Transcript

Cultural Baggage / September 25, 2011

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Broadcasting on the Drug Truth Network, this is Cultural Baggage.

“It’s not only inhumane, it is really fundamentally Un-American.”

“No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!”
“No more! Drug War!” “No more! Drug War!”

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DEAN BECKER: My Name is Dean Becker. I don’t condone or encourage the use of any drugs, legal or illegal. I report the unvarnished truth about the pharmaceutical, banking, prison and judicial nightmare that feeds on Eternal Drug War.

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DEAN BECKER: Hello friends, please open your ears and try to keep up. “Whistle-blowers allege corruption, cartel ties” so says a story in the El Paso Times written by Diana Washington Valdez. Miss Valdez tell us, if you will, some of the details on how this story came to be.

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: I can say this much. We have been contacted in times past by various people. Many of them former law enforcement officers – either retired or people who transfer from one agency to another - who have made these kinds of allegations.

This is a little bit different because these are people who wanted to go public with what they knew and wanted to go public with the fact that they had been involved in assisting various agencies, including the FBI, with drug-related investigation. And, as a result of that involvement, over the course of nearly two years they were able to develop a lot of leads, a lot of information about not just low-level drug dealers but also corruption involving big names.

DEAN BECKER: And this is, I guess, the nightmare of a lot of people that corruption has really involved the army, the police and so forth on the Mexican side but it’s starting to show up on the U.S. side as well. Right?

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: I don’t think it’s started. I think this is one of the few occasions where we get a glimpse of how extensive it is. We have had, you know, along the border officers and Customs or Border Patrol or Sheriff Deputies – you name it… Police officers have been busted for possessing drugs or assisting drug dealers, that sort of thing.

But this is a little bit more…a bigger picture of what it’s like on this side. And how could there not be corruption on this side with so many drugs getting through. I mean there’s no other explanation for it.

DEAN BECKER: Yah, the story indicates that it’s alleged that drug cartels have given big donations to politicians which go unreported and thus influence appointments of key law enforcement officers.

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: That’s correct.

DEAN BECKER: You say that this is not the first discovery and I have been reporting on individual police corruption across the country for years now. But for it to reach a higher echelon should give us even more foreboding.

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: Foreboding but I think that if it could be proven that certain people accepted payoffs and the only way to put an end to that is for justice to be served. For these people to be charged, arrested and tried in court and I think that’s the only way that others will be discouraged from trying to do the same thing regardless of their position.

DEAN BECKER: Now there’s been some hemming and hawing with responses from the FBI. At first they were willing to address this and now they say there’s nothing to talk about. What’s been your observation there?

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: In all fairness agencies cannot discuss either pending or details of former investigations. But I think that greater transparency is needed and I hope that there is continued pressure by both the public and by public officials to bring out certain facts so that they’re not just glossed over.

DEAN BECKER: It strikes me as scary. The fact that these facts could be quashed or delayed at best, I suppose. And I guess what I’m wondering is the courage of these two whistle-blowers to speak what they see, to try to change things and yet to be denied, if you will. There’s a parallel there that journalists in Mexico have been denied the right to print the truth and, in fact, recently we saw where a couple of bloggers were disemboweled and hung from a bridge. What’s your thought there? I mean courage is the answer, isn’t it?

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: Also morality in the part of public officials - the kind of morality that tells them to do the right thing no matter what it costs politically. I think that is just fundamental and fundamental to law enforcement. And, again, the quicker they can get to the bottom of these allegations…Because there’s only one or two things that can happen when these kinds of allegations are made.

Either they will go after the suspects that are allegedly committing these crimes or the whistle-blowers will be attacked and there will be efforts to discredit them and so forth and so on. I’ve seen this sort of thing before with other kinds of situations.

DEAN BECKER: It was pointed out in your story that one of these gentleman even had a knife put to his throat to stop him from going forward, right?

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: That’s correct. They’ve had their homes broken into, families threatened…there’s more to it than we were able to report in that small amount of space.

DEAN BECKER: Alright, once again, we’ve been speaking with Diana Washington Valdez of the El Paso Times. Diana, is there anything that I’m leaving out here that you think my listeners should know? Your privy to more than the story certainly.

DIANA WASHINGTON VALDEZ: People everywhere should be vigilant to what goes on in their surroundings. It’s very easy to pick on Mexico and pick on the corruption there because it’s so in the open there but remember that we have…you know, wherever there are human beings…we do have corruption here to.

The quicker it’s rooted out and cleaned the better off we are for it.

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DEAN BECKER: Well it’s been some time since we’ve had a chance to talk to Mr. Phil Smith of the Drug War Chronicle and the Stop the Drug War organization. Phil, there’s a lot of information about perceptions on marijuana and maybe a change. What’s your thoughts?

PHIL SMITH: I don’t want to be a “Debbie Downer” but I’ve been watching some recent poll numbers from some key states and they’re not making me happy. A lot of people who are interested in marijuana reform have been looking to the West Coast to Washington, Oregon and California to get something done in 2012.

But in Washington state where there’s an initiative effort underway – we just had a poll showing only 44% for marijuana legalization. Now, to be fair, there were earlier polls that showed higher numbers – one at 56% in January, one at 54% in June – but now it’s down to 44% and that’s got to be pretty discouraging for the initiative folks up there.

The conventional wisdom among people who do initiatives is you want to start your campaign with 60% approval because you’re going to expect to get some knocked off during the campaign. So if you’re not at 60% and you’re not even at 50% now – it really has to make people wonder about the prospects for the initiative and, more importantly, it has to make funders wonder about the prospects. And if you can’t get money in these states with large populations – you’re not going to make it onto the ballot – let alone win the election. So that’s kind of depressing.

We’ve seen equally depressing numbers out of California today with a Public Policy Institute poll showing 51% opposing marijuana legalization, 46% in favor. That’s almost identical with the results from the 2010 election with Prop 19.

Now there are several initiatives competing to get on the ballot in California as well. But the folks who were behind Prop 19, Richard Lee and the Oakland people, it looks like they are going to stay out of it for 2012 because they don’t see any money. Richard blew all of his trying to get victory in 2010.

The other initiative campaigns in California face the same problems – they don’t have any money. And you have to get an awful lot of signatures just to get on the ballot. I don’t want to be completely depressing here. It is a long way out and California and Washington aren’t the only possibilities.

There’s also Oregon. People are working to get a legalization initiative on the ballot there. I haven’t seen any polling on that. But perhaps our best bet for 2012 is Colorado where there’s a well-organized campaign underway, a legalization initiative. One that appears likely to attract the money necessary to actually run the campaign.

But, that said, these are kind of bleak numbers for the West Coast.

DEAN BECKER: This brings to mind…I saw a report yesterday that reminded us that more than 50% of American adults have used marijuana and if they could just face-down their own hypocracy then this could be turned around. Your thought?

PHIL SMITH: Well I think we have to work on some key demographics. I think the key demographic is the middle-age woman that is a mother – the soccer mom. She may well have smoked joints at parties when she was in college but now she’s got teenage kids and she’s worried about them. That seems to be fairly consistent throughout the point of all the different races – all the different initiatives across the country.

It’s these middle-aged adults with children who are the toughest nut for us to crack so we’ve got to come up with ways of addressing their concerns.

DEAN BECKER: The angle that Law Enforcement Against Prohibition take on this is they want to take away the jobs. There’s about a million of our teenage kids out there selling drugs to one another, bringing it into the high schools, even the junior highs and that by ending prohibition we can at least take away that profit incentive for them. Your thought?

PHIL SMITH: That’s certainly an argument we can use on our side. But we’ve also got to convince these people that their kids are going to be safer if marijuana is legalized. The polls suggest that we haven’t made that case sufficiently yet.

DEAN BECKER: Again, there is the continuing waves of propaganda – keeps coming from the government offices trying to frighten these same parents. Is there not?

PHIL SMITH: Indeed. You see them hitting not only the teenage kids angle but also increasingly, as they run out of other arguments, the drugged driving angle. You know, “If we legalize pot we’re going to have hoards of pot heads cruising down our highways and running over people.” Or something.

Some of the initiatives try to address that and that leads me to another set of problems. We have divisions within the movement itself and I guess I would describe the divisions between pragmatists who want to get something passed even if it’s not that good necessarily and the absolutist who would rather have the status quo than see their ability to drive all high violated.

There’s a problem on our side of this movement too and that’s movement unity. We saw that with Proposition 19 in California and the Stoners Against 19. You’re seeing the same kind of thing come up in Washington state where they have a “per se” drugged-driving provision in their initiative which is inciting opposition from people within the community. Same kind of issue in Colorado.

So not only do we have to worry about the other side, we have to quit forming circular firing squads aimed at ourselves.

DEAN BECKER: Well this is true. The naysayers, the Drug War proponents always say this is putting the camel’s nose under the tent, so to speak, a first step towards legalizing heroin for babies or something. And yet the case is that we want to make it possible for adults to have easy access but to diminish the ability of children to get that same access, right?

PHIL SMITH: We need to be sharpening our arguments about how a legalized, regulated and controlled system for marijuana distribution would do that. Because we apparently not making that argument strongly enough now to influence those key demographics that we need to get over the top.

DEAN BECKER: Let’s hope that signatures can be gathered. At least, perhaps, in Colorado because they seem to have a more open recognition of the truth about the use of marijuana by adults. Heck the prices are even dropping up there – significantly lower there than they are in California.

PHIL SMITH: And they also manage to fend off an attempt in the legislature last year to impose one of those “per se” drugged-driving laws for marijuana. It was really quite amusing. They had recommended a limit of 5 nanograms per millileter of THC in your blood and right before they were ready to vote on that in committee last summer, a reporter for West Word(?) (local alternative weekly) smoked pot, took a blood test and was able to demonstrate that he was not too impaired to drive and that effectively killed that legislation last year.

So there are things that can be done and we need to be doing those things if we want to prevail.

DEAN BECKER: I recall a few years back that I got fired from a company. They wanted to hire me full-time, they loved me so much but, “You got to go take a urine test, Dean.” I drank a kidney rinse and drove around and drank all the water a person can handle and they hired me. A couple weeks later they fired me because the test had come in. The limit was 15 nanograms. I tested at 225. The weird thing is that two weeks later a different department in that same company hired me back under a contract basis because you can do that. Again, hypocrisy – mile high, right?

PHIL SMITH: Your bringing in another interesting topic that I’d like to broach for a little bit and that is the topic of drug testing. It’s in the news quite a bit these days as state legislatures across the country who are in a real budget pinch are seeking to pass laws that would require people receiving unemployment benefits or people receiving welfare to pass drug tests before they could get their benefits.

One of the most common responses I see to that is, “Well I have to take a drug test for my job – why shouldn’t they?” It really galls me because that kind of comment betrays a lack of understanding of the way our government works and our constitutional system. We have rights to protect us from our government. That’s why these drug test laws always fail because they are unconstitutional. We have a 4th amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. The federal courts have ruled that a drug test is a form of search and seizure.

Now, with private employers in the United States, we don’t have those rights. Or if we do have those rights – there only because they’ve been negotiated by unions acting on behalf of the workers they represent. So when I hear that kind of comment, “Well I have to get drug tested – why shouldn’t they?” I find it kind of disappointing and depressing because it betrays a real lack of understanding of how our system works. I think we have some more Social Studies programs in our schools.

DEAN BECKER: This brings to mind that since September 11, 2001, the mechanism, the framework of these laws that have intruded into our constitutional rights in regards to drug use have just been morphed, adapted kind of carte blanche for the War on Terror. Your thought?

PHIL SMITH: People have long talked about the Drug War exception to the Constitution. Now they’ve taken that same kind of logic that the enemy is so frightening, the threat is so great that we ought leave the Constitution in taters to protect ourselves. I think that’s very backwards thinking and very dangerous thinking and leads down a slippery slope towards a police state.

I don’t want to sound over-paranoid or like a conspiracy theorist but we’ve been nibbling away at our Bill of Rights for a decade now. It’s getting to be a pretty flimsy piece of paper anymore.

DEAN BECKER: I’ve got my fingers crossed and I’ll be trying to accent the words of those speaking truth to this hypocrisy in the coming months leading up to the 2012 election. The point is that folks out there need to educate themselves, need to undo the knot of hypocrisy. Your closing thoughts, please.

PHIL SMITH: I want to add that even though I’m the bringer of bad tidings today – I don’t want people to get the idea that we should just give up and roll over and play dead. These numbers tell me that we have to work harder. I remain convinced and committed to legalizing marijuana as a start.

I want to see it happen in my lifetime. I’m starting to get old, man, so we need to hurry up and we need to rededicate our efforts and we are going to make it happen some place, some year – next year in Colorado, at least. It could still happen in California and/or Oregon and Washington. But these numbers today tell us we got our work cut out for us.

DEAN BECKER: Indeed we do. Once again we’ve been speaking with Mr. Phil Smith of the Drug War Chronicle and http://StoptheDrugWar.org

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(Game show music)

DEAN BECKER: It’s time to play: Name That Drug by Its Side Effects.

Nausea, heartburn, development of bleeding ulcers, vomiting, swelling of the brain, extensive liver damage, difficulty with mental functioning, nucreas syndrome and death...

{{{ gong }}}

Time’s up!

The answer: Aspirin. Another FDA approved product.

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STEVE FOX: I’m Steve Fox, the Director of Public Affairs Industry Association.

DEAN BECKER: Steve, you guys have a release coming out today talking about marijuana commerce. Do you want to sum that up for us?

STEVE FOX: There was an important study released today by the Rand Corporation which is a global, well-respected research organization. What they found…they did a study of dispensaries in Los Angeles and found that where dispensaries where forced to close, crime rates actually went up compared to areas where dispensaries continued to operate.

DEAN BECKER: Now this kind of flies in the face of what many within government, many opponents to marijuana commerce have been saying, correct?

STEVE FOX: It certainly does. Interestingly the report that directly and said that opponents of medical marijuana have frequently cited the notion that medical marijuana dispensaries attract crime and they made the point that this is the first real study of that claim and they found the exact opposite. They found the existence of dispensaries may actually have the effect of reducing crime.

DEAN BECKER: This is very anecdotal. I was at a cannabis symposium, if you will, a few weeks back where there were multiple dispensaries selling all kinds of products and yet over the two days of that seminar there was not one problem. I asked the police and security there and they said there was not one problem at all. Your response to that.

STEVE FOX: That, in general, isn’t surprising. We’ve seen the same kind of phenomenon, if you will, at events like the Seattle Hempfest where you have a hundred thousand people coming together to basically celebrate cannabis and interestingly they ban alcohol at that event and what they find is there is usually very, very few incidents producing any kind of problem.

But what we have here is sort of taking that to the next step where they’re actually looking at dispensaries themselves. Their hypothesis is that the existence of these dispensaries produce foot traffic. They also tend to have their own security systems and individuals securing the area and these factors may actually be bringing crime rates down in those areas.

DEAN BECKER: We’ve been talking with Mr. Steve Fox of the National Cannabis Industry Association. Steve, you want to share your website with listeners?

STEVE FOX: We can be found at http://thecannabisindustry.org

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DEAN BECKER: This is Dr. Steven Davies of the Institute for Economic Affairs.

STEVEN DAVIES: Here are three of the most bizarre, strange and frankly unbelievable kind of reasons that have been given for prohibiting the sale and use of drugs.

The War on Drugs, contrary to what many people believe, has been going on for a long time. The very first international anti-drugs conference was actually called by no less a person than the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas the II. Maybe that's why so many people in this campaign want to be called czars. Although, you'd think they'd remember what happened to him and maybe be not so keen to have that title.

Now over the years a whole number of reasons have been given for sustaining the War on Drugs, for extending drug prohibition and the like. Many of these are so preposterous to any sane person’s ideas that you wonder how on earth they ever got credence.

One argument which was made, for example, banning opiates in the United States in the 1890s and which is also made for banning the sale of cannabis in 1930s is that it would lead to miscegenation. The idea was that the drugs in question were going to be taken by respectable white girls and turn them into sex-crazed maniacs who then want to have sex with Chinese people or Mexican.

Another constant theme and noted idea was that the drug business, the trade in drugs of you will, was part of an international conspiracy run by all sorts of nefarious interests. On some occasions it was the international communist conspiracy, on other occasions it was the yellow peril and yet on other occasions it was a worldwide conspiracy of aliens and lizards.

The third kind of popular reason which is often given is the idea that somehow drugs are going to make their users into idle, unproductive “layabouts” who want to do nothing else in life excepts have a good time, have lots of sex.

You do have to wonder about what the assumptions are behind this. The basic notion is that your life belongs to the government and it is your job to be productive. It’s your job to be the kind of person who never really wants or tries to have a good time. Certainly there’s a good time involving mood-altering substances and so the notion here is that, in fact, what you should be doing is simply avoiding any kind of temptation if at all possible.

And you do wonder, in this case, why these arguments do not apply to other kind of areas of life. But let’s not give the people making these arguments any more ideas.

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MARY JANE BORDEN: Hello drug policy aficionados! I’m Mary Jane Borden, Editor of Drug War Facts. This question for this week asks, “Is opiate use increasing?”

Each year around this time the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration releases its National Survey on Drug Use and Health that reports the problems of illicit drug use in the U.S. population age 12 or older.

Trend measurements from 2002 onward, the data measure lifetime and monthly use of various illicit drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Lifetime use means having tried a drug just once. Monthly use equates to consuming an illicit drug at least once per month. The National Survey of Drug Use and Health quotes monthly use and current use.

What is striking about these data, but underreported analysis, is the growth in use of opiates. Specifically heroin and pain relievers and often opiates as well. In a nine years since 2002 among drugs showing the largest lifetime growth in users were pain relievers at +17.4% over 2002 and heroin at +12.5% over 2002. Monthly usage of heroin at +44%, pain relievers +16.5% grew the most quickly over the 2002 respective user population.

There were an estimated 5.1 million users of illicit pain relievers in 2010 – over 700,000 more than in 2002. The increasing use of these illicit drugs is tragically reflected in the headline of a recent Los Angeles Times article entitled, “Drug Deaths Now Outnumber Traffic Fatalities in the U.S.” Citing 2009 data and a 2011 National Vital Statistics report and naming these drugs as the culprits.

The article read:

“…Claiming lives every 14 minutes… This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979.”

These facts and other facts can be found in the data tables within the Drug Use chapter and the Causes of Death chapter at http://www.drugwarfacts.org.

If you have a question for which you need facts, please e-mail it to me at mjborden@drugwarfacts.org. I’ll try to answer your question in an upcoming show.

So, remember when you need facts about drugs and drug policy, you can get the facts at Drug War Facts.

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DEAN BECKER: Too soon we’re out of time. Please check out the debate between the former [DEA Administrator] and Ethan Nadelmann on this week’s Century of Lies.

And, as always, I remind you that because of prohibition you don’t know what’s in that bag. Please be careful.

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DEAN BECKER: To the Drug Truth Network listeners around the world, this is Dean Becker for Cultural Baggage and the Unvarnished Truth.

This show produced at the Pacifica studios of KPFT, Houston.
Transcript provided by: Jo-D Harrison of www.DrugSense.org
Tap dancing… on the edge… of an abyss.