Transcript

Century of Lies / October 9, 2011

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DEAN BECKER: 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 and thank you for being with us here on the Drug Truth Network. Some of you, up to the 10 years, which we recognize today. Progress has been made and we’ve slid back a couple steps as well. Seems Obama is afraid of marijuana – going after it out there in California like gang-busters.

But we’re going to talk about these 10 years and let’s begin with a gentleman who first put me on the airwaves. When I came to KPFT there were a few folks that would listen to me - my ideas about doing these programs about the Drug War. But foremost among them was the long-time patriarch of the mothership station, Mr. Ray Hill.

RAY HILL: Well, mercy. I don’t know if I can follow that title well but one of the things that KPFT can do for any movement is give it a launching pad. And I think that KPFT did not step up to the bar on the Drug Truth Network and on the issues involving the struggle against the Drug War because I think that we were afraid somebody was going to pull them over on the way home and find out what they had in the glove box.

But I had some extra license in that regard because I have been both drug- and alcohol-free for now 52 years and at that time over 40 years so that wasn’t likely to happen to me so it gave me a little more courage.

I welcomed you, Dean, and the proposal you had on KPFT’s prison show because that’s a good place to start. In our listening audience we had a large number of victims from that war. Many simply for possession, many who were without the kinds of resources for an adequate defense. A lot of people doing more time than necessary and all of them becoming criminals beyond necessity. So I thought you had a particular interest to my audience and generally an opportunity for KPFT to fulfill its creed and bring some light into a controversial, dark alley.

DEAN BECKER: And, Ray, if I dare say, in the ten years that we’ve been doing this the major media and even certain groups of politicians are starting to echo some of the thoughts that I’ve been putting forward. Your response.

RAY HILL: That’s one thing that I learned about doing media a long time ago. You got to realize that I’ve been in radio since I was about 7-years-old. Some of the things I’m doing now…retiring from the Prison Show and I am now producer of Execution Watch.

But as we talk about how it appears in the broader media are seduced to begin discussion with it. What we provide, both in terms of Execution and you in terms of Drug Truth, is a sounding board to compare the lies they may pick up somewhere else and repeat. We offer them a steady base of information that would encourage them to be more accurate in their reporting.

DEAN BECKER: You have now stepped down from the Prison Show but, as you say, you’re doing this Execution Watch. It’s particularly important in Texas, is it not?

RAY HILL: Yeah, Texas is the execution capital of the western world. Doing that show….i don’t enjoy doing that show but I feel an obligation for somebody to do that show and since I’m a retired old hack – better me than someone else. I’m able to examine cases closely enough to separate the wheat from the chaff as it were.

DEAN BECKER: The nature of American justice is supposed to be beyond the shadow of a doubt but for far too many of these executions a little shadow doesn’t seem to bother anybody, does it?

RAY HILL: It’s true. The thing about is that media, if it’s done right, is there to enlighten potential victims – drug war excesses or even criminal justice excesses – anybody can get falsely accused. Anybody can get pulled over and not know how to deal with a probative cop. That’s something that you supply and hopefully I supply in a different arena to educate the public on how to protect themselves from these excesses.

I hope not one other person is sent to a Texas prison for any crime that they did not commit or anything that an adult should have the right to decide to do. I’m getting tired of government treating adults like they were children and trying to tell adults what they can and they can’t do. And I’m getting tired of them treating children like adults when it comes to excessive punishment.

They’ve got it wrong. We know the right answers. We have to keep on keeping on.

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DEAN BECKER: Long time listeners to the Drug Truth Network will remember Mr. Doug McVay of Common Sense for Drug Policy who, for years, brought us Drug War Facts.

DOUG McVAY: People like to think that because there’s an internet presence that means that we’re out there and taken seriously but the reality is that people do credit “real” media - things like radio – a lot more highly.

You’ve been presenting a quality program for a very long time. You’ve gained for yourself respect from many quarters out there and it’s well deserved. You’ve been a credit to the drug policy reform movement with the quality of your reporting.

Drug Truth Network provides a very necessary service in that it’s the voice of the skeptic of the Drug War.

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TERRY NELSON: This is Terry Nelson of LEAP, speaking for law enforcement against prohibition. This week is the tenth anniversary of The Drug Truth Network (www.drugtruth.net). I’d like to thank Mr. Dean Becker for his work of bringing the truth about the drug war to the listening public’s attention. It’s through activism such as the Drug Truth Network that the public is afforded an opportunity to have information from a view other than that presented by the government.
LEAP appreciates the opportunity, as a not for profit 501-3(c) education organization, to share news about the drug war with you as well. Thank all of you for affording us the opportunity to share the truth about this failed public policy with you.
LEAP believes that drugs should be regulated and controlled by the state instead of the drug cartels and street gangs. And, the only way I know to regulate and control something is for that thing to be legal. Of course, when you over regulate something then a grey market will be created so it is imperative that the regulations be fair and equitable to both the consumer and the merchant.
Regardless of your position on legalization, in favor or opposed, you should welcome a open and inclusive debate on the merits of the issue. Let’s base policy on science and not politics.
Without a doubt the issue is one that should be debated, studied and research conducted nationally. Let the facts, instead of fear, govern our actions. What we cannot do is stifle honest and open debate and prohibit the only review to NIDA.
I believe, from testimony and what I have read that there is sufficient cause to be skeptical of the federal government’s position on prohibition.
Why would a lifelong police officer take this stand? Because I know that prohibition is the cause of the crime and violence associated with drugs. I know that a drug problem can be cured whereas a felony record stays with you the rest of your life and effectively marginalizes you for the remainder of your life. You can’t vote in some states, can’t be bonded for licensing, can’t get loans and you can’t get a decent job and pay taxes instead of being a burden on society. Plus, we can no longer afford the luxury of trying to arrest our way out of this social/medical problem. I listened to the position for decades that drugs caused crime as drug gangs and cartels shoot it out for control of the lucrative street corner or drug corridor. I now know that prohibition causes this violence and not the drugs.
If you agree please raise you voices and be heard. Phone, write, or email your federal, state and local representatives and let them know where you stand.
Again, thank you for listening. This is Terry Nelson of LEAP, www.leap.cc signing off. Stay safe.
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WINSTON FRANCIS: So it’s been ten years. Ten years of assertions that if drugs, not just marijuana but all drugs, were decriminalized – street overdose deaths would go down, not up; HIV infections would plummet and overall drug use would decrease. Just let them do it and they’ll stop.

Teen drug use would go down. Overall drug use would go down. Overdose deaths would go down. Just decriminalize. Just let them.

Who believes this stuff? If a country decriminalized drugs around the time this show started - let’s say July of 2001 – we could show the drug legalization advocates just how wrong they are. But we don’t need that data so no need to look for it.

We already know what would happen. People who want marijuana for a stubbed toe will want heroin for a headache. Everybody will be high because they are allowed to be and in many cases, with there being no way to effectively test for certain substances, officers will not be able to tell who is high and who isn’t. And neither will you.

Automobile accidents will increase. Crime will increase. Much of the money saved on not incarcerating drug offenders will be spent dealing with all the robberies and homicides committed by all the new addicts. There would be fire and death.

[ gunshot blast ]

Solving our country’s drug problem by providing cocaine-laced cigarettes to the masses is as crazy as it sounds. No need for the facts. Just use your common sense. Your government knows what it’s doing so trust in that. Sometimes it’s best to just listen to the people in charge and do what your told.

This has been Winston Francis with the official government truth.

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MIKE GRAY: I’m Mike Gray. I wrote the book, “Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out.” which is a history of the War on Drugs. I’ve been chairman of Common Sense for Drug Policy for the past 8 years. I’m a supporter of Drug Truth Network and wish you only success.

DEAN BECKER: Mike, as the words in your book lead us in the direction of understanding and realizing that the truth is pretty obvious and perhaps it can work its magic some fine day. Your response.

MIKE GRAY: [chuckling] Well, let’s hope so. We’ve spent a trillion dollars and packed the prisons to the roof beams with basically people who were simply no more guilty of anything more than having a drink. We had a terrible history with alcohol prohibition. In fact alcohol prohibition is what gave us organized crime.

Back before the 1920s, when alcohol prohibition was introduced, there was no such thing as organized crime. There were criminals in all the major cities but they didn’t know each other. They certainly did cooperate. Then all of the sudden we made booze illegal and millions of people said, “The hell with that, I’m drinking anyway.”

And it opened the door for people like Al Capone. You can’t run a brewery which covers two city blocks unless everybody is in on it so you have to pay off everybody. Not just the cop on the beat, you got to pay off the alderman, the city councilman and the mayor. And the corruption eats its way through the whole establishment and pretty soon Al Capone, unquestionably, was running the city of Chicago.

But he was in direct league with “Bo Bo” Hauth in Detroit where they were bringing the booze across Lake Sinclair from Canada and all these huge combines all over the country began handshake arrangements to help each other out and they created this vast industry of organized crime.

Now, interestingly, the murder rate in the United States went up by a factor of 10 during the short period of alcohol prohibition. It went from 1 murder per 100,000 people to 10 per 100,000. They then decided in 1933 that they had enough of that and the 18th amendment was overturned and we ended alcohol prohibition. The murder rate in the United States dropped dramatically over the next 11 years to half of what it had been before.

And now that we’ve instituted the Drug War it’s right back where it was at the peak of prohibition – 10 per 100,000. The slaughter that’s going on in Mexico…the idea that government of Mexico would set up warfare with the criminal gangs is absolutely insane.

I don’t know if you were at the conference in Baltimore in ’92 but the Drug Policy Foundation at that time (now the Drug Policy Alliance) invited experts from all over the world and one guy who really stuck out was one of the Supreme Court judges from the nation of Colombia. Gomez Hertado was his name. He said in his speech, “Forget about inquisitive crime and all the normal criminal pursuits, the income of the drug barons is now greater than the United States Defense budget. With these resources they can suborn the institutions of the state and if the state refuses they can purchase the firepower to outgun it. We are faced with the return to the dark ages.

Now if that doesn’t describe quite accurately what the hell is going on in Mexico right now – you’re not paying attention. And to imagine that the slender little ribbon of water, the Rio Grande, is going to keep all that mayhem south of the border – you’re cuckoo. It’s already coming into Texas and it’s invading several others states, mostly southern right now but they have operations in Chicago, New York…

Full service organization – they grow the stuff, they transport it and they have operations here in the United States that sell it here in Los Angeles and all over the country. And, like I said, the only way you can do that is if you corrupt the officials. The border patrol is already corrupted. When of their top agents was found near Juarez was arrested she took $25,000 to look the other way – just once. Now who can refuse that?! In this economic climate – what rational human being would turn down an offer of $25,000 to just not show up for work for an hour? You know?!

To imagine that we have a handle on this is insane. We could save this country, in this dire economic moment, over $70 or $80 billion dollars a year if we just simply said, “OK, it’s legal now. We’re turning this back over to the people who used to run it – the medical profession. If you have a drug problem you take it to your doctor. If you’re an addict he’ll get you into a treatment facility. If you’re not an addict he’ll make sure that you’re using drugs responsibly or sensibly.”

And there are a lot of people who do that, by the way. The idea that one toke and you’re out of control is cuckoo. There are police officers and doctors and medical patients all over the world who are responsibly smoking marijuana on a daily or hourly basis and they’re getting along just fine.

So you could begin by decriminalizing marijuana and save the country about $25 billion dollars immediately just on that one drug.

DEAN BECKER: Mike, just last week there was a situation reported in the Houston Chronicle that three police officers busted a house for marijuana. While they were there they found a plate of marijuana brownies and they ate them. Then they used the police transponders (or whatever you call it) to laugh about it and talk about how high they were. They did bust the guy but it’s to be determined whether or not they’ll take him to trial.

MIKE GRAY: That kind of stuff goes on all the time. I’ve worked with a narcotics officer in Chicago who took me around to a number of establishments. He said, “See that house over there? That’s notorious drug distribution center.”

And he’s going around and pointing out all this stuff. So I said, “Why don’t you do something about it?” He said, “Are you crazy. We’d need another 10,000 men to actually get this situation under control.”

He said, “The corruption that extends as a result of this throughout the department is just staggering. Let’s say you’re a hard working cop but you’re two months behind in your…You got a big bill from the plumber. Your wife is on your case because she needs a new living room suite and you’re going under and you’re not being paid enough. You’re chasing this drug dealer and he goes into a motel room and you chase in after him and he dives out the window. You look at the bed and there’s $20,000 in cash that nobody else knows about but you. Now the question you ask yourself at that moment is, ‘Do I continue chasing him or is this far enough?!’”

And that’s what happens. He says, “Once you get your first taste of just picking the cash up and not reporting it…or not reporting all of it. You may turn in some of it in but some of it magically ends up missing between the site of the arrest and the station. You split with your partners and all of the sudden both of you are in on it and the next time it gets easier and easier. Pretty soon you’re working for drug dealers.”

That happens all the time. We cannot afford…it’s like termites in our criminal system eating away at the foundations of justice. It is insane.

DEAN BECKER: It is indeed. Well, friends, we’ve been speaking with Mr. Mike Gray, author of “Drug Crazy.” He’s written many great screenplays so I’m sure you’ve seen his movies as well.

Mike, 10 years…it feels pretty good.

MIKE GRAY: I wish you well with your program – continued success. It sounds like you’re spreading the word and the word about your program is spreading as well. So, congratulations and keep up the good work, will you?!

DEAN BECKER: Thank you, Mike.

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DEAN BECKER: This is Jerry Epstein, president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas.

JERRY EPSTEIN: Dean, just want to congratulate you on 10 years of marvelous work and educating the public on all the terrible damage done by the Drug War - very little good it does.

For 10 years it’s been a pleasure for the Drug Policy Forum of Texas to be associated with you and to hear all those wonderful interviews with experts from all across the world who are revealing to the public how much damage the Drug War has done.

I want to thank you, so much, for your contribution for a full decade now. Congratulations.

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WILLIAM MARTIN: My name is William Martin. I’m an Emeritus Professor of Sociology and a Harry and Hazel Chavanne Senior Fellow for Religion and Public Policy and also for Drug Policy at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

DEAN BECKER: Now, Bill, I’m quite honored to be affiliated with the Baker Institute and that you guys now…well, gosh, for years now, have carried the Drug Truth Network programs on your website.

WILLIAM MARTIN: Well I’m delighted to do that. We’re happy to do that and it’s not just to do you as a friend a favor. I think you have interviewed virtually every significant reform voice and a number of people who are still upholding the law on drugs and you’ve treated everyone fairly.

What you have done with these 500 maybe 600 interviews is really a remarkable achievement. The notable websites for the Drug Policy Alliance, DPFT, Common Sense, LEAP, Marijuana Policy Project and others…NORML and, for documents, the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy but no one has this kind of archive of interviews that over 10 years and counting really voices from the struggle which can be heard all over the country.

You had mentioned once that you were hoping to find a home for it and I lit up on that immediately and the Baker Institute is quite delighted to have the permanent archives for your interviews for people in the future…reformers, students, historians…this has been fully welcome by the Baker Institute administration. We’ve been quite happy and pleased to have this wonderful archive on our website.

DEAN BECKER: Bill, you know, I was talking to somebody the other day that I’ve interviewed everybody from Tommy Chong to the U.N. Drug Czar.

WILLIAM MARTIN: I was looking over some of the people you’ve interviewed today and it’s quite a list.

DEAN BECKER: I guess what I’m most proud of is the caliber of guests has increased over the years. I was quite proud that this last election cycle for the District Attorney that both candidates, democrat and republican, allowed me to moderate an on-air debate. I guess I do show a little bit open-mindedness to both sides, do I not?

WILLIAM MARTIN: I think you do. I think you always treat people fairly and I think that both sides would be interested and willing to do a debate on your program shows that they expect to be treated fairly that they’re not being set up. And they also recognize that this a legitimate avenue for voices to be heard about this tremendously important subject.

DEAN BECKER: Again, we’re speaking with Professor William Martin out of Rice University .Bill I want to ask you perhaps a sensitive question – perhaps not – and that is that in these same 10 years, your understanding, your perceptions have grown as well which is indicative of most Americans. Your response, please.

WILLIAM MARTIN: That’s certainly true. I taught criminology for 35 years before I retired from teaching. So certainly the importance of drugs as an issue was certainly not lost on me. In the last ten years I have become…at the Baker Institute I saw an opportunity to really bring this to the floor and to have the Baker Institute…which is now, I think you know, regarded as one of the top 30 think tanks in the U.S. and 16t h in the world among think tanks associated with a university.

So to have drug policy be part of it I think is significant and also it shows the importance of the topic. I’m delighted and, of course, over the 10 years of working on this at the Baker Institute my own views have…I don’t know that they’ve changed all that much but they have certainly grown deeper and I’ve been able to invite people who have enriched the conversation of our people in Houston.

DEAN BECKER: Yes, but Bill I kind of think of it as one door leading to another…that certain topics of discussion just weren’t to be brought forward 10 years ago but they can be discussed now, right?

WILLIAM MARTIN: That’s true. People ask me…we had a conference in 2002 which you attended and we have another one planned for 2012 – next March. People have been asking me, “When are you going to have another one of those conferences?” or “When are you going to have another program?”

Just last week we had our Round Table at the Baker Institute where our major supporters come and talk to the various fellows on whatever their fields are. I had a number of people come by and I had a few charts out talking to them about the facts of drug dependence and the Drug War and just person after person said, “That’s just remarkable. You need to get this out.”

And I said, “I’m working on it right now.”

I seldom ever get any kick back or anybody saying, “This is crazy.” Over and over I get great support for this - from the administration of the Baker Institute at Rice and also from our supporters.

DEAN BECKER: I want to thank you for your kind thoughts on this recognizing 10 years of the Drug Truth Network. Please share the website of the Baker Institute where folks can learn more.

WILLIAM MARTIN: http://bakerinstitute.org and click on Drug Policy which shows the Drug Truth Network. Down at the bottom, there are about 25 programs listed, but there is a link that says “Search the Drug Truth Archives” where you can get all 500+ programs and many of those have a transcript attached to them. It is truly a unique archive. I think it is the best collection of interviews that have ever been done on this particular subject.

I really commend you richly for that, Dean. I think you’ve done a tremendous service and you continue to perform it.

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DEAN BECKER: I want to thank Steve Nolin, our first engineer, Laura Slavin, our current engineer and mostly I want to thank you, dear listeners, for paying attention, for doing your part, for helping to end the madness of Drug War. Because, as we all know, there is no basis for this. We have, indeed, been duped. I’m more convinced than ever that the drug lords run both sides of this equation.

Please visit our website, http://endprohibition.org. Prohibido istac evilesco!

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

The Century of Lies.

Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Policy Studies.

Transcript provided by: Jo-D Harrison of www.DrugSense.org