Public Enemy Number One (2018) - full transcript

[man] We are sending a

bad message with the

Medical Marijuana Laws

and the federal

government really needs

to speak out against it

and show some leadership there.

There is a powerful lobby

arguing for the

legalization of drugs

and that claims that

drugs, particularly

marijuana and hashish

are not harmful

to young people.

[judge] We have these

drugs in our society.

They're going to be

here like it or not.

We have a choice, we can

either have drugs in our

society with drug lords,

or without drug lords.

We know that when drugs

are legal, they're cheaper,

they're more available

than they're promoted

as we've seen for alcohol.

So, I think alcohol would

be the last model we want

to look at for marijuana.

I know annually we have

well over a thousand young

people dying in this country

because they're caught up

in the illegal drug market.

Focus on the real bottom line.

I want to reduce both

the harms of drugs

and I want to reduce the

harms of our failed policies.

[echoing] Policies...

I mean the easiest way

for most people in this country

and really throughout much

of the world to understand

the absurdity of the war on

drugs is to focus on marijuana.

[Dan] The drug war that I think

we are experiencing today

has its roots in Richard

Nixon's 1968 campaign

because of the

unrest of the 60's,

the student demonstrations

against the Vietnam War.

[reporter] Thousands

of demonstrators opposed

to the Vietnam War

assembled in the nation's

capital for a mass protest.

Military police

contained the crowd, but

clashes soon break out.

The two-day protest ends

with over 600 arrested

and the widespread opinion

that the demonstration

made everyone a loser.

[Dan] The long, hot

summer riots in such places

as Detroit and Newark...

[reporter] With the coming

of the long, hot summers,

for three years

has had to face the

tragic consequences of riots.

Negroes claim they have waited

long enough for equal rights.

[Dan] The public was in a panic.

Middle America was

in kind of a panic.

Every night on the evening

news it just looked like the

country was coming unglued

and Richard Nixon ran in '68

on a law-and-order platform.

"I am going to restore law and

order to the United States."

[Nixon] It is time for an

honest look at the problem

of order in the United States.

So, I pledge to you, we shall have order in the United States.

Well, he gets elected

and then he discovers federal

government has very little role

under the Constitution,

in law and order.

Law and order is a

local and state matter.

And in John Mitchell's office

and several people who were

there told me about this meeting

in which Mitchell is saying,

"Come on people, we got

to come up with a way

to project the federal

government into law and order."

And they kick around some

ideas and finally somebody

says, "Well, there's drugs."

Do you want to join me

here? Won't you be seated

please, ladies and gentlemen.

Come on Dr. Jaffe, yeah.

Mr. Krogh, Mister...

-Yes, Sir. Yes, Sir.

-Fine. All right.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would

like to summarize for you the

meeting that I have just had

with the bipartisan leaders

which began at 8 o'clock and

was completed two hours later.

I began the meeting by making

this statement which I think

needs to be made to the nation.

America's public enemy

number one in the United

States is drug abuse.

In order to fight and defeat

this enemy, it is necessary to

wage a new all-out offensive.

I have asked the

Congress to provide

the legislative authority

and the funds to fuel

this kind of an offensive.

Nixon creates the Drug

Enforcement Administration

and this is half law enforcement

and half Hollywood.

They go out and start Eliot

Nessing around the country

and making sure that

the cameras are there.

In 1993, I had an interview

with John Ehrlichman

and this was the interview

that got me started on

this in an earnest way.

I was in the habit, every

time I talked to Richard

Nixon, or he talked to me

of taking very careful

notes because, usually,

it involved assignments

that I had to carry out,

one kind or another.

And I started asking him

these wonky questions

about drug policy

and he held up

a hand and he said,

"Can we cut the bullshit?

Can I-- can I just tell you

what this was all about?"

And he said, "The '68

campaign and the Nixon

White House thereafter

had two enemies: black

people and the anti-war Left.

And we needed a way

to mess them up.

We needed a way

to arrest their leaders,

to break up their meetings,

to delegitimize their gatherings

and most of all to vilify

them on the evening

news night after night.

And it was easy to associate

blacks with heroin and the

anti-war Left with marijuana."

At the time of Richard

Nixon, you were either, you

know, part of his generation

and appalled by drug use,

saw it as a moral issue,

or you were part

of the counterculture.

It was us versus them.

Everyone here seems

to emphasize the kids.

How can you communicate

with them when they

got flowers in their ears

where they can't hear and hair

down to their hip pockets?

Many of us are concerned

that a large percentage

of our young people

are breaking the law

by smoking marijuana.

I know you thought

about this problem

and I wonder if you could give

us some of your thoughts on it.

Well, to make a point, as

you know there is a commission

that is supposed to

make recommendations

to me about this subject.

Richard Nixon convenes

a Presidential Commission

on marijuana,

which, basically, says

marijuana is almost harmless and

should not be criminalized.

The recommendation of the

Commission in its first report

is that we do not feel

that private use or private

possession in one's own home

should have the stigma

of criminalization.

That people who experiment

should not be criminalized

for that particular behavior.

Richard Nixon very publicly

rejects the findings of

his own Commission

and that's the last time

a president convenes a

commission on marijuana.

I shall continue to oppose

efforts to legalize marijuana.

I became the White House

Drug Czar in July 1st of 1973.

Nixon's advisor, who I was

working with, said to me,

"The president is going to make

the decisions about marijuana.

You can make the

decisions about heroin,

but if you say anything good

about decriminalization of

marijuana, you're out of here.

He was elected president

and not you." And that was it.

I do think that it was a--

it was a moment when

the world changed.

I shall soon propose

a revision of the entire

Federal Criminal Code

which will give us tougher

penalties against drugs

and against crime.

A war on drugs is basically

the assumption or presumption

that anybody who has anything

to do with certain drugs

needs to be treated like a

criminal, needs to be punished,

viewed as somebody who can

have their freedom taken away,

their property, their

home taken away.

Somebody who is regarded

as immoral and for whom

it makes sense for the state

to spend oodles of

money, basically trying

to find these people,

arrest and prosecute

them, and convict them

and incarcerate them.

[cell door closes]

I actually started my

undercover work at the

beginning of the war on drugs.

When I joined the State Police

in 1964, we had 1700 troopers

and we had a

seven-man narcotic unit.

In 1970, in one step

overnight grew to a

76-person Narcotics Bureau,

all paid for by the

federal government.

That was when Nixon got

Congress to pass funding bills

that would give massive

amounts of money

to any Police Department that

was willing to hire officers

to fight his war on drugs.

As I talked to the people

from New York State

I realized the need for money

to deal with this problem.

I am glad that in this

administration we have

increased the amount of money

for handling the problem of

dangerous drugs, sevenfold.

It will be six hundred

million dollars this year.

To the extent money

can help in meeting the

problem of dangerous drugs,

it will be available.

This is one area where

we cannot have budget cuts

because we must wage

what I have called total war

against public enemy number

one in the United States:

the problem of dangerous drugs.

[Cole] It was all

a numbers game.

The whole idea was to get as

many arrested as possible.

We used to joke that if we

arrested the devil himself,

we'd let him go if he gave

up three of these demons.

And the reporters would

go away and they would

write horror stories.

And the next morning,

the public would

pick up those papers

and read them and

shake their head and say,

"Give it to him.

Give it to him."

And we'd get the money

and then we'd go out and do

even worse the next time around.

I was working undercover

for the state police, in the

suburbs of New Jersey.

Since we didn't have real

drug dealers out there,

the administration targeted

me on small friendship

groups of young people.

And when I infiltrated one

of these friendship groups

and became their friend,

come Friday night

somebody might say, "Hey,

you want to get high?"

Someone might say, "Yeah,

while you're in the city, pick

me up a couple of joints."

We're talking about five

dollars worth of drugs.

We'd have a big raid and we'd

swoop into their neighborhoods

five o'clock in the morning

with hundreds of police.

Kick down their doors and

drag them out in chains.

And when we got them all

lined up against that back wall,

my boss would come out

and he would say, "You see that?

There's a hundred major

drug dealers we took out

of your community."

[policeman] Everybody remain

seated where you are.

[Cole] Back then in 1970,

we didn't have a whole

bunch of laws about drugs.

We only had one law. That law

said it's illegal to distribute

a controlled

dangerous substance.

One joint was the same as a

hundred pounds of marijuana.

Since we only had one law there

was only one punishment,

seven years in state prison.

[reporter] Don Crow was

convicted of selling marijuana

to an undercover agent.

There seemed reason for hope.

It was his first

offense after all

and the amount had been

small, less than one ounce,

but the jury saw its duty,

sentence 50 years in prison.

For Crow, 25 years old,

newly returned from

Vietnam, it was a bitter pill.

I had the feeling that I was

fighting for my country

and for my fellow man.

And it is kind of depressing

to know that I should come

back and be given 50 years

for allegedly selling some--

a little marijuana.

[mother] This is a Purple Heart

that he received the first

time that he was wounded.

[reporter] There is a mother's

pride as Mrs. Crow recounts

Don's military record,

but it is hard for her, too.

He loved his country, she says.

He was a good boy.

It all starts off with

no hope, lack of education,

not being able to actually

enter the system.

I can't enter the system.

I can't get in.

I can't make a living wage,

but over here is a way.

And now, you try to do that

and you end up in prison,

or you end up with your life,

you know, devastated.

We snatched them off the streets

in the prime of their life

when they were trying

to get their education.

"How are they going to get a

job? They're drug dealers."

That's what we labeled them.

That's what everybody thinks.

Nobody wanted to hire them.

So, what do they do?

Well, they turn right back

to the drug culture,

the very group we say we're

trying to save them from,

only now they become

real drug dealers.

And that is how

this became the

self-perpetuating, constantly

expanding, policy disaster.

An interesting thing emerges

as the drug war heats up.

As it becomes more

and more serious.

As the kicking in more doors

and taking away more people

and giving people longer and

longer sentences for trivial

amounts of marijuana.

What emerges is an

organized, well-funded

opposition to the drug war.

Organizations like NORML,

the National Organization for

the Reform of Marijuana Laws

that mount an

organized response.

It's not just the stoned

hippies in the back of a van.

These are lawyers. These

are people with money.

These are people with

some influence and power

and access to the media.

[man] Last year in this country

there were two hundred

and twenty-six thousand

marijuana-related arrests.

And although the police

sometimes tell us

that they're only

interested in the pusher

or the seller as they say,

the fact is that only 7%

of those arrests were

against the seller.

93% of those arrests were

for possession and use.

Now what that means is that

there were about 200,000 young

people in this country last year

who were given an unnecessary

criminal record and all

that and all that involved

for the rest of their

life simply because

they smoked grass,

something which is a

relatively harmless thing to do.

So we're not trying to encourage

the use of the drug,

in fact, we're trying to

discourage it, but we're trying

to get the country to understand

that there are other means

to discourage the use of drugs

other than the criminal law.

And, in this case, the use

of the criminal law causes

more harm than the drug itself.

I give NORML, you

know, a lot of credit.

The role that they played

in the 70s and Keith

Stroup's pioneering role.

I mean, they really helped

to break open this issue.

In 1970 I founded NORML,

the National Organization for

the Reform of Marijuana Laws,

as a marijuana

smokers lobby.

We took the Marijuana

Commission report in

any state in America

where we could identify,

usually a young

progressive legislator

willing to introduce a Marijuana

Decriminalization Bill.

We not only provided

support for the legislator,

we brought out expert

witnesses at our expense

to testify that states should

do what the Marijuana

Commission recommended.

And as a result, between 1973,

when Oregon was the first state

to adopt a modified version of

marijuana decriminalization...

In Oregon, possession of

up to an ounce of marijuana

no longer is a felony punishable

by up to five years in prison.

Now marijuana smoking

is punishable only by

a fine like a traffic fine,

maximum penalty $100.

To 1978, we had a total of 11

states that stopped arresting

minor marijuana offenders

and we thought we were

on our way to victory.

In fact, we figured within

five years we would be finished.

We would have marijuana

smokers decriminalized

all across the country.

[cheering]

The portfolio legalizing

marijuana probably hit close

to 30 percent in the late 70's,

kind of at the era of that

decade of live-and-let-live.

It was fairly open in

the culture at that point,

mostly the youth culture.

[rock music]

[Anthony] Hey, you want

to get high, man?

Does Howdy Doody

got wooden balls, man?

I've got a joint here,

man, I've been saving

for a special occasion.

Is that a joint, man? I can

probably smoke this whole joint,

man and still walk away, man.

Wouldn't be no

problem at all, man.

[Pedro] Dog, talk it out, man.

Kinda grabs you by

the booboo, don't it?

The FBI claims that a huge

shipment of grass which

they are calling "killer dope"

has been smuggled

into New York City.

The bureau urges users

not to smoke the weed which

is greenish brown in color,

not particularly seedy

and contains mostly

cannabis buds.

Warning symptoms are

a mild euphoria, a slight

rise in the pulse rate,

some hallucination and

death by laughter within 15

minutes of ingestion.

[crowd laughs]

In an effort to aid the FBI

in its investigation,

Weekend Update is undertaking

its own analysis of marijuana

sent to us anonymously by any

viewers who may be worried.

Simply place a small

sample of the suspected

cannabis in an envelope

and send it immediately to Chevy

Chase, Apartment 12, 827 West

81st street, New York City...

When Nixon left and Gerald

Ford was the president,

I was the White House Drug Czar.

I was a hero with NORML and

High Times as a guy who was

interested in decriminalization.

And I liked that idea.

I supported that idea as

the White House Drug Czar.

[Baum] Jimmy Carter at that

time was-- I think he was

a pragmatic individual.

You know he had that

really classic and crucial line,

"The harms of drug laws

should not do more

harm to people than

the drugs themselves."

I support a change in law

to end federal and

criminal penalties

for possession of up to

one ounce of marijuana.

Leaving the states free to

adopt whatever laws they

wish concerning marijuana.

I think Jimmy Carter was

influenced initially by his

drug adviser, Dr. Peter Bourne,

and he was telling him

it made no sense

to treat marijuana

smokers like criminals.

I was Director of the Office

of Drug Abuse Policy.

And our policy was if people

are suffering adverse effects

from any of these drugs,

we should set up programs

to treat them, as we had

begun to do with alcohol

after countless decades

of, you know,

condemning alcoholics.

We'd have yet to find a

serious medical consequence

related to marijuana...

[man] Let me-- just

one more question...

Somewhat to my surprise, we have

not found serious health conse--

consequences in approximately

20 million dollars of research

in the last five years.

But the thing that we do

know, though, is that we will be

saving the lives and careers

of a lot of young people that

would otherwise be destroyed

by maintaining criminal

penalties and putting people

in jail for possession.

Dr. Peter Bourne

was someone I knew.

I would see him several

times a month in a

professional situation

and we considered

ourselves political allies,

no doubt about that.

I didn't disagree with him

particularly in terms of

his position on marijuana.

He and I really had a falling

out over the paraquat issue.

I had been advised at some

point that the government was

beginning to spray paraquat

and paraquat was an incredibly

dangerous herbicide

that if you took a teaspoon

in your mouth, it'll kill you.

It's that deadly.

They were spraying it on

marijuana crops in Mexico

in order to cut down on the

Mexican marijuana that

was coming into the U.S.

And so, we really thought

that they were-- they were

poisoning marijuana smokers.

He became seamless

on paraquat and I mean,

it was all blatant nonsense.

Once Peter and I began to

fight over the paraquat issue

it made it difficult for us

to work on other issues where

we did have common values.

Here's the bottom line:

the health concern

that we felt at the time

turned out to be overblown.

At the end of that dispute,

unfortunately, was also the

end of Dr. Bourne's tenure

as Drug Czar and

within a few months the

end of my first tenure

as executive director of NORML.

I don't doubt for a moment that

some of the confidence we had

to fight to the death

on the paraquat issue

may well have been impacted

by my own drug use

and drug use of other people

I was working with at the time.

The activists in the 70's

who played such a pioneering

role in helping to open this up

at the same time sort of became

undisciplined in their rhetoric.

Important thing is that make

sure your congressman knows

that 10 grams of marijuana

is not enough,

10 grams won't do it!

And then, basically, what

happens is things turn around.

I think, you know, as

marijuana is used more

extensively in society

and as you see a problem

emerging among high school

kids who are waking and baking,

I think, you know,

there's-- there's real

serious concerns there.

Well, as a kid, you say well,

he does this or he does that

and the lines are very clear

what you expect, right?

Or what he feels he has to do.

But now we're in

a kind of gray area,

17, and I'm saying to myself,

"Oh, what do I expect?

What can I expect?

What should he be doing?"

We had a big discussion

in my U.S. history class

and Mr. Sean talked about pot

in the United States, you know.

[friend] With Sean?

[kid] Yeah, he was like

comparing it was

prohibition, you know.

That's why I stayed

out of school today.

There was a changed in the

world that was very profound

and it started in 1977.

A mother in Atlanta, Keith

Schuchard wrote a letter

to the esteemed director

of the National Institute on

Drug Abuse, that's me.

And she said,

"You are the problem."

I mean, not that I

got a lot of letters, but

that got my attention.

What in the world

is she talking about?

She said, "You are fighting

the battle about marijuana

and you're missing what the

point is. The point is kids.

You're mixing up kids and

adults as if it's one problem.

The issue is kids smoking pot."

In this country and all

of the Western countries,

a very powerful drug culture,

a drug legalization lobby,

and they have managed to get

a message out quite strongly

that many drugs are harmless,

particularly,

marijuana and hashish.

So that the tremendous

epidemic of marijuana smoking

that went on in the 1970s

was based on ignorance

about the health effects.

We gave a seventh-grade

birthday party in our backyard

and were quite surprised

to find out that kids

were smoking marijuana

and it revealed to us

a culture that we had no

idea that was out there.

That was already absorbing and

recruiting young kids as young

as twelve-thirteen years old.

We called all the parents of

the kids who were at the party

and asked them to come over and

let them know what had going on.

It didn't matter if we liked

them, if we were the

same politics and religion,

but we all had kids

who knew each other

and so, we better get

to know each other, too.

We had already been

worried about our daughter,

her personality changes,

lack of interest in school,

a whole sense of drift

among her friends, etc.

It was about a week after the

party that we asked people

to come to our home then

and it was quite

awkward and difficult.

Some of the parents were quite

hostile and very serious denial,

but, eventually, a father

stood up and said,

"I know this is going to be

hurtful and it's going to be

difficult for you to hear,

but this is what I've learned

about what's going on."

One of the things that was

happening in that period of time

where marijuana was

coming into use,

parents didn't have

any idea what it was.

They were being told that it

was just a harmless giggle,

or the Academy of Pediatrics

thought it was just

a phase that young

people would go through.

It was really being ignored,

the dangers and risks

and, obviously, that helped

increase it greatly.

The parents and the

families across our nation

must understand

the danger involved

from the biological standpoint

and then from the social

aspect of the child's world;

what is being created

in the child's world that's

encouraging the drug use.

We noticed that parents

had doubts about marijuana.

They were hearing and reading

from magazines and seeing

on TV, and funny movies

like Cheech & Chong

and so forth, "Well,

maybe it's not so bad,

or what are we supposed

to do? Are we supposed

to tell our kids not to do it?"

[reporter] This is the

American child's favorite

illegal chemical, marijuana.

[reporter] Today, more high school kids have tried it than haven't and except for alcohol,

more kids smoke pot every day

than all other drugs combined.

The kids like it because

it feels good and what's

more, it's harmless,

or at least that's

what the kids tell me.

It's not bad for you. Nobody

ever said it's bad for you.

It might give you cancer

or something, but so

does everything else.

They don't have any proof

that pot hurts your body

as it is, you know,

not that, uh,

I've heard that no scientist

has proven, you know,

that pot hurts your body

in any kind of way.

Between 1975 and 1978,

youth marijuana use in

this country exploded.

And I watched, year after

year, those numbers rise.

By 1978, one in nine high

school seniors in this country

were smoking marijuana

every day.

As it picked up more and more

at-- and as it became more of

an issue in media coverage,

Dr. DuPont, the

government getting

involved, it really took off.

These were amateurs

and grassroots people

doing it on their own,

wanting help and support

and if we didn't get it,

we were gonna do it anyway.

I didn't have much problem

with her taking a position

that more attention should

be played to marijuana use,

particularly in the

suburbs by white kids

because I was too busy

dealing with inner-city

heroin addiction.

I didn't personally think

that marijuana should

be much of a priority.

The total focus had shifted

from the damage we're doing to

otherwise law-abiding citizens

by treating them like criminals

because they smoke,

had all of a sudden shifted

to these parents groups.

At the time, we didn't

take it very seriously.

We thought it was a distraction.

We thought that "Yes, we have

to respond to those questions."

But we couldn't imagine that

a majority of the country would

adopt that particular focus.

But we were wrong.

[Schuchard] Our interest

was in prevention--

from keeping it from starting

from the very beginning.

The first thing was, you

wanted the children to

be honest with you.

Listen, let's just get

this all out in front.

Look, you know, in front-- on

the table, what's going on?

Main thing we said,

we're going to keep a

sense of humor about this.

It's not going to be all

grim and miserable.

We're going to keep

a sense of humor.

We confessed to them

we were naiïve, out of

it, didn't have a clue.

Could they help us not

make fools of ourselves?

And that did strike

with some of the kids.

They didn't want their parents

going out and saying

things that were absurd

without knowing what they

were doing, if we were gonna go

talk to PTA or anything else.

The main thing is the absolute

lack of information on the

effects of drugs on kids.

The fact that there was almost

nothing out there about-

these are very complicated

chemicals, you know.

The chemicals are

strong enough to stop

seizures in epilepsy.

These are not, you know,

mild benign things going into

young kids' brains and bodies.

We began looking

around us and found out

that our local village,

our shopping malls, were full

of kiddy drug paraphernalia.

Comic books, Quaalude

candies, root beer-flavored

rolling papers,

space gun marijuana shooters,

a very attractive, fun and

witty commercialized culture

really targeted at that age

group because at that

time all over the country,

12 was the average age of

having their first experience

with marijuana.

This is designed to put

some pot in and then you

smoke the pot out of here.

Now, you can toss a smoke

to a friend if you want to.

There are things like

bongs that's B-O-N-G.

You put the pot in here,

light it, the smoke travels

down here, collects,

and then you get a

concentrated volume of

smoke by sucking in like this.

And I think the label is

instructive, "Bong, the

only thing wasted is you."

They're smoking at during their

most important development years

where the brain is developing,

the emotions are developing.

It numbs you to all of

those feelings that you are

learning how to handle

and that's what makes

marijuana so dangerous.

That is what we're destroying

with our children.

[Gleaton] Dr. DuPont and Keith

sat down and had a talk.

Bob said, "This is a

wonderful thing you're

doing in your community,

wonder if we can duplicate it."

So, he asked Keith

to write a book.

So, she did. She wrote one

called, Parents Peers and Pot.

And with that book the National

Institute on Drug Abuse, NIDA,

was able to distribute

more than a million copies.

I think when they had a million

copies requested they stopped

printing it because they said,

"We have too many requests.

We can't keep printing it."

I was stunned by that.

I had no idea, but it shows

how widespread the problem was.

It worked best

from the bottom up

and especially, if you're

talking about parents and kids,

you're dealing with the

strongest instinct in nature,

which is protect your kids.

They did a remarkable job

in such a tiny amount of

time of getting the attention

of federal leaders, national

leaders, and making this a

national movement of parents

wanting to push all drugs

out of their community.

It wasn't just marijuana, it

was alcohol, it was tobacco,

it was other illegal drugs

and they did a very

good job of doing that.

The regular marijuana use

and regular drug use fell

in almost two-thirds in the

period that they were active.

There were probably a lot

of other factors, but I can't

help to think that the parent

movement and this idea

of changing the culture,

which they did so effectively,

wasn't one of those factors.

By the time that

Carter left, the scene

had completely changed.

Even in the Congress, not--

not just Reagan himself,

but the whole attitude was

we've been too soft on drugs.

When I first came to

Washington, I was Drug

Czar under President Reagan.

It was a difficult entry

in a number of ways.

One, because I'd never had

a job with that much power

and oversight and budget,

but also because I was

a pediatrician doing a job

that the psychiatrist knew

belonged only to them.

I was there mainly

because people in the

White House were worried

that the people in the fields

were not paying any

attention to marijuana

and they wanted somebody

in there who saw it their

way, so that was me.

The power of a First Lady

to reach a national audience

is always tremendous.

She took on the drug issue

and developed a slogan

that was just a directive.

What will you do when

someone offers you drugs?

[crowd] Just say no!

She didn't invent that slogan.

An elementary school

in Oakland, California,

had a contest

and the kids came up with

the contest "Just say no."

And they won the contest

and Nancy Reagan went out

to give them a little award

and the media picked it up

that this is the entire national

and international drug policy

is, "Just say no."

♪ And the only thing that we're Here to say that the drugs

Are fewer every day ♪

♪ Cocaine and crack

It's all got to go ♪

♪ We got to learn

To just say no ♪

Just say no.

♪ Just say no

♪ Just say no, just say no

♪ No, just say no

♪ Learning when to say no

Hey, no.

♪ That's what you need to do

♪ Don't need it

♪ Say, no

Don't need it ♪

♪ Say, no

♪ Just say no

To drugs to beat it ♪

♪ Don't let a friend push

You in to taking drugs ♪

♪ You got a right to say no

♪ No

♪ Right to say no

If you just say no, you'll be

saying yes to a whole lot more.

What can be a better little

slogan for elementary school?

"Just say no." Why not?

No.

No thanks.

No way!

No.

No.

No.

[man] Help them to just say no.

When Nancy Reagan

said, "Just say no,"

I think that was maybe

the highest moment of the

drug war, perhaps to this day.

We laugh at Nancy Reagan

for saying, "Just say no."

But "Just say no" was

a pretty good message.

"Just say no" doesn't

put anybody in prison.

"Just say no" doesn't

get anybody killed.

"Just say no"

I think was humane.

Enjoy life to the fullest

and to make it count.

Say, yes to your life and

when it comes to drugs

and alcohol, just say no.

And in there were the

roots of a new drug policy.

Just say no so loud that

everyone around you can hear

and if you do that drugs

won't stand a chance.

Mrs. Reagan just

took it on instinctively.

She had seen enough drug

problems in kids and she

just took it on as a mother.

It was interesting because

when I first met her,

I said, "Mrs. Reagan, I have

to confess, I'm a Democrat

and I'm even an L word."

She said, "An L word?"

I said, "A Liberal."

She said, "That's fine.

This is bipartisan

as I understand."

And I said, "Yes, indeed."

And she said, "Well, we're

gonna keep it that way."

She took it on as a mother,

not as a First Lady.

In fact, her staff didn't want

her to take it on and when

she came up with the idea,

let's invite the First Ladies

of the world to come,

many people

thought she was nuts,

but that was an incredibly

impressive and effective thing.

And as we have found out,

you know, moms are something

to be reckoned with

all over the world.

Ronald Reagan, you know,

he could see the political

utility of the drug war

and he's- and he's

certainly profited.

Leading medical researchers

are coming to the conclusion

that marijuana, pot, grass,

whatever you want to call it,

is probably the most

dangerous drug

in the United States

and we haven't begun to find out

all of the ill effects, but they

are permanent ill effects.

My position was always that

the best way to handle a

drug problem is to prevent it,

or to offer counseling

and cures,

whereas for many other people

they thought the best way

was to stop it, to war it.

There is only one way

to stop an epidemic

and that is to isolate the virus

that causes it and destroy it.

[MacDonald] The administration

did go in a different direction.

They believed it was a balanced

approach. In my view, it was

balanced on the wrong side.

The American people want

their government to get tough

and to go on the offensive

and that's exactly

what we intend.

You had Reagan come in

and say this is all nonsense.

It's all evil people,

doing evil things.

It doesn't matter what

drug they're using.

We need to worry about

putting in prison these

malevolent people

who are doing these

bad things and that

will stop drug use.

Drugs are menacing our society.

They're threatening our

values and undercutting

our institutions.

They're killing our children.

Reagan was more of a

moralist than Richard Nixon.

Richard Nixon

was not a moralist.

Reagan-- Reagan's

presidency coincides with the-

with the rise of the

evangelical churches...

Hallelujah! You cannot

drug the Holy Ghost!

You can't do it, drug addict!

The Holy Ghost will follow

you to hell and back to

bring you to Jesus Christ!

He can set you free from drugs

and put something in your life

that will make

life worth living!

Conservatives in

general took the view,

people commit crimes

and people use drugs

because they're bad people.

And the appropriate

response is to punish them.

And they say this

with some justification.

They would say the liberal idea

that root causes are

behind things like

crime and drug abuse,

is to say that everybody

who is poor,

and everybody who is black

is potentially a criminal.

And I'm a liberal, but I

can see where that is a--

that is an unpleasant

place to go.

We're fighting the crusade

for a drug-free America

on many fronts.

We've substantially increased

the number of federal

prosecutors and agents.

When I first started working

undercover,

we had a very, very,

small statewide drug unit.

There were five people

on my team, which had

all of Southern Maryland.

Almost like overnight,

we went from a little

small unit to a bureau.

We ended up adding

another Bureau to the

Maryland State Police.

So, now you're talking

about hundreds of

undercover operatives

throughout the state of

Maryland in just a few years.

And as we go into Regan

and that federal

money starts pouring in,

our pay increased dramatically

during that period.

And that's why so many

cops liked Ronald Reagan,

because we got raises.

The federal government

gives grants to every state,

county, and municipal

police department

every year based on one thing:

how many drug arrests did you

make the year before? The more

drug arrests, the more money.

Where do you think police

administrators are going to

focus their police officers now?

They don't get paid for

arresting people for murder,

they don't get paid for

arresting rapists, they get paid

for arresting drug violators.

It's the only crime

in the United States

where police officers

get paid extra money

for making arrests.

And the easier the

arrest is the more likely

they are to make it.

So, we have what is called

low-hanging fruit and that's

where we make our arrest.

[Franklin] Most of our

efforts by large are for

marijuana enforcement.

And I think this is one of the

reasons why at the management

level you tend to see

a lot of

resistance to the change in

marijuana laws,

moving it from a place

of illegality to legality.

I had seen too many of my

colleagues so wound up in

the idea of a war on drugs

that they had decided that in

this particular situation, the

means are justified by the ends.

So, anything they could

possibly do to get a drug

dealer off the street was okay.

Some of them were

lying on the stand.

Some of the guys felt like,

"If I see this dealer out there.

I know he's been

dealing every day

and I grab him at the one time

he doesn't have drugs on him,

well, maybe I'll just

put some on him.

He'll go to prison. I've done

my job." We even had a name for

it. It was called salting them.

It distracts us from what we

should be doing, finding

the murderers, the rapists.

When you arrest a rapist,

he's been terrorizing a

community or a neighborhood.

You know what?

The rape stops.

You arrest the drug dealer

who's hanging out on the corner,

the drug selling

doesn't stop, folks.

If at anything, we the

police, just cause the

temporary void in the market

that other crews and gangs

are going to fight for.

And they're gonna have

shootouts in an attempt

to fill that market.

And then when you

have their shootout,

then you have months

and months of retaliation

resulting from that.

We call it clearing corners

and we create more violence

in our neighborhoods and

communities when we do this.

[reporter] Ten years ago the

efforts of Mrs. Dawson to stop

the drug-dealing backfired.

Their home at 1401 East Preston Street was set on fire.

Five children and Carnell

and Angela Dawson couldn't

escape a Molotov cocktail.

When people say, "How did

the drug war get so violent?"

It's like asking, how

did alcohol prohibition

get so violent?

Drug markets had always had

an element of violence to them,

but tied together with

other things going on in

our culture in the late 80's,

early 90's met with--

then we had this

explosion of violence

in American cities and

sometimes beyond the cities.

[Reagan] We've also

strengthened the laws,

so that we can now dispose

of property that was

bought with drug money.

We don't have to give it back.

The results:

last year federal drug

agents confiscated over

half a billion dollars

worth of drug-related assets.

That's when civil forfeiture

policies came to life.

Initially designed to go

after drug kingpins

and all their proceeds

from their illegal

businesses, that's what civil

forfeiture policies were for.

But then, there came a time

when we busted up most

of the major drug operations.

We turned five major

organizations into five hundred

street corner operations.

So, as the drug kingpins within

our communities went away

and now everybody's out

there for themselves with

their own little operations,

we didn't stop our

civil forfeiture policies,

we just took those

civil forfeiture policies

and aimed them

to every John Doe

citizen that's out there.

You don't even have to

arrest somebody, you know.

When you stop a car,

if you find that there's

a lot of money in that car

then you can seize the money.

And you don't even have

to arrest the person.

And it quite literally

is a license to steal.

The reason these forfeiture

dollars are so important

to police leaders

is that they have discretion

to spend them any kind

of way that they choose fit.

And whenever you give

a pile of money to a law

enforcement official

with uncontrolled

spending limits that's a very,

very, bad place to be.

How do you decide

forfeiture funds?

There's some limitations

on it, you know.

It's actually-- there's not

really on the forfeiture stuff.

We just usually base it

on something that

would be nice to have.

That we-- we can't get in

the budget, for instance.

So, you know, we try not

to use it for things that

we need to depend on,

you know, because we

need to go ahead and

have those purchased

but it's kind of like pennies

from heaven, you know.

It gets you a toy or something

that you need.

This is the way we

typically look at it.

Sometimes when you look

at the progress or lack of

progress on drug law or reform,

you- you have to acknowledge

that it has a lot to do

with whether there's been

a high-profile victim.

And probably the best example

of that in my lifetime

was a wonderful all-American

basketball player,

drafted number one that year

by the Boston Celtics, Len Bias.

He graduated from the

University of Maryland.

He was the highest ranked

player in the entire country.

[commentator] Notice how

he gets it under control

and then he goes up strong.

He likes to see your big guys

do that. That's a big basket.

[Baum] Congress is

very basketball crazy.

Congress-- it's kind of

a basketball culture.

And Len Bias for basketball

watching America, he was

America's sweetheart.

The Boston Celtics

select Len Bias of the

University of Maryland.

[Bias] I knew what was going

to happen when the guy came over

to me when I was sitting down

and said, "Are you

packed to go to Boston?

And I said, "Uh, yes. I am."

So, I'm happy to be picked by

Boston and I'm going to go out

there and play the best I can.

June 19th, 1986, that

was the day that changed

the way we think about drugs,

it changed

all kinds of policies.

When Len Bias death

occurred, there was

enormous national media-

international media

attention about it.

Mr. Bias died of cocaine

intoxication,

which interrupted

the normal electrical

activity of his brain.

Up to Len Bias' death crack

cocaine had been on the streets

and thousands of kids had died.

And a thousand people have

been incarcerated behind it,

but because someone so famous

and someone so prominent died,

all of a sudden it became

a national epidemic.

It was a tragedy for him, it was

a tragedy for his family, but it

should not have been the basis

to formulate national drug

policy, but it was for

a number of years.

I call him the Archduke

Ferdinand of the

war on drugs because

his death is perfect

for the drug war.

Tip O'Neill is Speaker of

the House. He's a Democrat

and he is screaming

at his staff, "Write me

some goddamn legislation.

We need to get out

in front of this." "We"

meaning the Democrats.

There weren't any

in-depth studies,

they weren't fact-based.

They weren't evidence-based.

[Baum] And what the

Democrats come up with...

[man] The yea's are

97, the nays are 2.

...is mandatory

minimum sentences.

This is something that

had to be dealt with and

of course, you know,

election year fever did

take hold of some people.

[Baum] This idea is

manufactured that lenient

judges are letting drug users

and drug dealers off too

easily and we are going

to tie the hands of judges.

It is the most wildly

anti-democratic step

you can take.

It was McCarthyism on steroids.

It was McCarthyism with all

the hysteria and the paranoia

both externally and internally,

but with this

extraordinary budget,

and throwing not just a

handful of people behind

bars, but millions, millions.

During the mid-1980's into the

later 1980's, it just got crazy.

Mandatory minimum sentencing,

tougher drug sentencing laws,

and it was a complete disaster.

If you look at this moment

in time on a graph of

incarceration for this country

that's literally the beginning

of our prison population

boom in this country,

going from, you know,

roughly around 500,000

people in prison in this country

to where we are

today at 2.3 million.

The gravest domestic

threat facing our

nation today is drugs.

We need more prisons,

more jails, more courts,

more prosecutors.

We are determined

to enforce the law.

Punishment that

is swift and certain.

You will be caught

and when you're caught,

you will be prosecuted

and once you're convicted,

you will do time.

Caught, prosecuted, punished.

While I was a judge,

it was a learning

experience because

I'm a former drug warrior

who used to prosecute

those drug cases,

but I'd see us churning

low-level drug offenders

through the system

in my own courtroom

for no good purpose.

So, I did something

extremely unusual for

a sitting trial court judge

and on April the 8, 1992,

held a press conference telling

the world as much as I could

that our system of drug

policy was not working,

drug prohibition did not work,

and we'd have to come

to our senses because

there were alternatives.

The tougher we get with regard

to marijuana prosecution,

literally, from my

experience as a judge

and I have seen this on

in Orange County forever,

the softer we get with the

prosecution of everything else,

and that is something that

we simply have so many resources

and if we're spending them

in prosecutions of marijuana,

we are not spending them

for prosecutions

of rape, homicide, etc.

I have seen numbers of federal

judges appointed by people like

Nixon and Reagan, for example.

I mean they're really

conservative people

on the bench in tears

because the law forced

them to have to sentence

this person standing

in front of them to 20

to 30 years in prison.

And they apologize.

What they say, "I have to do

this. I have to follow the law."

It's great politics but

it's rotten government.

Just wipe me out, straight

off the mouth for nothing.

Put yourself here for such

a small wrong, you know.

You know what I'm saying?

I want to know why

I'm being treated

like I murdered

somebody, you know.

Politicians want to get

reelected, plain and simple.

And one of the issues is that

they suck from the same trough

that they see others

making headway with.

In 25 years, crime has

been a hot political issue,

used too often to divide us

while the system makes

excuses for not punishing

criminals in doing the job.

Under Clinton, Clinton

sort of said, "Well, you

want a war on drugs?

I'll hire this general

and run it."

And so, he used very

much the military model

to deal with the drug problem.

I mean I-- I know well

and like Barry McCaffrey,

but he came with

zero knowledge or

experience with drug abuse.

General McCaffrey has faced

down many threats to America's

security from guerilla warfare

in the jungles of Vietnam to the

unprecedented ground war

in the sands of Desert Storm.

Now, he faces a more insidious,

but no less formidable

enemy in illegal drugs.

As much as I admired President

Clinton, I thought his criminal

justice policies were misguided.

Those who commit crimes

should be punished.

And those who commit repeated

violent crimes should be told.

When you commit a third

violent crime, you will be put

away and put away for good.

Three strikes and you are out.

I think he knew better

and I think he would

acknowledge that now.

I signed a bill that made

the problem worse

and I want to admit it.

In that bill there were

longer sentences

and most of these people are

in prison under state law, but

the federal law set a trend.

And that was overdone.

We were wrong about that.

A law-abiding person, it might

sound like it makes sense.

You're gonna go commit

three felonies, obviously,

you're a habitual criminal

and you're not gonna go back.

But you don't understand, you

know, I've had guys that went to

jail for fighting with a girl,

okay? That's the felony

and then inside prison,

catch two more.

You can strike out in jail.

People don't know that.

So, you could be a square

guy to go to jail for

DUI, end up going to jail.

End up somebody

tries to rape you.

You catch a felony in there

and he you're on your way

to the three-strikes.

I definitely know

it was a foul law.

I know that it-- it's--

it's got a lot of

people stuck for life

that don't deserve

being in there for life.

There was a U.S. senator from

Virginia named Jim Webb who

was looking at these statistics.

We have 5% of the world's

population, 25% of the world's

known prison population

and at the same time, we

have about 7 million people

who have been involved

in the criminal justice system

in one way or another.

Many of them who were

marked for life with the stigma

of having been in prison.

Either we are the most

criminally minded

people in the world,

or we're doing something

wrong. Which do you think?

A shocking new study by the

American Civil Liberties Union

has found that more than

3200 people nationwide

are serving life terms without

parole for nonviolent offenses.

The crimes that led to life

sentences include stealing

gas from a truck, shoplifting,

possessing a crack pipe,

facilitating a ten-dollar

sale of marijuana,

and attempting to

cash a stolen check.

Of those prisoners 80%

are behind bars for

drug-related crimes.

65% are African-American, 18%

are white and 16% are Latino.

Evidence of what

the ACLU calls extreme

racial disparities.

You know, one of the issues

that's tremendously sad

is what's happened

to the black community,

where so many fathers

are separated now

from their families.

And that's been a real concern

of ours is this racial bias,

not only in penalties, but

also in reporting and things.

If you were to randomly

stop a hundred black kids

and a hundred white kids

in any neighborhood

in America, roughly

the same percent

would have a little bit

of weed in their pocket,

but in virtually every

city in America, the

black kid is three,

five to ten times more likely

to be stopped and arrested

and given a criminal record

than the white kid.

And most people, including

white people who are

kind of indifferent to

the issues around race,

kind of get that

that's not fair.

[Cole] In the most racist,

political regime

in modern history,

that would be the apartheid

government of South Africa,

in 1993, the year

before that fell,

they imprisoned black

men at the rate of 851

per hundred thousand.

But you know, in the United

States by 2008, under our

prohibition government,

we imprisoned black men

eight or nine times the rate

we imprison white people.

Anybody who looks at that

one statistic and doesn't

see institutionalized racism

must have a sheet

over their head.

The war on drugs is

like the new Jim Crow.

It is aimed at controlling

black folks and making

money off folk.

Think of the money that's

being made off of all

these black folks in prison.

The people at the bottom,

let's keep them at the bottom.

And this is an easy

way to do it.

Incarcerate them,

decimate their families,

destroy their chances of

making it into the world.

Once they go to prison,

they'll never get a chance to-

even if they now want

to be legit, move up.

It's a fucked up paradox

that gets you stuck.

The people who are suffering

the most are the citizens.

These are the people

who every day deal with

the increased murder rate,

whether it's Chicago, whether

it's Baltimore, whether

it's Newark, New Jersey,

whether it's Washington, DC.

It's the citizens that live

in these communities

where these gangs and

crews are fighting each other

every day over corners.

I think most people fail

to realize, even cops.

They are also victims

of the war on drugs.

They are serious victims

of the war on drugs.

All you have to do is turn on

any TV and look at the news, or

turn on YouTube and see the-

the dissension, the hate

and the problems that we

have between police and-

and mainly our poor,

black, and brown

communities because of this.

When I started working on

the drug war in the early 90's

to me what was most offensive

was the clamping down of debate

to question the drug war was

tantamount to forbidden speech.

We were really specifically

enjoined from debating our way

toward a rational management

of drug abuse in this country.

If you want to put the

drug dealer out of business

overnight is legalize drugs.

There's no drug dealer.

[arguing]

It's slime like you in the

White House, I'd puke on you!

[crowd cheer]

I they think there is a sense

in which the fanaticism

and the willful propaganda...

One of the DEA judge said they

compared intoxicity to aspirin.

Marijuana is

overwhelmingly safer.

He says that marijuana--

he said that marijuana is

perhaps one of the most-

safest psychoactive substances

ever known to man.

[crowd laughs]

Very simply--

everybody please...

Mayor Koch talks about

throwing youthers into jail.

[arguing]

I actually think that they

helped to delegitimize the

anti-marijuana movement.

Its extremism is part

of what brings it down.

If you quit drugs, you

join the fight against

terrorism in America.

The early days of the war

on terror were scary and

I-- it just seemed to me

that the public was in no

mood for patent political

nonsense surrounding it.

It seems to me that

in the United States,

we've always had a demon.

That something in American

political culture requires

us to have a demon.

You know, go back to Salem.

Alcohol was a demon.

I say alcohol must go!

[Baum] Communism was

a demon for a long time.

[man] In recognizing

a communist, physical

appearance counts for nothing.

If he openly declares himself

to be a communist,

we take his word for it.

[Baum] And all kinds of things

were justified in the name

of fighting communism.

It seemed very clear to me

at the end of the-- of the

80's, in the early 90's

that we were just pivoting

to this new demon and now

we have a war on terror.

Our war on terror begins

with al-Qaeda, but it

does not end there.

It will not end until every

terrorist group of global reach

has been found,

stopped and defeated.

[Baum] We have torqued our

Constitution into a pretzel in

the name of the war on terror,

the way we did with drugs,

a generation before that.

This is what we do.

When 9/11 happened, I remember

that morning thinking, "And

here we go again," you know.

"It is happening again."

The drug war then felt the way

the war on terror feels now.

It's very hard to question the

premises of the war on terror.

You got to be very careful.

Maybe in 25 years, we'll

be able to talk about the

war on terror more openly

and more casually

than we do now.

We are free now

to rationally debate

different ways of managing

the problem of drug

abuse in this country

and I celebrate that.

The fact of the matter is

psychoactive drugs have existed

in most societies

throughout the world.

There's almost never

been a human society

that did not use

one psychoactive

drug or another, right?

We know that these drugs can

be used for good, as medicines,

for spiritual benefits,

for relaxation, and we

also know that these

drugs can be used for bad.

It can be used in ways

that cause horrible

devastation to human bodies

and human lives and

human community.

[man] Gone are the pleasurable

sensations of the drug.

Now, to feel normal, he

must have his narcotic.

[Nadlemann] We're not

gonna get rid of drugs.

We can't build a moat between

those drugs and our communities,

between those drugs and

our schools, and our children.

Therefore, the only real

choice is not to ask how

do we get rid of drugs?

The only real choice is

to ask, how do we learn

to live with these drugs?

How do we learn to

live with the reality of

psychoactive substances

in our midst in such a

way that they cause

the least possible harm

and, in some cases, the

greatest possible benefit?

'96 we got medical

marijuana in California.

It changed the world.

It was a political success and

now it's sweeping the country.

[reporter] Ten states have

passed laws permitting the

use of medical marijuana.

Polling has shown that a

large majority of Americans

consistently support the

use of medical marijuana.

I can vouch for the fact that

some very sick people are

benefitted from marijuana.

Sick people that have

AIDS and cancer can use

marijuana and benefit by...

People are actually

moving to Colorado

to gain access to a special

kind of medical marijuana.

Arizona's first legal

medical marijuana...

[reporter] Boston's very first a

medical marijuana dispensary.

Sixty-five medical marijuana

dispensaries...

[reporter] Heading

today patients can

legally buy medical...

[reporter] Marijuana

laws now in effect...

Trying to legalize

marijuana from...

...South Carolina to the...

Marijuana will soon

be available at New

York state sanction.

Medical marijuana

is officially legal by law.

It is open for business.

No more!

Drug war!

No more!

Drug war!

When you look at what

the Obama administration

decided in the summer of 2013,

when, you know,

Attorney General Holder in

the White House, essentially,

gave Colorado and Washington

a qualified green light

to proceed with implementing

their new legalization laws.

What's remarkable is to

see the increase from barely

a quarter of the country

favoring the legalization

of marijuana in the mid-80's

to close to 60% today.

So, I think as with alcohol

policy, where basically we

have an extraordinary diversity

of policies between different

localities in different states

I think that we will have

and we need to have

a diversity of policies

both with local norms

and preferences, and

also with good evidence.

Drug war is ending.

Marijuana is legal in multiple

jurisdictions in the United

States and around the world.

The states of Colorado

and California and

Oregon and the others,

they have decided

we are going to give up

our power to arrest and harass

vast numbers of people.

That's huge.

I did not think I would live

long enough to see this.

Um, the cat is out of the bag.

The toothpaste

is out of the tube.

You can put it any way

you want. It's happening.

I try to be careful even

in my enthusiasm with all

the progress we've made

in the last several years

towards full legalization.

I still try to remind myself to

be cautious and not assume that

our total victory is inevitable

because I learned in the

70's that public opinion

sometimes can shift

and can shift fairly quickly.

This drug is dangerous.

You cannot play with it.

It's not funny. It's not

something to laugh about.

Good people don't

smoke marijuana.

It's a lot of money

to me being spent

to not solve the problem.

It didn't solve the problem.

I don't think the war on

drugs stopped drugs ever.

I don't think anyone's

ever said I can't get high.

What I would hope is, is

that we're less focused

on warehousing people

as opposed to

rehabilitating people.

The bottom line is, is

that you can push people into

the criminal justice system.

You can fill up the jails and

the prison, but if you aren't

doing something to change

that person's mindset

while they're in that

system, or more importantly,

change their support system when

they come out on the back end,

it becomes a vicious cycle.

By far the greatest value

would be to educate,

to prevent, to early treat-

that's not the way

the budget works out.

I am not a fan of

long sentences.

I don't think that's a great

idea for anybody, really.

It's expensive and I

think to me what's

important in corrections

is community corrections,

helping people.

But you've got to be tough

enough to say, "If a guy's

not going to support this,

they can go with the

program, or you have

to be able to go to jail."

I am very interested in

using the criminal justice

to promote public health.

We do need criminal justice

and we do need treatment and

we want them to work together

a lot better than they are.

Now that's not popular.

You got to make a

choice, Dr. DuPont.

Do you believe in prison,

or do you believe in treatment?

Oh, I believe in both.

Oh, well, you're a

criminal justice guy.

No that's not true.

And I think every

effort it should be made

in the prison population

to have real job

training programs and

rehabilitation programs

because so many

of those people

who get involved when they're

teenagers are very young.

They aren't making

real choices to do this.

They're caught up in something.

Being around weed my whole life,

and being around Cypress Hill,

being around Snoop Dogg,

being around my buddy Shiny

Shine and Beatmaster V who

smoked one continuous joint

all day long, you

know, I never found

a problem with weed.

I never smoked weed.

I sold weed, but I never

smoked it because I just was-

just always trying

to be hustling on all

cylinders at all times,

you know what I'm saying?

You know weed always

made me feel like

I gotta go to the gym

in an hour, you know.

We can fight about adults

about marijuana use, but we

don't have a fight about kids.

NORML doesn't

want the kids to do it.

The tobacco industry,

the alcohol industry,

at least officially,

don't want to do that.

We can cut together

on that issue.

When people start using

these drugs at later ages,

they're much less likely

to get strung out on them.

They're much less likely to

have them ruin their lives.

They got more at stake to lose.

That doesn't mean they

have no problem, but

it comes down with age.

The vulnerability is prior

to 21 or even 25 when

the brain is still developing.

I would argue that we need to

abandon our drug war mentality

and our war on drug mentality

not because these drugs aren't

dangerous, but because they are.

Now, let's turn it around and go

back with some of these people

in prison need to be set free.

They need to just let them go.

And they can do it,

they could free the beds.

They-- I mean, it's-- it's not

impossible to say, "Oh, you're

in here on a marijuana charge

where you've just been

expunged. And just go home."

And let them go home.

You know I'm saying? If

you're in here for marijuana,

plus you killed four people,

you guys stay.

You ain't getting out.

But if you're just here for

marijuana, go on home.

You know I'm saying? Go

home, figure it out, you know.

Why not?

♪♪♪

[music ends]