Century of Lies April 4, 2010

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.
_________________

Hello. Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. You know the drug war is getting shorter. It’s kind of like cutting off one end of eternity. But, it’s getting there. Today we have a report from Jerry Epstein, one of the founders of Drug Policy Forum of Texas. We have an extract from a recent and really fine program, put together by Bill Moyers and thanks to the BBC, we have the unnecessary heroin deaths that are occurring at a great number in Russia. First up, Jerry Epstein.
________________

Dean Becker: You know it was about ten years ago I found my self much confused and in fact outraged, by the US drug laws that I thought I was going to sit out and build my own organization. To help bring it to an end. But there was a movie playing at the local theatre. “Grass” featured Woody Harrelson talking about the hundred year history of marijuana prohibition and on a table outside the theatre there were some brochures from the Drug Policy Forum of Texas.

So I called them up and by gosh, they recruited me right away to go to work with them, helping to bring focus to bare on this hundred year effort to prohibit drugs. Among the leaders of that Drug Policy Forum of Texas, was one Jerry Epstein and he has, over the years, delved deeply into the data and put forward many reasons why we should end this failed policy. With that, I want to welcome, Jerry Epstein. Hello, sir.

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Hi. How are you, Dean?

Dean Becker: I’m good. Jerry, the outrage is turning more to concern and trying to find ways to present a narrative, which the American public can embrace and I think we’re at a turning point, if you will, in this hundred year war. Where the reasons to end this policy are becoming more evident and more glaring. Are they not?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: I think that that’s absolutely true, Dean. But we can see it most clearly from looking at the poll data about the number of people who are prepared to end marijuana prohibition, now. When we began some fifteen years ago, that number was around twenty-five percent. Today it’s very close to a neck and neck, 50/50 proposition.

So there’s been a huge difference in general attitudes and interestingly enough, we find out that in the States that have allowed Medical Marijuana, those figures are higher. In among the people who have actually tried marijuana, the figures are overwhelmingly higher. So we find that among democrats and independents, those figures are considerably higher.

We have definitely reached a position where, in my opinion, the ending of prohibition is now inevitable. Or at least marijuana prohibition and whether that takes another six months, or six years, is not clear. But it is going to happen and we find also that people under the age of fifty are just about evenly divided right now on the question and the younger generation is strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana. So that trend is almost certainly irreversible.

Dean Becker: Well you know, Jerry…

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Now in the interim, what we have is an immediate problem of several different dimensions. In my opinion, by far the largest aspect of the problem is that the Government tells us that something like sixty percent of the drug cartels’ revenues, come from marijuana. The horrors that are perpetrated on society by the existence of the drug cartels; the crime, violence and corruption. The massive deaths in Mexico now. Since 2006 there have been more people killed in Mexico than the United States has lost in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, in seven years.

So we have slaughter of incredible proportions going on and most of it is about control of the marijuana trade, in conjunction with cocaine. Those two drugs are the foundation for the cartels and apparently according to the Government, marijuana is by far the largest of those two.

Dean Becker: Jerry, we have this situation where, as you indicate, they get some ninety percent of their profits from these two drugs and the fact is, most people think of marijuana as rather benign, and I think rightly so.

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Yes.

Dean Becker: But the fact is that cocaine, if it were pure; if the quality and quantity were known, is not quite the devils drug that it’s portended to be. Right?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: That is true, Dean. It is a very difficult drug. It is definitely, significantly more dangerous than marijuana. But if you look at the long term data, you find things like, in 2002 we had one and a half million people who had a cocaine problem. This compares to eighteen million with an alcohol problem.

OK. In 2008 we still had one and a half million people with a cocaine problem. However in the interim, we had six million ‘new’ cocaine users. What that tells us, is that for every person who’s developing a problem with the drug, somebody is recovering from that problem. It also tells us that the vast majority of the thirty-seven million people who have tried cocaine, are not problem users.

So we have a distorted version. It is quite correct that one should deal with this drug very carefully. But the problem is not substantially any different, than it is with alcohol and the biggest point is that nothing about the prohibition of the drug has stopped the harmful use of the drug. So the system we use doesn’t address the problem.

Now another factor to understand, is that it’s very difficult to find anyone with a cocaine problem who is not an alcoholic. They are using both drugs simultaneously. The figure is almost ninety percent, for people addicted to cocaine are also alcoholic, and using alcohol and abusing alcohol at the same time.

Dean Becker: That would tend to distort the perception of the use of cocaine by itself. In that the health problems associated with massive intake of alcohol, are bound to exacerbate the intake of cocaine. Correct?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: I assume that that’s sort of true. But we see pretty much the same net result. Long term among big numbers on these figures of, ‘who has a problem’ and ‘whether it changes or not‘ are pretty much the same, for both alcohol and cocaine. But they’re so intermingled, that it’s hard to separate out that influence.

Dean Becker: I hear you. You know I end one of my shows with the phase that, ’Because of prohibition, you don’t know what’s in that bag’ and ‘Please, be careful’ and we had a situation here in Houston. I think it was four maybe five summers ago. Where on one weekend, a batch of heroin was mistaken for cocaine and was sold to the regular users. I think it was fourteen people died in one weekend here. Because the content of the bag was not known. Your thoughts on that?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Yeah. Well, that is the essence of one of the major reasons why we always say that the basic question that faces the American people is, ’Do you want your drugs with drug dealers, drug cartels, drug lords? Or do you want those drugs without drug dealers, etc?

Because we have chosen a route, prohibition that creates the drug cartels, then we have drugs that are unregulated. The exact situation that occurred during alcohol prohibition, when tens of thousands of people either died or went blind or became paralyzed from the use of ‘bootleg’ products, applies today for all of the drugs.

If we see a problem with Ecstasy, very frequently the drug turns out not to have been Ecstasy. They just were told it was Ecstasy. Just as you’ve said, ’Fine. Here’s your cocaine.‘ But it was really heroin and so they overdose. It’s a situation where we make an already dangerous drug, many times more dangerous by making it illegal and back to this fundamental problem.

We don’t reduce it’s availability through prohibition. We have the statistics on that. We cannot stop the supply of the drug, for numerous reasons that are very difficult for the public to accept and the ultimate outcome is that more dangers and damaging outcomes occur. Because that drug leaks out in an illegal system, rather than a regulated system.

Dean Becker: Friends, we’re speaking with Mr. Jerry Epstein. He’s one of the founding members of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas. An organization, which I might add, has be emulated by many other states across this country, for their acumen and for their success.

Jerry, you were talking about the problems associated with drug use and one of the other ’legs’ that has been knocked out from under. The concept is the financial fiasco, that many of the states and municipalities are facing across this country. Finding better ways of spending their law enforcement dollars, if you will. You want to talk about that?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Well, that’s also been a major factor of course, Dean and budgets - California being a classic example. They’re running huge deficits and they’re looking for a variety of ways to try to save billions of dollars. Reducing the spending in the entire area of prison maintenance, which is huge in California for instance and even larger in Texas, is one way to collect revenue. Here we pay a great deal when we could in fact be collecting taxes, in the same general way that we collect taxes on alcohol and tobacco.

Dean Becker: Jerry, despite the overwhelming evidence, the cartels thriving, the drugs being distributed and tainted by these bad actors, the financial fiasco, etc. The drug war still has life, and I was wondering if you would kind of give me your opinions on ‘what it is’ that allows the average ’Joe’ out there - or half the average Joe’s out there, to continue believing in this policy?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Well I think Dean, there are a whole lot of different ways to look at that. There are many, many currents floating and what we’re finding out more and more, is that the simple answer to most of the problem is education.

A diversion on this, is that this whole subject was addressed by the 1973 Commission Report on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, that was appointed primarily by President Nixon. They tried to look at the basic framework for answering that question. They come up with a whole series of basic flaws, in the way the public looks at the problem. Let me address some of them.

One of the things they said was, ‘The amount of money that bureaucracies and politicians and legitimate businesses made, from pursuing the drug war, had become so great…’ - and we’re talking 1973 now. Just between 1965 and 1973 - ‘…that it was their fear that those special interests would become so powerful, that they would pervert and perpetuate the problem.’

Now the amount of money we spend today, is perhaps almost a hundred times as great, as it was in 1973. So a problem that alarmed them in 1973, has grown hugely greater by today. There are many, many financial interests involved, one way or another. From gaining their profit, power, prestige or employment, through the drug war. That’s one whole set of problems.

The second set of problems that they recognized was that, in their words, the public had been ‘conditioned’ to make incorrect assumptions about drugs in general and in particular, to make incorrect assumptions about alcohol. The result of that, is that they had a very exaggerated understanding of the dangers inherent in, what they called, street drugs and they had vastly underestimated the damage done. Or the potential for damage, from alcohol. So that we know for instance today, that alcohol provides eighty-five percent of the drug addiction in the United States. The drug war is almost irrelevant to the drug problem. Because the drug problem is about ninety percent, alcohol and prescription drugs. Notably pain pills, which are the third leading source of addiction.

So, maybe a much shorter answer to your question is, we need to do what the Drug Policy Forum of Texas started out to do, when it was formed by Dr. Robinson. Who’s one of the countries leading authorities on drugs and he just wanted to give factual information. But as you get more accurate information, you can make more rational decisions about policy.

So that’s the process that’s involved and when we started at the very beginning of this conversation about the poll numbers, what we were saying is that the people who have actually used marijuana, have a much more reasonable understanding of it. The states that have allowed the medical use of marijuana and people for instance, that have observed that now. Since 1996 in California, you get a much more relaxed and realistic view of this drug and I always stress this… Relative to alcohol.

Dean Becker: Yeah. There’s that great new book, three authors… Marijuana’s Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? It’s a pretty good question, isn’t it?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: SAFER’s a very good organization and it’s a very fine book and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting an accurate understanding of the scientific comparisons of what marijuana and alcohol produce in our society and maybe, particularly, on our college campuses…

Dean Becker: You know…

Mr. Jerry Epstein: …when use ‘skyrockets’, between eighteen and twenty-one.

Dean Becker: Oft times when the news is reporting on the purported changes in marijuana laws, they quote some law enforcement official as saying, ’We don’t want another intoxicant available to our youth.’ When the truth be told, it’s more available to our youth because of this policy. Right?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Well I think it is because we have talked to over a million kids since 1975. The response is, in one sentence, ‘That any kid has been able to get any drug they wanted, during that entire period.’ One of the major reasons that that’s true, is that we now have over a million teens involved in selling these drugs for profit. They don’t sell alcohol, they don’t sell cigarettes and they certainly aren’t operating at 12, 13, 14, 15 years old.

Now what the country says when we make this decision, ’Well we want the drugs with drug lords.” It’s the same thing. ‘We want those drugs made available to our kids and we want to set up the temptation of profits‘, which is the negative role model that says, ’Gee. Who has the money? Who has the women? Who has the cars?’ Etc, etc. Coincidentally perhaps or perhaps not coincidentally. It’s about the same number of people who carry guns as teenagers.

So you have to worry about so many negative influences, in a young persons life by virtue of the fact that we’ve created this sub-class of people. The equivalent of about one per class, to do this and make these drugs more available to our kids. Instead of getting them either through much more closely licensed sale to adults. Or prescription sale, in terms of drugs that are not marijuana or more dangerous. I think that I would trust a doctor or a pharmacist to do a much better job of keeping those drugs away from our kids than the drug dealer, for sure.

Dean Becker: The major media papers across this nation; broadcasters, cable and network, are beginning to focus on this problem and they’re beginning to specify the nature of the problem and even to touch upon the potential solution. A couple of late, that that come to mind, a recent editorial in the Chicago Tribune and just yesterday, a great program by Bill Moyers is talking about the racial implications, as well. Do you think we’re rounding the corner? Do you see any solution?

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Absolutely. I think that there’s been a huge change, just within the last two to three years, in media coverage. They’re becoming much more aware of the facts. They’re becoming much more willing to discuss it. This is a product of moving poll numbers. This is a product of much more receptivity in Congress to begin to nibble at the problem. We have the prospect of a currently existing application to the Department of Health and Human Services, to reschedule marijuana.

That report… Their decision has already been transferred to the DEA which is considering it. If we reschedule marijuana there will be a real impetus to move to allow states to make their own decisions about this and that would be our shaking.

Dean Becker: Alright, friend. We’ve been speaking with Jerry Epstein. One of the few that I still consider to be mentoring me and guiding me in analyzing this drug war and presenting the facts to you. Jerry, please point folks towards the website for the Drug Policy Forum of Texas.

Mr. Jerry Epstein: Sure. www.dpft.org That’s Dog Pony Fox-Trot. Drug Policy Forum of Texas dot org.
________________

I am the Reverend Dean Becker, of the Drug Truth Network. Standing in the river of reform, baptizing drug warriors in the unvarnished truth. drugtruth.net
________________

The following comes to us courtesy of Bill Moyers ‘Journal‘. He’s speaking to author Michelle Alexander.

Mr. Bill Moyers: You call your book, “The New Jim Crow”. What’s the parallel between ‘the old Jim Crow‘, that Brian has just described, and the new Jim Crow, that you describe in your book?

Author Michelle Alexander: Well, just a couple decades after the collapse of the old Jim Crow system, a new system of racial control emerged in the United States. Today, people of color are targeted by law enforcement for relatively minor, non-violent, often drug related offences.

The types of crimes that occur all the time on college campuses where drug use is open and notorious, that occur in middle class suburban communities without much notice… right? Targeted often at very young ages for these relatively minor offenses. Arrested, branded felons and then ushered into a parallel social universe. In which they can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from jury’s and legally discriminated against in many of the ways in which African Americans were discriminated against during the Jim Crow era.

So when I say that we have a new racial caste system, what I mean is that we have a system of laws, policies and practices in the United States today, that operate to lock people of color. Particularly poor people of color living in ghetto communities, in an inferior second class status, for life. Now most people thing the drug war was declared in response to rising drug crime or crime rates. But that is not the case. The current drug war was officially declared by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. A couple of years before ‘crack’ hit the streets and became a media sensation.

Mr. Bill Moyers: We have Ronald Reagan’s announcement when he’s launching the war on drugs. Let’s take a look at it.
________

Ronald Reagan: We can put drug abuse on the run through stronger law enforcement. Through cooperation with other nations to stop the trafficking and by calling on the tremendous volunteer resources of parents, teachers, civic and religious leaders and state and local officials.

We’re rejecting the helpless attitude, that drug use is so rampant that we’re defenseless to do anything about it. We’re taking down the surrender flag that has flown over so many drug efforts. We’re running up a battle flag.
________

Author Michelle Alexander: The drug war was part of the Republican Parties Grand Strategy, now known as ’The Southern Strategy’. To use racially coated political appeals on issues of crime and welfare, in order to appeal to poor and working class white voters who were resentful of and disaffected by many of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

Folks who were upset by bussing, desegregation and affirmative action. The republican party strategists openly talked about the need to use racially coated political appeals on crime and welfare, in order to get those voters who use to be part of the Democratic ’New Deal’ Coalition. To get those folks to defect to the Republican Party.

Mr. Bill Moyers: Do you have a quote in your book? From President Richard Nixon’s Whitehouse Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, “…the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”
________________

{jammin’ music}

Each year we arrest one point eight five million people.
Because it feels ‘so right’.
We give three hundred eighty-five billon dollars to terrorists and gangs.
Because we just love to fight.

It’s insane and ineffectual. By no means intellectual.
It’s that patriotism of our Puritan past.
________________

The following comes to us courtesy of the BBC.
____

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: In the Siberian city of Novokuznetsk, they’re bringing out the dead. This young man was killed by a heroin overdose. One more number to add to the thirty thousand addicts who will die in Russia, this year. The young man was found in one of these buildings. Slumped in a stairwell, a needle stuck in his arm.

This is one of the poorest, most derelict and most drug riddled neighborhoods of Novokuznetsk. We’ve been told by our local contacts that this building ahead of me here, has one of the most notorious drug dens in it, on the third floor. From the window, the dealer’s look-out keeps watch. Down below, it doesn’t take long to spot the first junkie.

Ten years ago there was no heroin in this city. Now, there are thousands of addicts. The man in red use to be a drug dealer. From his squalid apartment, Sergei had a front row seat as he watched heroin take over this city.

Sergei’s translator: First without, in Opium. But in 2002/2003 heroin came and washed over this whole region. Lot’s of people began to use it, even those who had never injected before.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: Russia’s heroin problem has mirrored the massive growth in production from Afghanistan. Today Russia is the biggest heroin market in the world.

Sergei’s translator: Heroin falls down on us like rain. We can put up our umbrella, but you can’t stop it from raining. You need to stop the clouds from forming. Clouds in the shape of Afghan poppy fields.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: It’s 3:00 AM in a North Moscow suburb. For the first time ever, a foreign T.V. crew is being allowed to join Russia’s Drug Police, on a raid. Under a bed, the agents find a bag. The bottles are full of pure uncut heroin, at least a million US dollars worth. It’s a big bust. But still a tiny fraction of the huge quantities pouring in from Afghanistan.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, BBC News in Moscow.
________________

(to the tune of deck the halls)

Fear, fear-fear-fear,
fear-fear-fear, fear-fear-fear,
fear, fear, fear.
________________

Well, that’s about it for this weeks edition of Century of Lies. I urge you to tune into the most recent Cultural Baggage, which features an interview with Scott Bullock, of the Institute for Justice. Talking about the ‘Policing for Profit’ that’s running so rampant here in America, and again I remind you. There is not truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, medical data. No reason for this drug war to exist. We have been duped.

Please do your part to end the madness of ‘drug war’. 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: C. Assenberg of www.marijuanafactorfiction.org