legislator who when they cast their vote finally had that same epiphany that I did and said, ‘What are we doing? What are we doing?’

Dean Becker: Well, this is so true. Now, Richard, there are major papers, I mean the New York Times has done it, the Houston Chronicle has done it, I think the Washington Post has done it, have called for, at least, medical marijuana.

Richard Van Wickler: Yes.

Dean Becker: And certain papers, maybe the, not the biggest, but some in Great Britain, the Guardian has and one just, August 25, Colorado Springs Gazette, ‘Decades of Efforts Yield Few Results,’ talking about the end of prohibition itself. You know, I find it ironic, hypocritical, outrageous that many of the politicians, including the major politicians, what’s that ladies name, the new VP candidate, Palin, I believe?

Richard Van Wickler: Yes.

Dean Becker: John Kerry, George Bush, and Mr. Barack Obama all have a history of using drugs in their youth and yet, somehow, they’re still good enough and yet, if had they been caught, had they been sentenced, they would have a blemish on their record that would have denied them this opportunity.

Richard Van Wickler: That’s correct.

Dean Becker: Your closing thoughts? We’ve got just a couple of minutes left, Richard, and I’m going to let you run with it.

Richard Van Wickler: Boy. There’s just not enough time to cover all the things that need to be said about this topic. But I will tell you, we are going to be looking at medicinal marijuana here in the next legislative term and I’m afraid that the people who are going to lobby very hard against it are pharmaceutical companies and the like, because you just cannot make any money on a weed. You can’t patent it. You don’t have to put it together synthetically. It grows naturally and it can help people and I would imagine that pharmaceutical companies and very wealthy people who invest in pharmaceutical companies would fight, would fight the opportunity to have marijuana help people who are in pain or who are ill because they want to use a means of profit in order to help these people feel better and that’s too bad.

I appreciate everything you’re doing out there, Dean. I appreciate your listening audience and hope that they will take an opportunity to go to the LEAP website and check that out and look at DrugFacts.org and check out some of those things and wish you all the very best and appreciate the opportunity to be on this show today.

Dean Becker: Well, Richard, once again I thank you, I commend you, I hope some of your fellow officers get a chance to hear this show once we get it posted to the web. And, God speed to you, sir. I look forward to our next encounter. And let’s just keep at it. Mr. Richard Van Wickler.

Richard Van Wickler: Good day to you, sir.

Dean Becker: Thank you.

Richard Van Wickler: Bye-bye.

Dean Becker: All right, my friends. We will go to some of our messages I want to share with you but I want you to think about it for a minute. What has this drug war wrought? What has it created? What is the positive? And I say there is none. It’s time for you to step up to the plate and as Richard recommended, please check out the LEAP website, which is LEAP.cc.

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Official Government Truth with Winston Francis

Here’s a news flash. Heroin is not safer than aspirin. Being addicted to crack is not safer than driving to work and free-basing PCP is not safer than climbing a tree. Drug legalization advocates will use misinformation and misdirection to try and convince you that these ridiculous notions are actually fact. Like a magic trick. Example: substantially more people die each year from Aspirin overdose than heroin overdose--abracadabra--heroin is safer than aspirin. Only it isn’t. You see, more people use Aspirin that heroin. Imagine that everyone who used Aspirin also used heroin. I think it would be safe to say that we would see a change in those figures, don’t you? What if everyone who could drive a car was also addicted to crack. You get the point. The real question is ‘why?’ Why don’t more people use crack and heroin so we can see the death toll rise? The answer is that the drug war works. The reason that alcohol and tobacco kill so many is because they’re legal so more people use alcohol and tobacco. The same goes for over the counter medication. The death toll for illegal drugs is low because people are discouraged from using them. This is the success of drug prohibition. Our efforts pay off in lives not wasted and graves not filled.

Abracadabra. It all makes sense, doesn’t it?

This has been Winston Francis with the ‘Official Government Truth.’
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Dean Becker: All right, my friends. That was Winston Francis. We present that report on behalf of the cowards who think the drug war is a positive for our society.

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Blackwater! Mmmmm, tasty.
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How bass ackward can a nation be?
Watch America and you will see.
They fight and die for ever more,
They love to wage unwinnable wars.

Drugs and Terror,
World Wars forever,
Drugs and Terror,
World Wars forever.
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Dean Becker: Drug war is treason. Does the drug war do anything for our nation? Does it protect the children? Does it stop international intrigue and rebellion? Is it based on science? Is it even logical? After investing 20,000 hours into this subject I know there is absolutely no basis for this drug war to exist. There’s no truth involved. No justice to be found. No scientific facts sufficient to justify this jihad. No medical data existent to excuse this inquisition. That, to me, is what this drug war is: an inquisition, a means to frighten the people with propaganda, moral posturing and justifiable fear of the inquisitors. The U.S. Supreme Court claims a drug war exception to the U.S. Constitution. Science has been corrupted for the last hundred years in the name of drug war. Medical practitioners have been corrupted as well and are now suffering for their cowardice as more pain doctors are locked up and their careers destroyed. Law enforcement has been corrupted, our legal system -- a hell hole. Customs and border agents are bribed on a daily basis. Prisons are filled to overflowing. The U.S. is now the world’s leading jailer. Children are enticed to join violent gangs or to use the tainted products circulated by the black market in drugs, the world’s leading multi-level marketing organization. Rebels and paramilitary in Colombia and Mexico are making billions and are escalating their wars: thousands are dying each year. The Taliban, Al Qeada and Osama Bin Laden make additional billions from the opium trade so they can buy more weapons with which to kill our fine soldiers. It is necessary that we have wars, death, disease, crime and addiction so that these moral leaders in government, science, medicine, the media and the legal system can point to the symptoms of drug prohibition and through their stilted and evil lens of propaganda they can call for more drug war. This is treason. Those who support this drug war, whether by outright complicity, feigned superstition or feigned ignorance are the best friends the drug lords could ever hope for: the wind beneath the wings of the terrorists, homeboys to the gangs, purveyors of deceit, enablers of crime, reapers of the harvest of non-violent offenders. Bigoted and unconstitutional, drug prohibition is a betrayal or morality, science, medicine and common sense. Those who stand for drug war must be brought to justice. Once we remove these charlatans from positions of power other social changes will become much easier. That could only be done by you, by your words and by your courage.
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All right, that was a Drug Truth Network editorial. You know, the situation is becoming more dire, more dangerous to our nation, to our communities and I find that more and more people are sending me emails to discuss their fears, not of drugs but of this drug war. If you’d like to send me an email I urge you to do so. It’s Dean@DrugTruth.Net.

I got this one from a lady, born in El Paso, raised in a small desert town in Southern New Mexico. She was born in El Paso, raised in Juarez, now live in Houston. However, they have a large amount of family and friends that are still in the border area. She said ‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the drug war that apparently all the major media sources are ignoring in the El Paso/Juarez region.’ She says, ‘I have been directly affected by the violence and I am in Houston. It’s been here in the U.S. for some time now. I constantly worry about family and friends getting caught in the crossfire of the violence.’ Closing thought, I want to relay, ‘I am sick of reading about all the violence and constantly worrying about friends and family getting caught in the crossfire. I want to be able to do something about it.’

Here’s another one from David. He’s quoting a story from American Chronicle on August 13, ‘Paramilitary gunmen wearing body armor burst into a drug rehab center in Juarez. The attackers dragged several patients outside and executed them. Those murders were among 43 which took place in Juarez over a three day period.’ His closing thoughts, ‘On August 25, federal and local law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Mexican drug cartels are now sending hit-men into the U.S.’ Quote, ‘We received credible information that drug cartels in Mexico have given permission to hit targets on the U.S. side of the border.’

Now, my friends, if that doesn’t give you some concern that -- what has this drug war wrought and what has it accomplished? Well, very little. I think we can all agree upon that. Please, once again, send an email, if you will, to Dean@DrugTruth.Net. I’d love to hear from you. It’s necessary that we do our part. You know that. And I urge you to stand up and begin doing that part and I guess we got to close it out with the thought -- there is no truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, medical data, in fact no reason for this drug war to exist.

We’ve been duped. The drug lords run both sides of this equation.

Please visit our website, EndProhibition.Org.

Prohibido istac evilesco.

For the Drug Truth Network this is Dean Becker asking you to examine our policy of Drug Prohibition.

The Century of Lies.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.

Transcript provided by Gee-Whiz Transcripts. Email: glenncg@zoominternet.net