Century of Lies, June 17, 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. Today we have an extended discussion with a gentleman out of Connecticut, one of many across this country who are calling for the end of drug war while they are running for elected office.

Week in, week out we get a chance to talk to folks about the need for change to our drug laws. Seems those in support of this policy are just unwilling to discuss it over the airwaves. But today we have a gentleman, Sylvester Salcedo, he’s running for a state rep up in Connecticut and he’s calling for a radical change to our drug laws. And with that introduction I want to welcome him to the Drug Truth Network.

Sylvester Salcedo: Thank you very much, Dean, and greetings to all of your listeners. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Dean Becker: Yes, sir. This is not as radical a change as it was just a few years ago. As I indicated, there are many people, many politicians across this country now willing to talk about it but Connecticut has its own problems with the drug war. Let’s talk about the situation in your state.

Sylvester Salcedo: The situation in Connecticut, I think, really mirrors that of what’s happening across the country. I mean, I don’t think we’re in any better situation or worse situation. I mean, we’re situated between, basically, between two huge urban centers, Boston to the north and New York City slightly southwest of us. Actually New York City is about an hour from Bridgeport, Connecticut where I live and Boston is about two and a half hours northeast of here. So we’re right on Interstate 95, obviously the interstate highways are major thoroughfares and means of commerce to carry drugs north, southeast, and west.

But what I’m doing here, Dean, is I’m a first time political aspirant, candidate, and the motivation really comes from my own personal background. I mean I’m 51 years old, I served in the Navy for 20 years, both active duty and in the reserves, and during my last two and a half years in the military, as a naval intelligence officer, between the Fall of ‘96 and the Spring of ‘99, I actually participated in the so called ’War on Drugs.’

As a naval intelligence officer I worked six months with the FBI in New York, six months down in Puerto Rico with a combined federal and Commonwealth of Puerto Rico taskforce, and then back to New York City for another six months and then down to Miami with another, of course, combined task force of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and then finally one last six month tour in New York City again with the U.S. Custom’s Service.

So the experience there, for me, it really is more evolutionary rather than revolutionary in that I was probably and still am, I believe the record still stands, the first and only active military veteran who has publicly protested against the war on drugs. And what I did was, I tried to tell everybody in the world, mostly our political leaders, that the war on drugs is wasteful, it’s counterproductive and it really just doesn’t make sense for our citizens.

I mean, there’s an effort to protect children and that’s absolutely a high priority for families and for neighborhoods and for us a nation but at the same time we have to face up to the reality of what drug addiction does to individuals, certainly, but it has to be carefully balanced between what you do with limited financial tax revenues, resources that you have, and how you want to spend it. Here in Bridgeport, Connecticut we have a huge urban public school system that’s failing our children and so is our answer to basically do a kindergarten to state prison system or do we want to change it? We are largely high Latino, African-American population in our public schools and we have to have a different model to use.

So, again, the United States being what it is, in our democratic form of government, I’m trying to enter the marketplace of ideas and I’m putting it to the voters, saying you can either have more of the same or you can vote for change and I’m committing myself to the voters as a candidate and as a leader for change in that I am a drug war veteran and I’ve seen it first hand and today, as an attorney, I have since become an attorney since retiring in 1999.

I work here locally, two lawyer law firm in an urban setting and my work everyday as a lawyer is basically fighting to help mothers who, usually indigent population, not all but many are touched by drug addiction and they have their children taken away from them and I think to myself, we lock up mom for five years, ten years, the children go into foster care, I don’t necessarily think that that’s the best thing to do for these individual moms and a whole population of them. I think we’re better off looking at something different.

And, to me, I’m not trying to do a one-man end the drug war, although it seems to me that would be a good thing to do, so if these people want to do this incrementally my platform here in Bridgeport for the 130th State Representative District is to ask the voters, and certainly to ask everybody else at large, to consider what, I am copying basically from the Europeans, from the Dutch in Amsterdam and from the Germans in Frankfurt, Germany.

What they have there is a tolerant zone, they don’t necessarily change the federal and local laws about drugs because the Netherlands and Germany, like the United States, we’re all signatories to a UN international agreement about trying to fight narcotics, the international trade and so on. And that’s fine but I think at the same time we have to be realistic and say ‘how is it affecting our local constituents and how’s it affecting our local communities?’ So that’s really where I’m starting from.

Dean Becker: Once again, we’re speaking with Mr. Sylvester Salcedo. He’s running for 130th district rep in the state of Connecticut. I saw a piece in the Hartford Courant talking about your run for this position and I see some local officials talking about what you have proposed and talking about how it’s not going to work.

Sylvester Salcedo: Right.

Dean Becker: And yet they don’t really have a solution except to just continue digging this hole a little deeper. Am I right?

Sylvester Salcedo: Yes, that’s true, that’s Rick Green’s, Rick Green is one of the columnists for the Hartford Times, which is the premier newspaper up in our capital area, Hartford, Connecticut and I’m certainly very grateful for Mr. Rick Green for taking this on in one of his columns. Yes, I mean, either local officials up in Hartford, obviously that’s the seat of government for the State of Connecticut and even here locally in this city of Bridgeport, my own mayor here, he’s opposed to any kind of initiative like this.

And what I’d like to say to him and to many other current political leaders, I mean that’s part of my motivation for running as a political candidate for the first time is because, again, I have consulted with them, I have told them about my experience, I try to engage them in a dialogue and say ‘what ca we do to help our constituents?’ We can’t arrest and incarcerate our way out of this issue. You know, Connecticut, our prison system is bursting at the seams. We have on any given day 19 to 20 thousand prisoners.

I mean when I first arrived in Connecticut eight years ago in the year 2000 Connecticut was exporting 500 prisoners to the state of Virginia and, you know, $50,000 an inmate and that whole experiment basically backfired because there were some deaths involved and lawsuits and so on and then, of course, Connecticut decided to bring back those prisoners. And this effort and initiative was because, you know, the sort of prison complex has really exploded and mainly it’s because of the drug arrests, the level of drug arrests.

Most of it is really petty marijuana use, I mean a lot of us in this country, I think there are 80 million plus Americans who have smoked marijuana at one point in their life, and I’m one of them, and you can look at national leaders up and down, from President Bush who’s hiding behind a ‘when I was young and irresponsible’ sort of excuse to President Clinton, you know, ‘I didn’t inhale’ to obviously Al Gore was brave enough to admit smoking marijuana in Vietnam as many of our Vietnam veterans did, and many of them unfortunately also got hooked on heroin which caused a lot of the heroin problems in the ‘70s.

And recently, obviously, you look at our candidates: you have the nominee for the Democratic party, Barack Obama, admitting marijuana use and cocaine use. And you can see people can, like me, become lawyers, become naval officers, be responsible contributing members of our communities and of our nation in general. And, you don’t turn into some dope fiend and end up under a railroad bridge and become a drug addict for life. And so, to me, we need to bring common sense and, on the issue of addiction really it’s more, I look at it not as a national security threat, not as a law enforcement, criminal enforcement issue but really it’s a public health issue and I think instead of having police officers and bail commissioners being charged with the decisions I think we should really have our medical professionals, mental health, again, as I work here as a lawyer I never expected to work with probate matters, the elderly.

Now I have a lot of cases that I take care of at the local level, as a conservator, people who have extreme mental health issues and a lot of that crosses over to the addiction situation. So really we can’t just say, ‘oh, arrest them and lock them up and throw away the key,’ because it’s very expensive and I wish I had CPA skills to be able to show the accounting sheets. And I think people will really be wondering why are we paying so much taxes and not getting much for it. And a lot of it, really, is because you don’t have funding for your schools or for summer programs for the children but yet you can arrest them and throw them in jail without blinking an eye.

And then that’s another field I’m involved with as an attorney is juvenile matters here in Bridgeport and it’s overwhelming the amount of cases. And, to me, it’s really ridiculous. And obviously it’s kind of counterintuitive as an attorney, I make my living taking on those cases but yet, really, I don’t want to be selfish, I don’t lead an extravagant life, I can live very modestly and happily and I really think, as I said, a different model has to be introduced. And so, as a first time politician to be, my platform is really that. I’m not sugar coating it, I’m not trying to hide behind a, you know, lower taxes and all these other ridiculous claims by my opponents, and yet everybody knows: drugs and the drug laws and the drug war are at the heart of what’s facing us.
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Dean Becker: You are listening to the Century of Lies program on the Drug Truth Network and Pacifica Radio. Our guest is Sylvester Salcedo. He’s running for the 130th District in the state of Connecticut. He’s also a spokesman for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Now, back to our discussion.
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I have a phrase I use that, well first off I ask people ‘what is the reason for this drug war?’ And the best that people usually come up with is ‘it’s to protect the children.’

Sylvester Salcedo: Correct.

Dean Becker: And then I answer that with ‘yes, it protects them until they turn 17 when they become meat for the drug war grinder.’

Sylvester Salcedo: Right. Well, it actually starts earlier than that. I mean, when you say, I understand those sentiments. I understand people want to say ‘we want to have a drug free America.’ And those are laudable goals but you have to be realistic. Years ago people said ‘we want an alcohol free America.’ And we pushed that sentiment. And when you look back in history, I mean, the amount of families and wives who are left destitute because the wage-earner, the husband, was always drunk and spending all his money at the local saloons and stuff. I mean, yes, it was devastating.

But at the same time look what we went through as a nation with prohibition. I mean, that multi-year experiment really backfired. And part of it, obviously, is cultural. You know, we have immigrant groups who always have come over here with that kind of a background where the use of alcohol, whether wine at dinner or whiskey or beer or anything else, was part of their diet and the culture, a reasonable degree. I mean, we’re not talking about the, you know, slam down binge drinking drunk guy every night.

What happened is you basically turned a criminal enterprise to practically swallow up and undermine our whole democratic way of life. I mean, police forces, politicians were basically owned by the criminal syndicates. So, I think, we should learn from that. And that’s basically, slowly, what’s happening to us. I mean, it’s not as obvious, let’s say, as in countries like Colombia and Peru where their central governments are more a direct threat, especially at the lower levels of government, at the city level, town level, out in the countryside with the provinces.

Thankfully our form of government is still strong enough but it’s only strong enough to a degree where at some point it’s probably just going to collapse on its own because the sheer weight of the arrest and incarceration approach just is not going to be sustainable. So, I go back again here at the local level in Bridgeport, Connecticut and in this particular district, that’s why I, as a person, chose to live in this district, not so much I was thinking of running for political office in the future but because I was interested in being able to, you know, live among the population who are in fact going through this experience of drug addiction and the whole cycle of being arrested, going to jail, coming back out and basically doing the same thing all over again because they didn’t go through a rehabilitation program or a proper one and then there’s no support system when they get out.

They just basically do their time and then they’re tossed back out and they go back to the same community and do the same thing all over because there’s no other alternative for them. So, to me, I’d like to have, let’s say, a more robust fatherhood, motherhood, sort of a family prep school idea for the individuals and family units to look at them holistically, just don’t look at the one guy who gets sent to jail or the one mother who was sent to jail, but look at when they return the whole family unit really builds the community and the neighborhoods back up. So that’s my approach and, you know, give it the old American try and, as I said, democracy is a wonderful thing, we all support it. We’ve all enjoyed living with freedoms but with the freedoms that we enjoy comes the responsibility and the obligations of contributing back to the community. And that’s just my little slice of it.

Dean Becker: Sylvester, let’s go back to your mention of the time you spent in the Navy on the drug task forces. And you spent some time down in Miami kind of at the end of ‘Miami Vice’ era and yet, what happens, from my perspective, is that as we change our focus, change our direction, if you will, because these drug traffickers are constantly changing their methods and methodology, it seems to me that, from my perspective, I don’t see how it’s been a success. I mean, the Taliban is making billions from the drug trade...

Sylvester Salcedo: No, I mean, the whole drug war concept basically as, I believe it’s Eric Sterling who as a young lawyer back in the ‘80s, who helped write the drug laws under Speaker Tom O’Neill of Massachusetts, you know when the Boston Celtics lost their newly signed star Len Bias, and that’s where all this harsh drug laws came into effect, written by Congress. And with the drug trade, what you do is you basically force the smartest and the most, it’s survival of the fittest basically.

I mean it goes back to basic biology. And what you end up doing is you arrest the less smart, the less quick on their feet local distributors but the smart guys at the top, you can never really get ahold of them because they’re just too smart, they have too much money, they hire really good lawyers, they hire a slew of media consultants to basically protect their empires. And so, yeah, if you shift the discussion, you mentioned the whole thing about the Taliban, I just cut out an article from our local paper here, the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport about two weeks ago and I put it up on my website.

And the story is about these marines who have just been, you may have heard, that were just recently redeployed to Afghanistan, they were there initially when we first entered Afghanistan back in 2002 is when we went there, 2001 when we first sent them there and then they brought in the Army to take over and stabilize the area for the local military command, but the marines are back now to try to do another suppression effort, I guess, of the more active Taliban units. So the news article is about how the marines are just sort of taking a nap by these huge fields of poppy fields growing in acres and acres all around them and their orders are not to destroy the poppy plants and fields nor are they supposed to even arrest or antagonize the local Afghan poppy farmers.

You have to think to yourself, ‘how bizarre is that?’ I mean, after all this is the same poppy harvest that’s going to turn into heroin paste that’s going to be processed and probably, Afghanistan probably, really the drug trade there most likely ships that to Europe and the profits that are made, you know, the Taliban who access security will be basically paid off their cut and what do they do with that money? They will use that money in the international arms trade to buy guns to kill our marines and our soldiers and, you know, make all the threats against us. So why are we continuing to feed that crazy drug cycle and drug trade?

At the same time, of course, we’re spending billions trying to eradicate, trying to fumigate the poppy fields in Colombia and Peru and Bolivia yet in Afghanistan we’re not even, we’re not even scolding the local Afghan poppy farmer because we’re afraid that we’re going to alienate them and have them run and sign up with the Taliban. I mean it’s completely crazy. It’s a waste, as I said, that goes back to my whole premise and observation and conclusion that the drug war is a waste of money, it’s totally senseless and it’s definitely counterproductive so why don’t we address the issue of our addicts in our local cities and towns and neighborhoods, bring them in, don’t force them into the black market and use a public health and a mental health model to address their issues so that they’re not paying $10 a bag for heroin in the streets when we know, and most economists in this country know that each $10 bag of heroin is really only worth ten cents and it’s the $9.90 profit margin that basically drives the whole drug trade and drug culture of gangs and fancy cars and guns in the street and so on.

So why not take the politically responsible position, to be a real leader and, at the very least, talk about it? Put it out into the political discourse instead of ignoring it and saying ‘oh, I’ll lower your taxes instead.’ You’re not lowering my taxes. And by the way our taxes in the city of Bridgeport is not going down and we’re one of the highest taxed cities in the nation; property taxes are just out of control and most everybody knows across the country gas prices are going up. I mean, don’t we all know, one of the largest oil reserves there in Iraq and what good is that effort doing us?

Dean Becker: Right. Once again we’ve been speaking with Mr. Sylvester Salcedo. He’s running for rep in the 130th district in the state of Connecticut. And like many others across this country he’s now willing to share this truth and to do battle in this regard with the various authority figures in an effort to get elected and to change these drug laws. Mr. Salcedo, do you have a website you care to share with our listeners?

Sylvester Salcedo: Yes, thank you very much. Yes. The website, and I certainly invite your listeners to have a look, it’s www.SalcedoForStateRep.com. And I hope people will just have a quick look, shoot me an email, and if you have any ideas on trying to convince me to change my mind I certainly welcome that. Like I said, that’s the beauty of our country. We allow everybody to speak their minds, freedom of speech, that’s one of the core values that we have as a nation. We certainly cherish that.

For me, as a military veteran, I certainly served to sustain that and to protect that. And if I may, you mentioned one thing, if I may, Dean, about being a military veteran. When I was in the navy we always were proud, I mean, I was deployed to the Mediterranean, to Northern Europe and to South America and as a naval officer I was always very proud to say that we went over to Europe twice in the last century to save them from themselves during World War One and World War Two and restore the peace and democracy in their different countries, whether it’s the Netherlands, Germany, France, England and so on.

But I think in this century I’m really very hopeful and I certainly look to our allies in Europe to return the favor. To come here to us in America and show us and help us save us from ourselves, from this craziness of the drug war and our misguided policies. You know, I don’t want to point fingers but, and play the blame game, but I think certainly, yes, initially people of good will and good intent were, as you mentioned earlier, we try to fight the drug war because we want to protect our children.

But in the final analysis I think we really have to look over the history and what has happened and what is happening today, whether or not that premise still holds true. Because, especially for communities, people in the minority communities, that’s African-American community, Latino community, poor community such as the 130th district where I am here in Bridgeport. I mean, I live in Fairfield County, which is one the richest if not the richest, county in all of the United States, of all 350 plus counties across the United States I believe Fairfield County is number one, or maybe we’re just number two behind Orange County in California, but yet Bridgeport is the poorest section of Fairfield County and the 130th District within Bridgeport, we have six state representatives representing the various parts of the city of Bridgeport and the 130th District is probably the poorest of the six geographic state representative districts within Bridgeport.

So that kind of just explains to you where I am and what we face in this district. So, as I said, this cannot be done via a military takeover, we certainly don’t want that, and so I’m putting it out to a test and doing the door knocking, door to door, trying to meet everybody, see everybody eyeball to eyeball and introduce myself, introduce the ideas that I would like to be able to implement and ask them if they would support me to be their voice and to be their leader of change up in Hartford.

And so with help from good folks like you giving us this chance to engage in this dialog with your audience we certainly hope that people will consider it and engage us in the dialog. And that’s all we’re really looking for. And again, at the end of the day, the bottom line really is we want to help our neighbors and we want to help sustain safe healthy clean neighborhoods and good families to be able to take care, again, of the children.
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[DTN Promo: This bud’s so good that when I smoke it the government freaks out. ]
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Dean Becker: Tune into this week’s Cultural Baggage Show. We’ll refute the government’s hysterical propaganda about potent marijuana and we want to welcome to the Drug Truth Network 102.3 FM in Nimbin, New South Wales, Australia.

And as always I remind you that 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. Do your part to help end this madness.

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