Miami Vice (1984–1989): Season 3, Episode 5 - The Good Collar - full transcript
Crockett attempts to help a high-school football star achieve his dream, while others pressure him to help bring down a teenage drug lord.
Shane Smith:
This week on "VICE"...
the future of
recreational drugs.
We're looking for
new psychoactives.
We're developing hundreds
and hundreds of new drugs.
Morris: This is all
industrial level synthesis.
Smith: Then, the reality of
sex change surgery in Iran.
They have two gender norm--
male and female.
And if you're anything
in between,
you're sick
and have to fix yourself.
(speaking foreign language)
(theme music playing)
(chanting)
I'm currently inside a lab
in Shanghai, China.
This is the future
of recreational drug use.
They basically find gay Iranians
in Iran
and help underground railroad
them out of the country.
♪ ♪
Bath salts have made
some sensational
and disturbing headlines
over the last few years.
As one of the strangest,
and oftentimes dangerous drugs
to hit the streets.
Police say 20-year-old
Quinn Albers is responsible
for killing 30-year-old
Katherine Gick.
He purposely abused bath salts,
and didn't remember anything
leading up to Gick's death.
Now, bath salts are not actually
salts that you put in your bath,
they're just a nickname
for one of a host
of new synthetic drugs
that are designed to skirt
current narcotics laws.
They're cheap,
relatively easy to make,
hard to track and trace, and
extremely popular with young people.
So "VICE's" Hamilton Morris
took a closer look
at this new frontier
of recreational drugs.
Man: Can I get the one
with the strawberry?
And the one next to it?
Clerk:
$18.
Morris:
This is Felipe and Wolfe,
two Brooklyn-based DJs
who agreed to show us
how easy it is to buy a new class of
drugs called synthetic cannabinoids
right here in New York.
Morris:
Which ones did you get?
He recommended this one.
- This is new, apparently.
- Oh, wow.
Second generation.
It's legal.
Good, so we have
nothing to worry about.
(electronic music playing)
Morris: The new psychoactive
substances flooding gas stations,
corner stores, and the Internet,
are one of the fastest-growing
drug markets in the world.
The DEA estimates that the industry
is now worth billions of dollars,
with hundreds of different
chemical compounds
to serve any kind of high
you're looking for.
There are stimulants, sedatives,
dissociatives, psychedelics,
and cannabinoids--
each with thousands
of possible variations.
Synthetic cannabinoids are the
most popular drugs in America
for high school students,
surpassed only by marijuana,
a drug their effect
is supposed to mimic.
Given the surge in new
psychoactive substances,
government authorities around the world
have started paying much closer attention.
We spoke with DEA representative
Rusty Payne.
I think people don't realize,
especially in this country,
that there's a completely new
frontier of drugs out there.
Over the last five or six years,
we've identified
over 300 new drugs.
And many have been very much
scrutinized by the government,
and Congress has actually
made them illegal.
Morris: Although hundreds
of psychoactive drugs
have been prohibited,
manufacturers stay one step
ahead of the law
by tweaking the drug's
molecular structure,
creating a new compound
that technically isn't illegal.
In an effort
to skirt regulations,
the drugs are marked
with a "Not for
human consumption" disclaimer
and deceptively sold as incense,
potpourri, or bath salts.
Payne: These are unregulated
chemicals overseas, many of them.
They're shipped
in bulk over here,
and they're distributed
either retail
or Internet sites
here in the US.
Parents have no idea,
a lot of times,
that their child can go online
and buy a psychoactive substance
for pretty cheap...
and get it in the mail.
What people haven't realized
is how dangerous that is,
because nobody really knows
what's in these chemicals.
It's something that is smoked
or snorted
and it's potentially deadly.
(whimpering)
(screaming)
Payne: If you ask the emergency
room treatment facilities
across the country,
their numbers are up,
and a lot of times, they don't
know what they're dealing with.
(laughing)
Morris: The synthetic
cannabinoid market
has been expanding globally
for the last five years.
(screams)
In New York City alone,
synthetic cannabinoid associated
emergency department visits
rose 220%
in the first six months of 2014.
ER doctors citywide
say they are dealing
with a huge spike in cases
related to the abuse
of synthetic marijuana.
Springhill hospital, alone,
is averaging up to five
severe cases of this every day.
We just started seeing
a mushrooming of calls.
Some drug baron that's making
big money
off people's addictions--
of course he's gonna be
the one to tell you,
"Oh, yeah, I should be able
to do this legally,
"without any scrutiny."
He doesn't care about
these abusers of drugs.
Simply put.
(grunting)
Morris: But as we are
about to find out,
the modern synthetic
drug industry
began with the goal of actually
making drug use safer.
In the search to find out
where these drugs come from
and exactly how they're made,
the trail led us to
the other side of the planet--
New Zealand.
There we met up with
what seemed like
the world's least-likely
drug baron, Matt Bowden.
- (goat bleating)
- (folk music playing)
Over the last 15 years,
Bowden, a recovered
methamphetamine addict,
has created a veritable
pharmaceutical empire
from the sale and manufacture
of new psychoactive drugs
in New Zealand,
allowing him to realize
his wildest fantasies--
a sprawling estate
with private recording studio,
a steampunk fashion line,
and a starring role
in an intergalactic rock opera.
So how did
this eccentric musician
become the godfather
of a synthetic drug revolution?
I asked him in his laboratory.
(beeping)
This is the only lab of its kind
in the world, I think.
Can you give the entire story
of you got into this research?
I'm trying to understand what's
different about New Zealand,
what allows this lab to exist.
What really got me
involved in this area
was we're an island
in the middle of nowhere.
The cocaine boat
just doesn't stop here,
and so methamphetamine
was the drug of choice.
And you do go
quite crazy doing that.
People losing their families,
losing their businesses,
and so we had to do
something about it.
In the late '90s,
I started working
with chemists and asking,
"Would it be possible
to look for a molecule
"which can substitute
for methamphetamine in addicts
"that has a far safer profile?"
And one of them was BZP.
Right through the clubbing community,
the drug of choice changed.
Methamphetamine
sort of went out,
and BZP came in.
Morris:
Bowden's research suggested
that BZP was less harmful
to users than methamphetamine,
so he set out to get
the compound legalized
as a safer, alternative drug.
Bowden: I rocked down
to Wellington,
where the Parliament is,
asked, "Who's writing
the drug laws?"
and sat down and said, "We need
to change the laws around here."
So they said, "Okay,
let's do some research."
And it worked, so they said, "Okay,
let's rewrite these drug laws."
Very pragmatic and practical,
and we just did it.
♪
♪
(cheering)
Bowden: We started
packaging them into pills
and making them available,
so you could buy them
in nightclubs with people
who are awake
at 4:00 in the morning
bouncing up and down
like yo-yos.
Morris:
Stargate International became
one of the only
pharmaceutical companies
dedicated exclusively to creating
new, legal, recreational drugs.
Bowden: Over an
eight-and-a-half-year period,
about 26 million pills
were consumed
by 400,000 consumers,
and there were
no lasting injuries.
Morris: Bowden's success inspired
less-scrupulous manufacturers
to release an array
of competing products,
creating a synthetic drug boom
that didn't sit well
with many New Zealanders.
Eventually we had 30 or 40
different brands of pills,
and they were for sale
right across the board,
in the corner stores,
next to where children
buy lollies and ice blocks.
Mommies and daddies saw that
and thought, "This isn't cool.
"We don't want our children
exposed to these brands."
So a lot of people sort of turned
and said, "This is a bad idea."
And politicians, unable
to convince the wider public
that we were changing direction
away from the war on drugs,
decided to ban BZP pills.
And as things started
to be banned in New Zealand,
they started to be banned
everywhere else.
Morris:
Bowden's company responded
by manufacturing an unregulated
derivative of MDMA,
called Methylone.
This pill here was
an ecstasy-replacement product
and it came in
this sort of container.
Looks more like
an engagement ring box.
So it's kind of like,
"Would you like to
"have a very intense, emotional,
"three to four hour relationship
with me?"
Morris: Soon, Methylone
was prohibited as well,
so Bowden moved on again.
He built a state-of-the-art laboratory
in order to stay ahead of the government
by continuously developing
new compounds.
So this lab was set up
for our R&D.
We're looking for
new psychoactives.
We're developing and designing hundreds
and hundreds of new molecules,
and just looking
for the best ones.
Morris: Bowden's
business is now focused
on synthetic cannabinoids,
and he's trying to build
safer variations
of the same products that have
been prohibited in the US.
Some cannabinoids are an oil,
and other cannabinoids are an
incredibly pure, white powder.
That shows how sophisticated the
chemists working in Matt's lab is.
But one problem is that not all labs
share Bowden's level of sophistication
and dedication
to quality control.
If there's no motivation
to develop safer drugs,
then what's gonna happen is
that the cheapest, nastiest, strongest
drugs are gonna float to the surface.
And anybody with a phone
can Google the name
of a molecule,
order something like it
from any of the hundreds
of suppliers that are now
around the planet,
and have it shipped out to them.
Those things can move around.
They can't be stopped.
Morris:
To get a firsthand look
at the massive scope
of production,
we headed to China,
the manufacturing hub for everything
from iPhones to acne medication
to synthetic cannabinoids.
Using Bowden's long-standing
relationships with Chinese labs,
we were granted exclusive access
to manufacturing facilities
that are usually off-limits.
I'm currently inside a lab
in Shanghai, China,
where synthetic cannabinoids
are designed
and produced on a mass scale.
These five rotovaps could
easily allow the lab to produce
kilos or maybe even tons
of a given chemical
if they wanted to.
This is equipment that they use to characterize
the compounds that they're making.
This room definitely contains
at least a million dollars
worth of analytical equipment.
This is all
industrial-level synthesis.
This is something that I
actually know very little about.
It's one thing to make
a couple grams of a chemical,
but it's an entirely different thing to
make metric tons in a lab like this.
♪ ♪
Bowden: Medicines are
produced in bulk like this,
the things are dried out
here on the table,
the solvents are evaporated
off under lights,
and cannabinoids, ecstasy,
and other drugs
are produced
in exactly the same manner.
This is the future of
all recreational drug use.
It's a cheaper, easier way
to make drugs.
This could easily represent
millions of dollars of profit,
both for this lab and for all
the people down the line
that sell it in smoking blends.
It's certainly cheaper
than growing cannabis plants.
There's no question about that.
And it's easier to ship.
It doesn't have any odor.
There are no drug sniffing dogs
that are trained
to detect this material.
To test how easy it is
to buy kilogram quantities
of ultra-potent synthetic
cannabinoids,
we went to another lab
posing as potential customers.
♪
♪
We were amazed by the sheer
volume of synthetic cannabinoids
stacked casually around the lab.
(speaking foreign language)
Oh, wow.
That's quite a bit.
Oh, okay.
Morris:
Considering that each dose
may be a small fraction
of a milligram,
what I'm holding might amount
to millions of hits.
(man speaking foreign language)
Morris: But this
was just one order.
A representative
then went on to show us
other cannabinoid compounds
that he's been making
for overseas customers.
(speaking foreign language)
(interpreter speaking
foreign language)
(man speaking foreign language)
Is the business growing
or getting smaller?
(interpreter speaking
foreign language)
(man speaks)
Interpreter: Growing.
There's an idea that we should place
blame on the Chinese manufacturers.
To them,
it doesn't really matter.
If someone says, "Can you put
this carbon next to this carbon?"
They don't know
if this is a glue
to go inside the next part
of Nike's shoe,
or if this is some sort
of a compound
that's gonna be used in
a coloring agent in wallpaper.
It's not really
a concern for them.
Morris:
Whether it was an amphetamine,
psychedelic, or cannabinoid,
they were eager to synthesize
whatever compound I requested.
(interpreter speaks)
(man speaking foreign language)
(interpreter speaks)
Bowden: Instead of saying,
"These guys are bad.
"Let's shut them down.
Let's lock them up."
Why don't we put
some safety standards in place?
So that we know at least
what we are consuming
is gonna be safe enough.
It's not gonna hurt us.
The only solution that I can
see, as we move forwards,
is a regulatory system
which rewards
safer alternatives.
It's unclear which of these will
be toxic until they're introduced
into a large human population.
It's like
a giant clinical trial.
Bowden: At the end of the
day, you've got to realize
that in
the pharmaceutical industry,
things are tested on animals.
These things here are probably
gonna be tested by...
somebody's children.
Morris: And considering
the size of the market,
we're talking about
an uncontrolled trial
that spans the globe.
I've been told that there
are about 160,000
chemical manufacturing companies
in China.
160,000 is a lot.
Those are just ones
that we know of,
and it makes the law enforcement
challenge even greater.
When we do research
on a particular substance,
there's always a new derivative
or a new chemical compound
similar to it
that is being manufactured.
I'm not gonna sit here
and tell you we're gonna
arrest our way
out of the problem.
We're not gonna legislate
our way out of this.
You're talking about
a completely different game.
And for the government
in the United States, it's
become a game of whack-a-mole.
♪ ♪
Ever since the Islamic
Revolution of 1979,
when the Shah was overthrown,
Iran has been ruled
by fundamentalist Islamic law.
Iranian people are united,
and they believe,
and all of them are behind
Khomeini leadership.
Smith: Today, women must wear
head coverings in public,
all alcohol is banned,
and homosexuality
is strictly forbidden.
(speaking foreign language)
Translator: In Iran,
we don't have
homosexuals like
in your country.
(laughter)
Translator: We don't have
that in our country.
(booing)
Now what's strange is that in the
time since Iran banned homosexuality,
it's actually become
one of the world's capitals
for sexual reassignment surgery.
Now to see if there's
a connection between the two,
we sent Thomas Morton
to meet with Iranian refugees
who fled this anti-gay policy.
♪ ♪
(cheering)
(participant speaking)
(siren wails)
Hi, it's Thomas.
I'm in Toronto
at the World Pride Parade.
It's basically the gayest place
on the planet right now.
There's a guy running the show
back there in blue shorts
named Arsham. He runs
an organization called
The Iranian Railroad
for Queer Refugees.
They basically find
gay Iranians in Iran
and help underground railroad
them out of the country.
He brings them here to Canada where they are
basically free to be whatever they want.
How many people a year
does the IRQR help?
Since 2005, 885 cases.
On average, we have
5 cases every month.
I grew up in Iran
as a heterosexual guy.
I had to be a heterosexual guy.
Homosexuality is
punishable by death.
Among all of the Muslim clergy
and the justice system,
the only difference
and the only argument
is how we should kill them.
If I go back to Iran,
I will be executed.
They believe that homosexuals
are against God.
So they interpreted that since
you want to change this one,
you want to change
the God's rule.
So you are against God,
so you have to be killed.
Morton: One of the most recent Iranians
that Arsham's group has helped
find refuge in Toronto
is Sohrab,
who fled Iran
with his boyfriend last year.
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: After government officials
established that Sohrab was gay,
he was sent to see
a psychologist
to see if there was any alternative
to arrest and execution.
(speaking foreign language)
So what did you do?
(speaking foreign language)
♪ ♪
Morton: Sohrab joined the
hundreds of other gay Iranians
who flee to Turkey every year.
Morton: Despite the fact that
being gay is a capitol offense,
transsexuality is completely
off the books,
which leads some Iranians who may
otherwise identify as gay or lesbian
to see being trans as their only
legal option for coming out.
According to Iran's regime
and Islamic ideology,
they have two gender norm--
male and female.
And if you are
anything in between,
you're sick, and you have
to fix yourself.
Morton: Iranian doctors perform
some 300 operations a year.
Putting Iran up there
with Thailand
and the Netherlands
as one of the sex change capitals
of the Eastern Hemisphere.
♪ ♪
While getting a sex change
is surprisingly easy in Iran,
getting a visa
as an American reporter,
unsurprisingly, is not.
So we sent a crew
with international passports
to film this improbable bastion
of trans culture
in the Muslim world.
♪ ♪
Farimah is undergoing
surgery today
to transition from male
to female.
(speaks foreign language)
Up to now, she's had to hide her sexual
identity from her family and neighbors.
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: Before a person like Farimah
can undergo this procedure,
they are required to do
up to two years of counseling,
hormone therapy,
and physical examinations
to make sure they're
actually transsexual.
Once they've passed, they receive
their official diagnosis
from a government board
who stamps a permit
authorizing the operation.
Dr. Cohanzad is
a renowned surgeon
who, despite taking part in
Iran's booming sex change trade,
is very particular about whom he
will and will not operate on.
(Dr. Cohanzad speaking)
♪ ♪
Morton: Iran's legal code
is based on Islamic law.
To clarify the Quran's
distinction between
homosexuality
and transsexuality,
we went to Qom, one of the
Shiites' holiest cities
to speak with Mohammad
Mahdi Kariminiya,
a prominent Muslim
scholar and hafiz,
which is someone who's memorized
the entirety of the Quran.
(speaking foreign language)
♪ ♪
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: So, because it's not
explicitly dealt with in the Quran,
the proper Islamic stance
on transsexuality
is left up to
clerical interpretation,
which prior to the 1980s,
lumped it together with homosexuality
as a form of perversion.
Then Ayotollah Khomeini
met a trans activist
named Maryam Molkara,
had a change of heart,
issued a fatwa,
and all of a sudden, it was
legal to be trans in Iran.
♪ ♪
Amir Reza is one of
the beneficiaries
of Ayotollah Khomeini's
pronouncement.
Once a married woman, Amir has now
legally transitioned into a man.
(Amir speaking foreign language)
♪ ♪
Morton: While the legal status
of transgender Iranians
like Amir Reza
changed overnight,
social acceptance
has come a lot slower.
(speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: Legalizing gender
reassignment surgery
may have made life better
for trans men like Amir Reza,
but has done nothing to improve
the lot for Iran's gays.
(speaking foreign language)
♪
♪
Morton: Harsh as they may sound,
especially coming from
a trans man's brother,
these threats are fully in keeping with
the Quranic stance on homosexuality.
(Mohammad speaking
foreign language)
♪ ♪
Morton: While homosexuality
ultimately carries the death penalty,
there's no official records
for how many Iranians
are executed simply
for being gay.
Hossein Alizadeh,
an Iranian ex-pat
who monitors Iran
for the International Gay and
Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
helped explain this lapse.
The Iranian government,
they recognize the international
pressure that exists
around these issues
and the sensitivity
when there's a public
execution of a gay man,
so what they try to do
is that they try to cover up
to always mix up the charges with
something unrelated that seems so big
that nobody can really
protest to that.
Narrator: This videotaped
backroom trial from the 1980s
is some of the only footage of Iranians
openly accused of homosexuality.
(speaking foreign language)
(interrogator speaks)
(man speaks) (speaks)
(man speaks)
(officer speaks)
(interrogator speaks)
(officer speaks)
Morton: Two hours after
this footage was shot
both of these men were executed.
So can you tell me what it's
like being gay in Iran?
It really depends on your
social-economic background.
For people who come from
a more comfortable
upper middle-class
background,
obviously it's very easy
to conceal your real identity.
And whenever things get heated
up, you always have a way,
either to throw money
at the problem
or try to get out
of the country.
But for the majority of people,
I have to argue
that's not the case.
If you live in a very
controlled environment
in a very closed society
like Iran,
admission of homosexuality
means that
you disappointed your society.
You failed your family.
People don't know who they are,
people get confused,
and the government tries to block
access to information, intentionally,
and promotes that homophobia,
so that people feel cornered.
And then, all of a sudden,
that surgery might seem something
that they can work with.
♪ ♪
Morton: For trans
people like Farimah,
it's a wildly progressive move.
But for gay Iranians trying to
come to terms with their identity,
in an environment clouded by such an
enormous social pressure to conform,
and where even basic sexual information
is withheld by the government,
it makes an already insanely
difficult decision even harder.
(crying)
(doctor speaks foreign language)
(Farimah speaks)
Arsham:
It's not a solution,
but a lot of people
doesn't have another option.
They believe it's choice,
but it's not a choice.
(machine beeping)
(doctors chattering)
This week on "VICE"...
the future of
recreational drugs.
We're looking for
new psychoactives.
We're developing hundreds
and hundreds of new drugs.
Morris: This is all
industrial level synthesis.
Smith: Then, the reality of
sex change surgery in Iran.
They have two gender norm--
male and female.
And if you're anything
in between,
you're sick
and have to fix yourself.
(speaking foreign language)
(theme music playing)
(chanting)
I'm currently inside a lab
in Shanghai, China.
This is the future
of recreational drug use.
They basically find gay Iranians
in Iran
and help underground railroad
them out of the country.
♪ ♪
Bath salts have made
some sensational
and disturbing headlines
over the last few years.
As one of the strangest,
and oftentimes dangerous drugs
to hit the streets.
Police say 20-year-old
Quinn Albers is responsible
for killing 30-year-old
Katherine Gick.
He purposely abused bath salts,
and didn't remember anything
leading up to Gick's death.
Now, bath salts are not actually
salts that you put in your bath,
they're just a nickname
for one of a host
of new synthetic drugs
that are designed to skirt
current narcotics laws.
They're cheap,
relatively easy to make,
hard to track and trace, and
extremely popular with young people.
So "VICE's" Hamilton Morris
took a closer look
at this new frontier
of recreational drugs.
Man: Can I get the one
with the strawberry?
And the one next to it?
Clerk:
$18.
Morris:
This is Felipe and Wolfe,
two Brooklyn-based DJs
who agreed to show us
how easy it is to buy a new class of
drugs called synthetic cannabinoids
right here in New York.
Morris:
Which ones did you get?
He recommended this one.
- This is new, apparently.
- Oh, wow.
Second generation.
It's legal.
Good, so we have
nothing to worry about.
(electronic music playing)
Morris: The new psychoactive
substances flooding gas stations,
corner stores, and the Internet,
are one of the fastest-growing
drug markets in the world.
The DEA estimates that the industry
is now worth billions of dollars,
with hundreds of different
chemical compounds
to serve any kind of high
you're looking for.
There are stimulants, sedatives,
dissociatives, psychedelics,
and cannabinoids--
each with thousands
of possible variations.
Synthetic cannabinoids are the
most popular drugs in America
for high school students,
surpassed only by marijuana,
a drug their effect
is supposed to mimic.
Given the surge in new
psychoactive substances,
government authorities around the world
have started paying much closer attention.
We spoke with DEA representative
Rusty Payne.
I think people don't realize,
especially in this country,
that there's a completely new
frontier of drugs out there.
Over the last five or six years,
we've identified
over 300 new drugs.
And many have been very much
scrutinized by the government,
and Congress has actually
made them illegal.
Morris: Although hundreds
of psychoactive drugs
have been prohibited,
manufacturers stay one step
ahead of the law
by tweaking the drug's
molecular structure,
creating a new compound
that technically isn't illegal.
In an effort
to skirt regulations,
the drugs are marked
with a "Not for
human consumption" disclaimer
and deceptively sold as incense,
potpourri, or bath salts.
Payne: These are unregulated
chemicals overseas, many of them.
They're shipped
in bulk over here,
and they're distributed
either retail
or Internet sites
here in the US.
Parents have no idea,
a lot of times,
that their child can go online
and buy a psychoactive substance
for pretty cheap...
and get it in the mail.
What people haven't realized
is how dangerous that is,
because nobody really knows
what's in these chemicals.
It's something that is smoked
or snorted
and it's potentially deadly.
(whimpering)
(screaming)
Payne: If you ask the emergency
room treatment facilities
across the country,
their numbers are up,
and a lot of times, they don't
know what they're dealing with.
(laughing)
Morris: The synthetic
cannabinoid market
has been expanding globally
for the last five years.
(screams)
In New York City alone,
synthetic cannabinoid associated
emergency department visits
rose 220%
in the first six months of 2014.
ER doctors citywide
say they are dealing
with a huge spike in cases
related to the abuse
of synthetic marijuana.
Springhill hospital, alone,
is averaging up to five
severe cases of this every day.
We just started seeing
a mushrooming of calls.
Some drug baron that's making
big money
off people's addictions--
of course he's gonna be
the one to tell you,
"Oh, yeah, I should be able
to do this legally,
"without any scrutiny."
He doesn't care about
these abusers of drugs.
Simply put.
(grunting)
Morris: But as we are
about to find out,
the modern synthetic
drug industry
began with the goal of actually
making drug use safer.
In the search to find out
where these drugs come from
and exactly how they're made,
the trail led us to
the other side of the planet--
New Zealand.
There we met up with
what seemed like
the world's least-likely
drug baron, Matt Bowden.
- (goat bleating)
- (folk music playing)
Over the last 15 years,
Bowden, a recovered
methamphetamine addict,
has created a veritable
pharmaceutical empire
from the sale and manufacture
of new psychoactive drugs
in New Zealand,
allowing him to realize
his wildest fantasies--
a sprawling estate
with private recording studio,
a steampunk fashion line,
and a starring role
in an intergalactic rock opera.
So how did
this eccentric musician
become the godfather
of a synthetic drug revolution?
I asked him in his laboratory.
(beeping)
This is the only lab of its kind
in the world, I think.
Can you give the entire story
of you got into this research?
I'm trying to understand what's
different about New Zealand,
what allows this lab to exist.
What really got me
involved in this area
was we're an island
in the middle of nowhere.
The cocaine boat
just doesn't stop here,
and so methamphetamine
was the drug of choice.
And you do go
quite crazy doing that.
People losing their families,
losing their businesses,
and so we had to do
something about it.
In the late '90s,
I started working
with chemists and asking,
"Would it be possible
to look for a molecule
"which can substitute
for methamphetamine in addicts
"that has a far safer profile?"
And one of them was BZP.
Right through the clubbing community,
the drug of choice changed.
Methamphetamine
sort of went out,
and BZP came in.
Morris:
Bowden's research suggested
that BZP was less harmful
to users than methamphetamine,
so he set out to get
the compound legalized
as a safer, alternative drug.
Bowden: I rocked down
to Wellington,
where the Parliament is,
asked, "Who's writing
the drug laws?"
and sat down and said, "We need
to change the laws around here."
So they said, "Okay,
let's do some research."
And it worked, so they said, "Okay,
let's rewrite these drug laws."
Very pragmatic and practical,
and we just did it.
♪
♪
(cheering)
Bowden: We started
packaging them into pills
and making them available,
so you could buy them
in nightclubs with people
who are awake
at 4:00 in the morning
bouncing up and down
like yo-yos.
Morris:
Stargate International became
one of the only
pharmaceutical companies
dedicated exclusively to creating
new, legal, recreational drugs.
Bowden: Over an
eight-and-a-half-year period,
about 26 million pills
were consumed
by 400,000 consumers,
and there were
no lasting injuries.
Morris: Bowden's success inspired
less-scrupulous manufacturers
to release an array
of competing products,
creating a synthetic drug boom
that didn't sit well
with many New Zealanders.
Eventually we had 30 or 40
different brands of pills,
and they were for sale
right across the board,
in the corner stores,
next to where children
buy lollies and ice blocks.
Mommies and daddies saw that
and thought, "This isn't cool.
"We don't want our children
exposed to these brands."
So a lot of people sort of turned
and said, "This is a bad idea."
And politicians, unable
to convince the wider public
that we were changing direction
away from the war on drugs,
decided to ban BZP pills.
And as things started
to be banned in New Zealand,
they started to be banned
everywhere else.
Morris:
Bowden's company responded
by manufacturing an unregulated
derivative of MDMA,
called Methylone.
This pill here was
an ecstasy-replacement product
and it came in
this sort of container.
Looks more like
an engagement ring box.
So it's kind of like,
"Would you like to
"have a very intense, emotional,
"three to four hour relationship
with me?"
Morris: Soon, Methylone
was prohibited as well,
so Bowden moved on again.
He built a state-of-the-art laboratory
in order to stay ahead of the government
by continuously developing
new compounds.
So this lab was set up
for our R&D.
We're looking for
new psychoactives.
We're developing and designing hundreds
and hundreds of new molecules,
and just looking
for the best ones.
Morris: Bowden's
business is now focused
on synthetic cannabinoids,
and he's trying to build
safer variations
of the same products that have
been prohibited in the US.
Some cannabinoids are an oil,
and other cannabinoids are an
incredibly pure, white powder.
That shows how sophisticated the
chemists working in Matt's lab is.
But one problem is that not all labs
share Bowden's level of sophistication
and dedication
to quality control.
If there's no motivation
to develop safer drugs,
then what's gonna happen is
that the cheapest, nastiest, strongest
drugs are gonna float to the surface.
And anybody with a phone
can Google the name
of a molecule,
order something like it
from any of the hundreds
of suppliers that are now
around the planet,
and have it shipped out to them.
Those things can move around.
They can't be stopped.
Morris:
To get a firsthand look
at the massive scope
of production,
we headed to China,
the manufacturing hub for everything
from iPhones to acne medication
to synthetic cannabinoids.
Using Bowden's long-standing
relationships with Chinese labs,
we were granted exclusive access
to manufacturing facilities
that are usually off-limits.
I'm currently inside a lab
in Shanghai, China,
where synthetic cannabinoids
are designed
and produced on a mass scale.
These five rotovaps could
easily allow the lab to produce
kilos or maybe even tons
of a given chemical
if they wanted to.
This is equipment that they use to characterize
the compounds that they're making.
This room definitely contains
at least a million dollars
worth of analytical equipment.
This is all
industrial-level synthesis.
This is something that I
actually know very little about.
It's one thing to make
a couple grams of a chemical,
but it's an entirely different thing to
make metric tons in a lab like this.
♪ ♪
Bowden: Medicines are
produced in bulk like this,
the things are dried out
here on the table,
the solvents are evaporated
off under lights,
and cannabinoids, ecstasy,
and other drugs
are produced
in exactly the same manner.
This is the future of
all recreational drug use.
It's a cheaper, easier way
to make drugs.
This could easily represent
millions of dollars of profit,
both for this lab and for all
the people down the line
that sell it in smoking blends.
It's certainly cheaper
than growing cannabis plants.
There's no question about that.
And it's easier to ship.
It doesn't have any odor.
There are no drug sniffing dogs
that are trained
to detect this material.
To test how easy it is
to buy kilogram quantities
of ultra-potent synthetic
cannabinoids,
we went to another lab
posing as potential customers.
♪
♪
We were amazed by the sheer
volume of synthetic cannabinoids
stacked casually around the lab.
(speaking foreign language)
Oh, wow.
That's quite a bit.
Oh, okay.
Morris:
Considering that each dose
may be a small fraction
of a milligram,
what I'm holding might amount
to millions of hits.
(man speaking foreign language)
Morris: But this
was just one order.
A representative
then went on to show us
other cannabinoid compounds
that he's been making
for overseas customers.
(speaking foreign language)
(interpreter speaking
foreign language)
(man speaking foreign language)
Is the business growing
or getting smaller?
(interpreter speaking
foreign language)
(man speaks)
Interpreter: Growing.
There's an idea that we should place
blame on the Chinese manufacturers.
To them,
it doesn't really matter.
If someone says, "Can you put
this carbon next to this carbon?"
They don't know
if this is a glue
to go inside the next part
of Nike's shoe,
or if this is some sort
of a compound
that's gonna be used in
a coloring agent in wallpaper.
It's not really
a concern for them.
Morris:
Whether it was an amphetamine,
psychedelic, or cannabinoid,
they were eager to synthesize
whatever compound I requested.
(interpreter speaks)
(man speaking foreign language)
(interpreter speaks)
Bowden: Instead of saying,
"These guys are bad.
"Let's shut them down.
Let's lock them up."
Why don't we put
some safety standards in place?
So that we know at least
what we are consuming
is gonna be safe enough.
It's not gonna hurt us.
The only solution that I can
see, as we move forwards,
is a regulatory system
which rewards
safer alternatives.
It's unclear which of these will
be toxic until they're introduced
into a large human population.
It's like
a giant clinical trial.
Bowden: At the end of the
day, you've got to realize
that in
the pharmaceutical industry,
things are tested on animals.
These things here are probably
gonna be tested by...
somebody's children.
Morris: And considering
the size of the market,
we're talking about
an uncontrolled trial
that spans the globe.
I've been told that there
are about 160,000
chemical manufacturing companies
in China.
160,000 is a lot.
Those are just ones
that we know of,
and it makes the law enforcement
challenge even greater.
When we do research
on a particular substance,
there's always a new derivative
or a new chemical compound
similar to it
that is being manufactured.
I'm not gonna sit here
and tell you we're gonna
arrest our way
out of the problem.
We're not gonna legislate
our way out of this.
You're talking about
a completely different game.
And for the government
in the United States, it's
become a game of whack-a-mole.
♪ ♪
Ever since the Islamic
Revolution of 1979,
when the Shah was overthrown,
Iran has been ruled
by fundamentalist Islamic law.
Iranian people are united,
and they believe,
and all of them are behind
Khomeini leadership.
Smith: Today, women must wear
head coverings in public,
all alcohol is banned,
and homosexuality
is strictly forbidden.
(speaking foreign language)
Translator: In Iran,
we don't have
homosexuals like
in your country.
(laughter)
Translator: We don't have
that in our country.
(booing)
Now what's strange is that in the
time since Iran banned homosexuality,
it's actually become
one of the world's capitals
for sexual reassignment surgery.
Now to see if there's
a connection between the two,
we sent Thomas Morton
to meet with Iranian refugees
who fled this anti-gay policy.
♪ ♪
(cheering)
(participant speaking)
(siren wails)
Hi, it's Thomas.
I'm in Toronto
at the World Pride Parade.
It's basically the gayest place
on the planet right now.
There's a guy running the show
back there in blue shorts
named Arsham. He runs
an organization called
The Iranian Railroad
for Queer Refugees.
They basically find
gay Iranians in Iran
and help underground railroad
them out of the country.
He brings them here to Canada where they are
basically free to be whatever they want.
How many people a year
does the IRQR help?
Since 2005, 885 cases.
On average, we have
5 cases every month.
I grew up in Iran
as a heterosexual guy.
I had to be a heterosexual guy.
Homosexuality is
punishable by death.
Among all of the Muslim clergy
and the justice system,
the only difference
and the only argument
is how we should kill them.
If I go back to Iran,
I will be executed.
They believe that homosexuals
are against God.
So they interpreted that since
you want to change this one,
you want to change
the God's rule.
So you are against God,
so you have to be killed.
Morton: One of the most recent Iranians
that Arsham's group has helped
find refuge in Toronto
is Sohrab,
who fled Iran
with his boyfriend last year.
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: After government officials
established that Sohrab was gay,
he was sent to see
a psychologist
to see if there was any alternative
to arrest and execution.
(speaking foreign language)
So what did you do?
(speaking foreign language)
♪ ♪
Morton: Sohrab joined the
hundreds of other gay Iranians
who flee to Turkey every year.
Morton: Despite the fact that
being gay is a capitol offense,
transsexuality is completely
off the books,
which leads some Iranians who may
otherwise identify as gay or lesbian
to see being trans as their only
legal option for coming out.
According to Iran's regime
and Islamic ideology,
they have two gender norm--
male and female.
And if you are
anything in between,
you're sick, and you have
to fix yourself.
Morton: Iranian doctors perform
some 300 operations a year.
Putting Iran up there
with Thailand
and the Netherlands
as one of the sex change capitals
of the Eastern Hemisphere.
♪ ♪
While getting a sex change
is surprisingly easy in Iran,
getting a visa
as an American reporter,
unsurprisingly, is not.
So we sent a crew
with international passports
to film this improbable bastion
of trans culture
in the Muslim world.
♪ ♪
Farimah is undergoing
surgery today
to transition from male
to female.
(speaks foreign language)
Up to now, she's had to hide her sexual
identity from her family and neighbors.
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: Before a person like Farimah
can undergo this procedure,
they are required to do
up to two years of counseling,
hormone therapy,
and physical examinations
to make sure they're
actually transsexual.
Once they've passed, they receive
their official diagnosis
from a government board
who stamps a permit
authorizing the operation.
Dr. Cohanzad is
a renowned surgeon
who, despite taking part in
Iran's booming sex change trade,
is very particular about whom he
will and will not operate on.
(Dr. Cohanzad speaking)
♪ ♪
Morton: Iran's legal code
is based on Islamic law.
To clarify the Quran's
distinction between
homosexuality
and transsexuality,
we went to Qom, one of the
Shiites' holiest cities
to speak with Mohammad
Mahdi Kariminiya,
a prominent Muslim
scholar and hafiz,
which is someone who's memorized
the entirety of the Quran.
(speaking foreign language)
♪ ♪
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: So, because it's not
explicitly dealt with in the Quran,
the proper Islamic stance
on transsexuality
is left up to
clerical interpretation,
which prior to the 1980s,
lumped it together with homosexuality
as a form of perversion.
Then Ayotollah Khomeini
met a trans activist
named Maryam Molkara,
had a change of heart,
issued a fatwa,
and all of a sudden, it was
legal to be trans in Iran.
♪ ♪
Amir Reza is one of
the beneficiaries
of Ayotollah Khomeini's
pronouncement.
Once a married woman, Amir has now
legally transitioned into a man.
(Amir speaking foreign language)
♪ ♪
Morton: While the legal status
of transgender Iranians
like Amir Reza
changed overnight,
social acceptance
has come a lot slower.
(speaking foreign language)
(speaking foreign language)
Morton: Legalizing gender
reassignment surgery
may have made life better
for trans men like Amir Reza,
but has done nothing to improve
the lot for Iran's gays.
(speaking foreign language)
♪
♪
Morton: Harsh as they may sound,
especially coming from
a trans man's brother,
these threats are fully in keeping with
the Quranic stance on homosexuality.
(Mohammad speaking
foreign language)
♪ ♪
Morton: While homosexuality
ultimately carries the death penalty,
there's no official records
for how many Iranians
are executed simply
for being gay.
Hossein Alizadeh,
an Iranian ex-pat
who monitors Iran
for the International Gay and
Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
helped explain this lapse.
The Iranian government,
they recognize the international
pressure that exists
around these issues
and the sensitivity
when there's a public
execution of a gay man,
so what they try to do
is that they try to cover up
to always mix up the charges with
something unrelated that seems so big
that nobody can really
protest to that.
Narrator: This videotaped
backroom trial from the 1980s
is some of the only footage of Iranians
openly accused of homosexuality.
(speaking foreign language)
(interrogator speaks)
(man speaks) (speaks)
(man speaks)
(officer speaks)
(interrogator speaks)
(officer speaks)
Morton: Two hours after
this footage was shot
both of these men were executed.
So can you tell me what it's
like being gay in Iran?
It really depends on your
social-economic background.
For people who come from
a more comfortable
upper middle-class
background,
obviously it's very easy
to conceal your real identity.
And whenever things get heated
up, you always have a way,
either to throw money
at the problem
or try to get out
of the country.
But for the majority of people,
I have to argue
that's not the case.
If you live in a very
controlled environment
in a very closed society
like Iran,
admission of homosexuality
means that
you disappointed your society.
You failed your family.
People don't know who they are,
people get confused,
and the government tries to block
access to information, intentionally,
and promotes that homophobia,
so that people feel cornered.
And then, all of a sudden,
that surgery might seem something
that they can work with.
♪ ♪
Morton: For trans
people like Farimah,
it's a wildly progressive move.
But for gay Iranians trying to
come to terms with their identity,
in an environment clouded by such an
enormous social pressure to conform,
and where even basic sexual information
is withheld by the government,
it makes an already insanely
difficult decision even harder.
(crying)
(doctor speaks foreign language)
(Farimah speaks)
Arsham:
It's not a solution,
but a lot of people
doesn't have another option.
They believe it's choice,
but it's not a choice.
(machine beeping)
(doctors chattering)