edsmithtalk.politics.drugs 3:15 pm Dec 10, 1993 (at wpi.WPI.EDU)(From News system) Here is my homemade transcript from the Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1993 MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour on PBS. I turned on the news and flipped around, with the VCR ready... Some of it may not make perfect sense, but I wrote exactly what was said and indicated when I couldn't catch something. A videocassette of the program is available by writing: 1320 Braddock Place Alexandria, VA 22314 or calling: 1-800-328-PBS1 ***** About the news program, first, they replayed the clip which has generated so much discussion, then discussed the issue with the "experts". Infer or interpret this as you may, I only offer this in case you are interested and did not happen to see the program... ============================================================ Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1993 MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour on PBS: Elders: "60 % of most of our violent crimes are associated with alcohol or drug use. Many times they're robbing stealing, and all of these things to get money to buy drugs, and I do feel that we would markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized. But I don't know the ramifications of this and I do feel that we need to do some studies. In some of the countries that have legalized drugs, and made it legal, they certainly have shown that there has been a reduction in their crime rate, and there has been no increase in their drug use rate." ---- Dr. Joycelyn Elders Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1993 ---- M = MacNeil/Lehrer B = William F. Buckley R = N.Y. Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel M: Dr. Elders' office later released a statement saying her comments were her personal observations. The whitehouse was quick to take issue with the Surgeon General, today the President said the costs of legalizing drugs would far outweigh the benefits. We join the debate now with William F. Buckley, editor and chief of The National Review, and author, his latest book is entitled 'Happy Days We're Here Again'; and Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel of New York. Congressman Rangel was Chairman of The House Select Committee on Narcotics. Mr. Buckley, you think Dr. Elders is right, if you do, how would it reduce crime, to legalize drugs? B: It would reduce crime because there would be no incentive for the drug peddler. If the drug were available at roughly speaking the cost of production, then why would it make any sense for anybody to try to make money off the sale of it? So I think she is quite correct in respect to that, and I'd be surprised if Mr. Rangel argued about that. You wouldn't would you? R: I'm always reluctant to argue with you Mr. Buckley, but it just doesn't make any sense to me that it would wipe out crime, I agree with Mr. Buckley and I agree with the Surgeon General even though it is ironic that she is supposed to be dealing with health, and not crime, and the Attorney General is supposed to be one dealing with how you reduce the crime. Yes there would be reduction, but it would still mean that you would have an illicit market. I am certain that Mr. Buckley would not even suggest that drugs be made available to everybody or we give them as much as they would want to have, and as long as you're going to have people who want the drug and they cannot get it legally, or they cannot get enough legally, then naturally they're going to go to the criminal activities. But having said that, what the President has said, which I think may have been his only statement on drugs, because I haven't heard anything about what plan they're going to have to deal with this, is that what are the other costs? My God, if Bill could see a baby being born addicted to drugs, and the costs that's with that six thousand dollars a day, if you could really see the tragedies that occur on our streets with kids that have no hope, no job training, and drugs is the only way out. I don't think that this is a substitute for providing what is necessary and to avoid people from going here. We have not had any education programs, prevention programs, any foreign policy of eradication, so out of frustration some people say 'Well why not legalize it', there are a lot of reasons why we shouldn't. M: Well, let's separate those two points and take them one at a time. First of all that it wouldn't kill the illicit market because presumably Mr. Rangel believes under legalization people who are addicts wouldn't get enough. B: I wouldn't put a limit on the suicidal appetites of anybody. He is quite correct that if you said you can have half as much as you want, then you are going to have a black market again. But under the scheme that I endorse and a lot of other people endorse, this would not be permitted because of the availability of the stuff... M: You mean it would like alcohol, it would be regulated, but legally available? B: Correct. I would not permit the sale of it to people under 18, for the obvious reasons which I don't need to elaborate, but remember this, that if you, first of all, let me dissociate myself from people who think that drugs should be legalized because we have no business telling people what they want to do. If the war on drugs were successful, I would say o.k., wait it out, if every year the consumption went down by 5%, o.k. in twenty years we have no more drugs. But that's not happening. The price of cocaine is less expensive now than when the war on drugs began, and meanwhile we are spending 20, 25 billion dollars a year on a program that doesn't work that's exhausting the juror's [?] system, is choking up the activity of the police, and is leaving us with a criminal subculture that is getting 100, 110, 120 billion dollars out of it, it's a lousy thing, it's not working. My approach is entirely empirical. R: Could I adopt a Buckley program just for a minute? M: Yes, but let me just get you to answer his point for a moment, and then I'll come back to your other point. His point, that the President referred to the costs of legalizing, the costs of not legalizing are surely as Mr. Buckley stated, are they not? All these billions of dollars and the effect on the criminal justice system, police time and money, so on. R: Yes, we did a study during the Bush administration and we found the drug problem when you take into account the lost productivity, because I assume that we'll have drug breaks and that if you feel down and depressed you go to your doctor and one way or the other he would be able to privatization because you can't have the federal government just running ... B: I think you're making fun of this position. R: No, the doctors would say 'have you tried crack? because you know you've been on heroin now for a week and it doesn't seem to bring you up'. Then we'll have the advertisers competing, they could give you samples.. B: No, No. R: As a matter of fact, knowing his compassion for the poor, I'm certain if he could not pay the price of going to the doctor, we'd have drug stamps so that youngsters that, I mean over 18 of course, and if you're under 18, I assume that you just have to wait to become of age no matter what your addiction is. So, I know the private sector, and the federal and local governments would do a better job, but when you take when you see what we're losing with drugs, I mean I don't see how any parent would want to say that we have given up. First of all we haven't even begun to fight, so I don't know what war he's talking about, it's so bad that I miss Nancy Reagan now, but assuming that there was a fight and we have lost it then you surrender. We haven't done anything in our schools, we haven't done a darn thing with Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, Mexico we went into agreement and 70% comes from there so, we haven't done anything. M: How about that, it failed because we haven't tried hard enough Mr. Anklestene [?] ? B: Under Bush we spent 400 million dollars, we're spending 10,000% more than that. Every single year it goes up and up and up and the price of cocaine goes down, which means that the availability... R: Tell me what we've done, not just how much money we've... B: But.., R: No, no, no, tell me what we've done Bill, not how much money we've spent. You know much more about the economy than I, so don't tell me we've spent billions of dollars. B: A junior at Harvard told me a week ago that it was easier to get marijuana in Cambridge than beer, because if someone sells him beer illegally, they stand to lose a capital plant, their license. You don't need a license to buy marijuana, you just buy it from the street peddler. R: You know that's very interesting. Where did this occur? B: In Cambridge. R: Well you can bet your life that they may be restricted to marijuana in Cambridge, and for all practical purposes it's legal. But I know where this crack cocaine is going to go. It's going to go to the people who don't have the hopes that the people do have in Cambridge. It's going to go to the people that don't have the alternatives. It's going to go where it is right now in the poorer communities, and instead of trying to do something like we're trying to do in Mexico, like we're trying to do in the Soviet to give people training and jobs and hope. What we're saying is, that if we can't stop the violence and you're going to insist on doing it, then the people in Cambridge would say 'Well we'll have our marijuana, and you can have your heroin and your cocaine and your crack, and that's giving up on a lot of potential that this great country has. B: It is an incorrect assumption that if you can have crack or marijuana you are automatically going to be attracted by crack. You can buy 200% proof booze if you want to , but people don't, and not only in Park Avenue, in Harlem they don't, they buy beer and wine in substantial... R: Well most users agree that this is a higher euphoria. M: Speaking of Park Avenue and Harlem, what do you say Congressman to the argument of Father Joseph Cain who is a Jesuit who has live in the Bronx for twenty years and he was the Chaplain at Rikhers [sp?] Island where many drug people are held, says the present system discriminates against exactly the poor minorities because the rich can afford to buy it, and when they want to end their addiction they can afford treatment, whereas the poor can't afford to buy it, and therefore resort to crime if they're addicts, and then they become criminals, and instead of treatment they go to jail? R: I'm sorry, besides being a priest, what was his qualifications? M: He is a man who has spent twenty years... R: In jail.. M: Not in jail, well... R: I mean helping those that are criminal. M: He says it makes criminals out of the poor. R: Let me say this, that everyone knows that using drugs, especially crack, is really, you know, death on an installment plan, and it's not a healthy thing, it is life threatening, and so we all accept that, both heroin and what not. The question is if you're telling someone not to do this because of your health, it has to be that you feel threatened in doing it, and intelligent people know what it is, they stop doing it if they see it's going to interrupt, is going to interfere with what they want, not just life expectancy, but I see people every day in Harlem , they congratulate me for what I'm doing in fighting against drugs, and I say 'But my friend you've been on drugs for years', and he said not for me because I have too much pain, I'm unemployable, I'm a veteran, they've given up on me, I can't get a job. And it's kind of hard to see why a guy like that, you know, would be straight, but if you find somebody that is using recreational drugs that, and they do use them in the board room, and it reaches a point that through education they find out that they can't function, they're not productive, then I think education and prevention works for them. B: Can I make one point? The people who would suffer if this reform were undertaken, would be inflicting that suffering on themselves. Who are suffering now, are people who are victimized by people who rob them and steal and maim, the entire court system: 380,000 people last year were arrested for taking marijuana. The consumption of police and judicial energy going into an effort that is utterly bootless, is a travesty. [couldn't figure out a word] is a superstition, if you want to go after killers seriously, stop cigarettes. M: I was just going to ask you, should heroin and cocaine, even crack, be no more feared than alcohol or tobacco, or is the taboo based on medical scientific evidence, or just on emotion? B: Well, the addiction rate on tobacco is about 36%, on booze it's about 14%, on crack cocaine it's between 6 and 8%, on marijuana... M: In the population... B: People who do try it. Ninety two million Americans have tried illegal drugs. Dr. Greenstrom [sp?] of Harvard says that if he had a child who was going to go either alcohol or marijuana, he himself would prefer that he went in the direction of marijuana. I have no position on this, I think that anybody who takes marijuana is crazy. But I do think this, that in terms of suffering, there would be less of it, and this is I think an authentic conservative concern empirically. War against drugs calls for a white flag not from characteriture but from ... R: Do you not deny that there would be a dramatic increase in health care as a result of the illnesses that now are directly connected with the abuse of heroin and cocaine... B: The answer is I don't know, Araglass [hourglass ?] of the American Civil Liberties Union says that he and his people have studied it, they don't know, they just plain don't know, there is a temptation to do something that's illegal, which we all recognize. R: You know, I don't mind discussing this at cocktail parties, but it really bothers me when the Surgeon General raises this argument. Bill Buckley always does this, one he likes to pick on me, and two he's using all of my material to write a book. M: Bill Buckley isn't the only one, I mean there is George Schultz, the former Secretary of State, there is Milton Freedman, and Judge Freed, U.S. former... R: Secretary Schultz really was discussing this at a cocktail party when it was reported. But really, you have to take into consideration all of the people we have taught to fight and die in Columbia for this war against drugs, all of the treaties that we have negotiated, if we legalize it then we will then have to either import the drug into the United States, or start growing it ourselves, and then we'll start subsidizing the opium growers, the cocoa leaf growers, and that we would have it now in every store and things available and this is really cutting down the productivity of our country, it's a killing thing... B: There should be a federal drug store, and it should receive shipments of that which is sold, according to the demand, always at a price that vitiates the black market. R: And if you don't have a price, would the government give you drug stamps? M: Congressman Rangel, William Buckley, thank you both. R: Thank you.