Century of Lies, Sept. 16, 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.

Dean Becker: Hello my friends welcome to this very unusual addition of Century of Lies. I’m preparing this in advance of the advance of Hurricane Ike. I’m preparing it incase I don’t have any electricity when this show is suppose to air. If there is no Cultural Baggage a bit later in the week, well I hope you’ll forgive me for missing for the first time in 7 years. Last week I got some strong compliments about the interview done in New Zealand with Judge Jerry Paradis out of Canada, who’s touring down south on be half of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. So I’m going to bring you more of that discussion.

Kim: Well, I mean, currently we are most concerned in this country with P.

Jerry Paradis: Yes.

Kim: And that does tend to make people do dreadful things.

Jerry Paradis: It disinhibits them exactly the same way as alcohol does, I agree. But actually, P, is a very interesting word, I’ve noticed that since I’ve arrived.

Kim: What do you call it?

Jerry Paradis: It’s called pure meth. Is it not? Is that what the “p” stands for?

Kim: Yeah.

Jerry Paradis: I wonder what impure meth is called. I haven’t quite figured that out since I’ve been here.

Kim: Something nasty and much cheaper.

Jerry Paradis: Is it?

Kim: I have no idea. What do you call it in Canada?

Jerry Paradis: Well. We call it crystal meth, in most, meth is still available in pill form, but crystal meth is a different beast entirely and I quite agree it’s an extremely damaging drug. But prohibition hasn’t prevented it from coming to the foreign creating the problem you just described.

Kim: So you think prohibition has reduced safety generally?

Jerry Paradis: Yes.

Kim: Because its encouraged, literally, encouraged the criminal underworld.

Jerry Paradis: I agree, that’s exactly what I was saying.

Kim: So it’s not the drugs themselves? It’s the culture which surrounds them?

Jerry Paradis: I would say that. In my, the Provincial Court of British Columbia hears 95% of the criminal cases in that providence. And between 2000 and 2005, just that period, I retired right in the middle of that. It dealt with almost 50,000 cases, just in the providence of British Columbia.

Of the drugs themselves, that is the use, the trafficking, the production, the manufacture, the importation, that sort of thing. And throughout all of that time, the drug use never abated, and in particular, cannabis grow-ops; continued to proliferate in greater and greater numbers. I don’t know how. My wife had an interesting suggestion a couple of nights ago, when we were talking about this.

She suggested that, New Zealand has so successfully dealt with its borders in order to keep as much as possible, heroine and cocaine out of the picture, that the only thing left for those who want to be risky in their behavior, is meth, manufactured domestically. And that I think is another important point. Other drugs, more benign than meth, might have been the drug of choice of some of those people who opted for meth.

Kim: How would you legislate to control them in terms of quality and price?

Jerry Paradis: Well, LEAP’s view is, and mine too, is that government control is essential. I understand you have a private enterprise approach to the dispensing of alcohol in this country. I'm not at all sure that’s a good idea, I’m not all sure that those who purvey those substances are being all that diligent about who they sell to. But I’ll accept that they are, that they’re trying to operate within the law.

The fact is, no one asks some one who wants some cannabis, for example, to show his ID, to prove that he’s of age and able to partake of it. Simply, if he’s got the money, he’ll get the drug. The control by government of both the production side, that is coming into contacts and forming contracts with producers, growers, and others, for the production of a tested drug, to be sold in a government drug store, if you will, in very plain packaging, no advertising, no branding, no attempt to increase the market, just everybody knows the drug store is there. That seems to be, at least at first blush, the best option, but I have to caution that there is still a great deal of debate about that.

Kim: Yeah, oh you mean, within LEAP?

Jerry Paradis: Yes, well, within anyone who is opposed prohibition, we all agree that it has to go. We all have a pretty good idea of how to deal with drugs after words, but there’s still debate. For example, the possibility of dealing with of certain drugs very much differently than others. Cannabis, for example, should be deal with much more easily, if I can use that word, than meth, of course, or heroine or cocaine. But that doesn’t mean they can’t all be dealt with out of some form of government-controlled dispensary.

Kim: So, in fact, there are no drugs that you consider to be beyond the pale?

Jerry Paradis: Well, even if they are far beyond the pale, prohibition has not prevented people from becoming affected by them. The damaging aspect of the drug, is not the key feature, and I doubt very much that we would find something like what is happening with alcohol here and in my country and every where else, as the result of the legalization of those drugs. Alcohol would still remain the drug of choice of well over 80% of the population.

Kim: I wonder if that’s the case, how are you sure of that?

Jerry Paradis: I’m not. I’m predicting. All I can do is take the situation as it is now, try to project it as best as I can, and arrive at some sort of rational conclusion about what would happen.

My view is that, with out the need to inflate your market in order to maintain your position in the black-market, that is what pushers do, with out that need, and with the goods available at a controlled price, by the way which would be taxed and the money from that would go into treatment, and prevention, and harm reduction, things that are essential right now, and are not getting a very good funding, are not getting funding for them.

Kim: This is isn’t the same way that nicotine is managed in this country then essentially, is it?

Jerry Paradis: Well that is a very good point Kim; I think peer pressure would take care of a lot of problems that we’re encountering right now. Even though you have a serious problem with alcohol, there is not doubt that the guest that spills his merlot all over his hostess’s broad loom, is shunned after that, I mean, no one wants a drunk around.

And the cigarette smoking process, the peer pressure process that we’ve seen in our country, and I see here has been fascinating. The intendance in smoking has dropped so radically, just because it has gotten to people that this is just not acceptable. I suspect that meth would suffer the same fate.

Kim: If the drug’s going to be taxed, the price would actually be quite high, wouldn’t it?

Jerry Paradis: Well, it depends on who wants to tax it. But no I don’t think so, because right now, it’s a real rough estimate.

Kim: But realistically I mean, I can’t imagine a government even beginning to legalize drugs, so that taxing them to the nth degree, in order, even though you said it doesn’t work, that price be a deterrent because you can’t be seen to sanction them.

Jerry Paradis: Oh, I doubt that, I don’t see any reason why that would have to be the case. If the idea is to get some funds into public revenues, to enhance treatment and prevention facilities, prevention and strategies, then I doubt very much the object of taxing would be to make the price high enough to not look as if its being sanctioned.

That certainly is not the case with alcohol, they do tax alcohol and they do tax tobacco, but it’s still available, if somebody is an alcoholic, he can get what he needs, with out breaking in to your home or stealing your car.

Kim: There is something weird about that though, when you think about it. Yeah, ok, alcohol and tobacco, but now with drugs, you legalized them, you set up drug stores for them, you tax them, and then you put all this money into dealing with the problems that the drugs are causing. There’s something odd about that.

Jerry Paradis: Again the problems are caused now.

Kim: You would call it realistic?

Jerry Paradis: Yes. The problems are there. The really important thing to remember about drugs of all kinds; is that an attempt to prohibit them, is an attempt to repeal the law of supply and demand. There will always be a demand for drugs, its innate. And therefore, there will always be a supply. And that being the case, any attempt to stem either one, is doomed to failure.

Kim: Yeah, but you know the argument against that is; well, that we have laws for all sorts of things that we don’t want to happen, murder for example.

Jerry Paradis: Yes.

Your response would be; that drugs are a victimless crime, would it?

Kim: Jerry Paradis: Well that certainly is one of the responses; the other response is it simply doesn’t fall into the same category. What someone wants to do to himself may very well affect those around him, so I agree there are some victims in the sense of victim by association. But generally speaking, we have laws to prevent certain things that we consider completely unacceptable within society.

The only reason we have drug laws, is because, 100 years ago the Chinese were smoking opium throughout the British colonies, and it was the god given duty of the god-fearing colonizers to pull the heathen Chinese out of the depths of depredation. The fact is the British are the ones who had introduced the Chinese to opium, which is kind of ironic.

Kim: So the drug laws are often targeting class and race?

Jerry Paradis: Oh they have been since the beginning. And add class defiantly class and race certainly.

Kim: Does a medical marijuana provision in some states, in California anyway, right now.

Jerry Paradis: We have one in Canada.

Kim: How does that work?

Jerry Paradis: Well, it’s not working very well at the moment, but I hope that they’ll refine it to the point that it will work. But at the moment, one registers with the federal government, one can be then, allowed to grow a very certain small amount for ones own use.

Kim: How does one qualify? Because I know in California, can suffer from anxiety, which I thought was counter intuitive; paranoia sets in. But anyway, how sick do you have to be, before you can register?

Jerry Paradis: Well, that’s a little too casual, it’s not a question of being sick. Certain kinds of conditions really are…

Kim: Pain.

Jerry Paradis: Have been shown to benefit from cannabis. A doctor still has to certify that, that person would benefit from cannabis in that persons situation. That is presented to the relevant authorities, and the exemption is given, and that person goes on their way. We have medicinally exempted people in Canada, I forget the numbers now, but they are growing.

It’s a small number of people, it really is. There’s not that many people that suffer from glaucoma, which it turns out marijuana is important for that, I really don’t know how myself.

Kim: And so, presumably you can, not only grow it for your own needs, you can acquire it from other people.

Jerry Paradis: Well, you can acquire it from the government; they have a growing operation, somewhere, unrevealed. But they sell their goods at a much-inflated price themselves. Which your point earlier, about maybe they would tax the thing out of existence. That is considering what they are doing with the medical marijuana at the moment, that maybe the case, they are trying to discourage it.

But that has to do with the nature of the government in power. Our government is dedicated to the notion of the war on drugs, and does see the American movement, if I can call it that, over the last 30 years, sees that as the way to go, and they’re going to approach it from that point of view as well.

Kim: It’s interesting that marijuana seems to be slipping under the barrier in some way. I wondering whether if you think that it’s the thin end of the wedge, and it’s the beginning of some kind of more liberal approach to drugs in general, or will there always be something demonized?

Jerry Paradis: I'm sure there will always be something demonized, alcohol is demonized now; any judge in my court certainly recognizes that’s its responsible for over 70% of the case that come before the courts.

But at the same time, marijuana, I use to think, it would be wrong to deal with decriminalization then legalization, sort of like you say; keep wedging the issue open. And medical marijuana being something like that, but now, I’ve really come around to thinking, if we can take care of marijuana first, then that would be a way to show people the sky would not fall, and that in fact it is one of the most benign drugs available to us, not that its completely harmless, but…

Kim: Have you tried it?

Jerry Paradis: Oh yes, of course I have.

Kim: And it’s your experience that it’s benign?

Jerry Paradis: Yes, it’s a relatively harmless drug; yes there are certain people who shouldn’t mess with any drugs and will be adversely affected by ingesting marijuana, there’s no doubt about that. No drug is completely safe. I’m just saying comparatively to other drugs, it is much more benign than most. And to deal with that first, to deal with marijuana first, and show that, again the sky hasn’t fallen. Would be very helpful to then moving on to deal with other drugs.

Dean Becker: All right my friends, you are listening to the Century of Lies show on the Drug Truth Network and Pacifica Radio, we’re tuning in to a recent interview on New Zealand radio with Judge Jerry Paradis, out of Canada, who’s down there speaking on be half of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Kim: Have you researched all drugs? As it were, personally?

Jerry Paradis: Oh, no I haven’t, no.

Kim: Why not?

Jerry Paradis: I was not interested. I guess I don’t have risky behavior, attitude towards this sort of thing.

Kim: So your position, I just wanted to clarify that; your position is not emerging from an attitude that says that drugs are ok.

Jerry Paradis: Not at all.

Kim: It’s emerging from an attitude that says drugs are not ok.

Jerry Paradis: Yes.

Kim: But we’re not dealing with that properly at all.

Jerry Paradis: That’s exactly the issues. The only issue is how to deal with the inevitable; bad results that one gets from drug abuse. The inevitability of the law of supply and demand that I mentioned, and the bad results are obvious to any one that looks. Prohibition has not done that job, and in fact, has fostered bad results.

Kim: Could Canada do it with the US policy in place? I mean, if the government were to have a complete lobotomy? Is it feasible that with that shared border, that Canada could even think about doing it?

Jerry Paradis: That’s a very strong argument, Kim, and my view at the moment is; that if any sovereign state deems a certain domestic social policy to be worthwhile and affective, the neighboring states’ attitude should not change that. And it would simply be a matter of political will.

They might get their shorts in a knot in the United States for a period of time. But eventually, noticing we’re their most serious trading partner, I think they would change that attitude. And besides the attitude in the United States generally has seen a C-change in the last 2 or 3 years. The numbers who have joined LEAP, are up to about 10,000 from 5 people in 2002, tend to illustrate that.

Kim: You went to Columbia, I think a year ago, to look at the US drug policy and military aid there.

Jerry Paradis: I did.

Kim: And I just been looking at an article about Mexico, where there’s a very similar situation, you know, huge amounts of money being put in by the United States. What’s actually happening because they, the US wanted, well, they provided the funding for aerial eradication of cocoa crops as part of the war on drugs there.

Jerry Paradis: Columbia is a very complex problem as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, it not just a question for drugs. It’s a 40-year civil war, there are paramilitaries of varies kinds, there are FARC of course. But the interesting thing about this; is that the United States beginning in 2000, began, did this aerial fumigation of crops, managed to devastate crops that had nothing to do with cocoa, managed to create over 2.5 million internal refugees, more than any where else in the world, except Darfur. And at the same time, failed to stem anything about the cocaine market.

Where that market use to be control by a couple of cartels, it’s now controlled by about 100 different major gangs in the country. And where it use to be sort of a marine distribution network, its now an over land distribution network, through Panama, through Central America, and into Mexico. So what you’re seeing in Mexico now, is the direct result of the process of trying to eradicate its source.

Again this is such a lucrative market, as all capitalist enterprises will, it adapts to changing circumstances. So now we have drugs flowing through Mexico, and that’s where the new drug lords are being created, by the United States being reasonably successful, in their efforts to scare people off of, either, the production in Columbia or the transportation by sea or by air. It’s simply a change of focus for those who control the drugs; the criminals and the terrorists.

Kim: So essentially, would you go so far as to say, if you ended the war on drugs, you could bring peace to parts of the world, like Columbia and Mexico.

Jerry Paradis: It’s remotely possible because, the war on drugs is what has made the drug, particularly in Columbia, the best resource to keep funding the terrorists and so on. That is what they’re using for both sides of that civil war that’s where the funds are coming from.

If we simply ended that, made cocaine available in a regulated market, I have no doubts at all that would simply disappear. Organized crime wouldn’t, they’d find something else, they always do, but drugs would no longer be the feature of it. 500 billion dollars is the trade annually in illegal drugs, it’s an enormous amount.

Kim: And 200, no 2,500 drug related killings in Mexico last year, 2,000 drug related murders already this year.

Jerry Paradis: Yes.

Kim: I mean, it would be a fascinating experiment, wouldn’t it? You think you could run it through a computer to find out what the world would look like.

Jerry Paradis: If I could, I just like to make a very important point. They’re not drug related. They are prohibition related; they are not the result of ingesting the drug.

Kim: I understand your point.

Jerry Paradis: I really think we have to start differentiating, in our minds, what is a drug related, that is one committed because the influence of the drug, or one committed involving the drug, that is the use of the drug, and those crimes that exist or are committed only because prohibition is in place. Those murders in Mexico are precisely that, as they are in my hometown.

Kim: In a realistic world, what you want is never going to happen is it?

Jerry Paradis: Well, I don’t know. I use to say that…

Kim: Well certainly not in your lifetime.

Jerry Paradis: I use to say that Kim, I don’t say that any more.

Kim: Really?

Jerry Paradis: The audiences I speak to, which are usually middle class people, I’ll be speaking to Harbor Rotary in Wellington…

Kim: Really, you’re not always speaking to the converted?

Jerry Paradis: Oh no, the objective is precisely the opposite. The object is to try to educate the people and, more and more, I started speaking on this subject 3 years ago, when people were, if not aghast, certainly very leery about the whole idea. And now the audiences I speak to are all virtually on side and their only question is; well let’s get down to the details, what will you do to replace what we have? And that’s a very legitimate question that needs open debate because communities, different communities need different solutions.

Kim: One of the things that concerns people; is the idea of legalizing drugs before you’ve got really well funded programs in place. And I’m making some kind of analogy here with the deinstitutionalization of people with mental illness, psychiatric patients, who were put out into the community before the community was equipped to help them, as they deserved to be helped.

Jerry Paradis: That’s a very good point; my city has gained a reputation as being both, one of the most livable cities in the world and one that has one of the most awful mixes in the downtown east side, of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction. And that all has to do with, a lot of that has to do with the closure of institutions some 20 years ago, and the attempt to deal with mental illness in the community, which has failed miserably because of the lack of resources.

I agree with you wholly that what we need to do before we legalize and regulate is commit funds and create networks that can deal with the new world that will exist when drugs are being sold in a regulated market.

Kim: Although, if I pressed you on that, would you not say, that the damage being done by the prohibition on drugs, is so great that no excuse should delay decriminalization?

Jerry Paradis: Oh I see. You’re suggesting that perhaps the governments might say, “That this is too costly to contemplate at this time; we have too many other priorities.”

Kim: I am.

Jerry Paradis: I, that’s certainly a point that will have to be addressed, but I think it falls in to the same category as governments saying, “Oh we cant possibility do this, we have international commitments.” It’s the same sort of thing, if there’s a will to deal with a serious problem, then it will be dealt with. We have to remember that 1.3 of the American population is addicted to drugs. 1.3 were addicted when the first Harrison Act in 1914 came into being, but that was an estimated amount, but it was as scientifically as possible in those days, estimated at 1.3. And in 1970, when the war on drugs was declared, it was 1.3.

So its not as if there’s this huge terrible problem out there, it’s really quite concentrated. I think the media had played up quite a large role in aggrandizing while they’re demonizing the whole drug issue. And if we look it logically and rationally, the funds needed to deal with those that are adversely affected by drugs are not enormous and could be dealt with very easily.

Kim: Vancouver has a safe injection site.

Jerry Paradis: It has a Supervised Injection Site, I correct you only because, that is the name of it. And also I have to agree with physicians who support INSITE very strongly, who say that there is not such thing as the safe injection of any drug. And that’s true, it has a supervised injection site, which our Superior Court has finally declared should be exempted from all drug laws and the federal government is appealing that at the moment and we’ll wait to see what happens.

But it was a very heartening decision by a Judge in Vancouver to keep the place open in spite of the government saying they would not extend the exemption past this last month of June.

Kim: So if it’s not exempt from drug laws, what is, what happens then?

Jerry Paradis: Well the people working there, could be seen or charged with, seen to be doing and charged with, abetting or aiding people to commit an offence, which is to use the drug.

Kim: That hasn’t happened.

Jerry Paradis: No, it has not. Because for a very good reason; that the past 3 Mayors of Vancouver have approved of it, the Downtown Merchant Association has approved of it, the Vancouver Police Department is completely in favor of it, the Providential Government of British Columbia is completely in favor of it.

The only people who are oppose to it are the moralist who seem to be in charge in Ottawa at the moment, and they are in charge of drug laws. The provinces don’t have the criminal law including drug laws as a federal jurisdiction in Canada.

Kim: If the price, I mean I know this is hypothetical, but, well it’s not hypothetical, in terms of your argument. Sorry I’m debating with my self here.

Jerry Paradis: You do it very well.

Kim: If the price of what you want, which is legalization of all drugs.

Jerry Paradis: Yes.

Kim: If the price of that, was an increase use of them, would that be tolerable? Would that be a price worth paying, in your book?

Jerry Paradis: I would defiantly say it would, but I don’t believe that would happen. I really don’t.

Kim: Others do of course.

Jerry Paradis: They do. And I don’t blame them for looking at it that way. It’s the most, it’s the easiest way to spot the out come of legalization. To say, “Of course, if its most easy to get and cheaper; more people are going to do it.” I realize that it’s not a scientific approach, but every audience I speak to, who raise the question of post legalization boom in drug use, I ask them if any one of them would run down to the drug store and cocaine or heroine or meth, or cannabis for that matter. And nobody ever raises their hand.

Now I’m not surprised they don’t. But the point is to be made, the point to be made is that at the moment, the use of drugs is fostered by the black-market that keeps it self alive by inducing younger and younger people to get involved in drug use. If a government control system made it uneconomic for organized crime to remain in that market and I suggest it certainly would, as it’s happened with alcohol, we use to have bootlegging cases in Canada but we don’t any more, I haven’t seen one in years.

Kim: Why do they call it bootlegging, because they shoved it down their boots?

Jerry Paradis: I think that’s, no, bootlegging is, I can’t remember what that had to do with, but it had to do with hiding liquor in…

Kim: Your boot.

Jerry Paradis: In your boot, I guess, yeah, I guess that must be it yeah. But it’s the same sort of thing; this market stays alive by maintaining a broad young base. If kids had to show IDs to get the drugs at a cheap enough price, that organized crime would be detoured from competing with it. Then they’d have to show ID and they’d have to, they would still get the drug if they wanted it, I agree. But it couldn’t be worse than what we’re doing now.

Kim: And drugs are always being invented; aren’t they too almost get around existing legislation?

Jerry Paradis: Interesting point, it really is. I repeat my wife had this idea that meth is such a problem in New Zealand because of the absence of drugs. It’s easy to manufacture and it’s very potent, and very easy to distribute, because if its small amounts that are potent. That is an invention designed to meet the needs of those who want to rebel and take, and be risky about what they do in their lives.

Kim: Do you go to any countries that are more particularly hostel to your ideas than others?

Jerry Paradis: I haven’t been to any other countries except Canada, the Untied States and here. No, actually I’ve been to the Netherlands that was just a stop over on the way on holiday to Africa.

Kim: Well that would be pictures of conversions, they’ve tighten up interestingly enough.

Jerry Paradis: I’m not, it’s difficult to say.

Kim: Is it?

Jerry Paradis: It really is, because the notion of the cannabis cafes where any adult can purchase up to 5 grams of marijuana for a price, is not because it’s legal, it’s because the police have chosen to turn a blind eye, by policy, to that sort of thing happening. Those cafes still have to get their marijuana on the black-market.

So it’s a very interesting kind of mix. So those still exist, as for the heroine issue and the cocaine issue, the fact is hard drug use in the Netherlands is far below per capita, by a long shot, to hard drug abuse or use in the United States, where the laws are much harsher.

Dean Becker: That’s it. And in closing I remind you: there is no truth, justice, logic, scientific fact, no 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.