HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/brown.interview

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 13KB | 239 lines

Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs
From: [e-mail] (Mark R Boolootian)
Subject: Lee Brown interview
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 20:41:56 GMT


The following was posted to alt.activism.  It is truly discouraging to see
the same misinformation repeated time and time again.  I wonder if Brown
has ever read "Marihuana Reconsidered?"  If not, I wonder why.


From: [e-mail] (Merry Weeks)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Top Cop in the War on Drugs, I
Date: 13 Mar 1995 13:41:20 -0800

I read this in Sunday's Chronicle/Examiner (3/12/95).  Please send
any response to: [e-mail]

Top Cop in the War on Drugs:  Lee Brown talks about why past
campaigns failed and why drug use is on the rise, especially among
youth.

Q:  Where do we stand in the war on drugs?
A:  I could probably best summarize it by making three points:
Number one, over a period of years we've seen a substantial
reduction in nonaddictive, casual drug use.  Even saying that, we
have 1.4 million Americans that use illegal drugs on a regular basis
- by that, I mean at least once a month.  Number two, we've seen no
progress in the category we classify as a chronic, hard-core,
addicted drug-user population.  There are about 2.7 million
Americans that fall into that category.  About 600,000 are addicted
to heroin, the remainng 2.1 million are addicted to cocaine.  The
third point is that we now see, after over a decade of decline in
drug use amoung our young people, that the decline has stopped, and
drug use is now going up, particularly marijuana, and to a lesser
degree, LSD and the inhalants.
    (President Clinton's) strategy is to reduce drug use in America,
and we feel the best way to accomplish that is great emphasis and
more resources for prevention, education and treatment.
    I point out that the hard-core drug-user population is our major
problem.  That's about 20 percent of the drug-user population. Yet
they consume about 80 percent of the cocaine that's sold in the
streets of our cities.  They commit much of the crime and put a
burden on our health care costs.  It's a major problem. Previous
strategies did not address the hard-core user.  We think it makes
good sense to do that, and the way we propose to do that is through
more treatment programs.  For this fiscal year we asked the Congress
for (an additional) $355 million to treat the hard-core drug user.
They gave us $57 million, far, far less than what we needed.

Q:  Is the drug problem getting worse in this county?
A:  The hard-core drug use population has remained stable.  The use
overall is about level.  The problem is with our young people.  They
are now using more drugs, particularly marijuana, and their
attitudes about drugs has changed. That's what worries me.  We also
have a concern about heroin. You see more heroin on the streets,
higher purity, low price, so people are using it without worrying
about the needle, and thus the potential for infectious diseases.
My objective is to get a handle on that before we have a more
serious problem than we have right now.

Q:  What correlations are there between drug use and violent crime?
A:  If we revert back to the mid 1980's, when we saw crack
cocaine hit the streets of our cities, that's where you also saw
violence go up tremendously, and that's the connection.  We see
crime associated with drugs in one of three ways:  Number one, the
battles over turf or territory among the drug dealers.  Number two,
those who steal and commit crimes to get money to pay for the
drugs, and number three, those who commit crimes under the
influence of drugs - crack cocaine and PCP are good examples of that
latter category.  Heroin's a good example of those who steal to pay
for the heroin.

Q:  This seems to go in waves.  This happened back in the '60's and
'70's where the government was telling kids about reefer madness,
kids tried it and found out it wasn't that bad, so they stopped
believing the government.  Is the law causing more anguish than the
drugs?
A:  I don't think so.  There's no one reason (young people are using
more drugs).  There are several reasons.  One, there is significant
reduction in media attention to the drug issue today.  It used to
be we had about $1 million per day of pro bono public service
announcements through the Partnership of a Drug Free America.
That's dropped off about 20 to 30 percent.  Number two, the media
does not cover the drug issue today. There was a survey done that
showed that in 1989, there were about 500 or so drug stories on the
evening news - and an almost equal amount of crime stories.  In
1993, there were about 60 drug stories and about 1,600 crime
stories.  It's virtually impossible to get the drug issue on the
national media's agenda.  We can call press conferences in
Washington, D.C.  and your colleagues at the Washington Post won't
even send a reporter out.
    Also, there's a re-glamorization of drug-use in the
entertainment media, particlarly in some of the rap records our kids
are using, and to a lesser degree in the movies that we see.
    We also see mixed messages going to our children.  Some very
respected people - judges, mayors - are talking about debating the
issue of legalization.  I have talked to young people and they say,
"Well, it can't be that bad.  This mayor or this judge is saying
let's talk about legalization. How could it be that bad when these
respected people are talking about it?"  What I don't think there's
an understanding of is that marijuana is much more potent than it
was 10, 15, 20 years ago, that it can do very serious damage - this
is from the medical people - to both the body and the mind, in terms
of cognitive factors, as well as the lungs and reproductive systems.


Q:  Obviously the war on drugs hasn't worked.  What if you just
disbanded and legalized drugs?  You might have a lot of people
hanging around stoned, but they wouldn't be shooting each other.
A.  I think it's a myth to believe it would take the crime out of
it.  There's nothing to suggest that that's the case.

Q:  If it's not illegal, there's no crime.
A:  There are other countries we could use as an example.  The
Netherlands has a tolerant attitude toward what they call the soft
drugs - marijuana and hashish.  I visited Amsterdam, I've talked to
their people there, and they have higher health care costs, (higher)
addiction rates.  I've visited their parks:  Their children wander
around looking like zombies.  We don't want that here.
    You may want to visit a hospital here where they care for babies
born to crack-addicted mothers.  Do as I've done: Hold in your arms
one of those babies weighing less than two pounds, with tubes
running in and out of its body, desperately clinging on to life.
Then ask yourself if you want to legalize that which causes that?
Or do as I've done and visit a crack house and see the human
degradation that takes place there.  Or talk to one of the kids like
I've done 6, 7, or 8 years old, and see if you want it to be the
nation's policy to support their drug habit for the rest of their
lives.
    There are more consequences than just the crime that goes along
with (drug use).  There are health care costs, there are family
break-ups, there's domestic violence.  All those things are very
much associated with the drug issue.  So our position is quite
clear.  We are unequivocally opposed to any public policy that would
result in more drug use.
    Prohibition (is often used) as an example.  When Prohibition was
lifted the consumption of alcohol shot straight up.  Today we have
some 300,000 Americans who lose their lives as a result of smoking.
Some 200,000 lose their lives as a result of drinking.  Less than
30,000 lose their lives as a result of illegal drugs.  I would
submit that many people do not use illegal drugs because they are
illegal, and to make them legal would compound the problem we
already have with the legal substances, such as tobacco and alcohol.

Q:  How can you convince people that the way to address that problem
is prevention rather than punishment?
A:  Our position is that anyone who breaks the law and is convicted
should be punished.  Certainly punishment is the deterrent to crime,
not necessarily the severity of punishment.  If somebody knew their
punishment would be swift and sure, that's going to be a deterrent
to crime.
    We're not, by no means, downplaying punishment.  Our strategy is
comprehensive:  aggressive domestic enforcement, prevention,
education, treatment, interdiction and international programs.  We
differ from previous strategies in important ways:  Number one, we
place a greater emphasis on reducing the demand for drugs.  We feel
the best way to do that is prevention, education and treatment.  To
me, it's very logical.  I'm a cop by my profession, 30 years in New
York City.  We would arrest up to 100,000 people every year just for
narcotic violations.  That's bigger than most cities in America. We
didn't solve the problem.  The better way is to stop people from
using drugs and get those who are on drugs off of drugs.

Q:  Is there a certain treatment that works better than others?
A:  What we know about treatment now is that it must meet the needs
of the individual.  (And) it's not only treatment, it's also after
care.  If you have a person who may go through a counseling program
but there are other poblems in that person's life - they can't find
a job, they go back in the same trap that got them in trouble to
begin with - then you haven't accomplished your objective.  So you
have to look at the totality of the individual and design a program
to cover that.
    You have good programs here in San Francisco.  Delancey Street
is a great example of a program that's never taken a nickel of
federal funds, but they've taken the worst of these drug users and
they're doing a tremendous job running the program themselves,
building buildings, operating restaurants.  They have an auto repair
shop, printing shop.  They're doing a great job.  The apartments
they build are better than the ones across the street built by the
private sector.


Q:  What about the argument that drug use is really just a
deterioration of personal values?
A:  We say that government can't do it alone.  There must be
individual responsibility.  Parents must assume responsibility for
their children. Individuals must assume responsibility for their own
behavior.  People must assume responsibilty for their neighborhoods.
Our basic premise is that the battle will not be won by what the
federal government can do. The battle will be won at the local
level.
    I've spent a lot of time in my travels talking to kids and young
people who have used drugs or are using drugs, gang members or
people who are not gang members, and there are certain messages that
they are sending us.  One, I think, is a cry for help.  Many of them
are scared themselves. You look at what they're telling us:  They
want the same things we want in life.  They want a family where they
have love, security.  All too often they don't have that because
we've seen over a period of 30 yars, really, a collapse in many of
our families. And so they turn to their peers to have love and
security.  Those are people we call "gangs".

Q:  Can you stop people from doing things to themselves that feel
good?
A:  I don't think the government alone can do it, but I think
through educational processes we can make progress.  We saw that
happen with smoking. It didn't happen overnight, but over a period
of years, in the school systems and society as a whole, (there was)
a massive campaign to decrease smoking because it causes cancer.
    It starts in the home.  (And) I believe that our religious
commuity could do a lot more.
    Seventy percent of the people who use drugs go to work every
day.  They're our colleagues, our co-workers, our employer, our
employees, not the sterotype image we see on television of the young
African American with his hands cuffed behind and getting into a
police car.  If we can reach the people at the workplace who are
using drugs, help them if they need help with employee assistance
programs, and also give them information that can also go home with
them, then we get two (benefits) for our efforts in that regard.

Q:  Why is the drug debate often framed in terms of race?
A:  The majority of community uses more drugs than the minority
community.  That's a fact.  But I think (the stereotype) comes about
as a result of television.  In your low-income areas you have a lot
of pen-air drug dealing.  Those are easy targets.  The cops can go
out there and make those arrests and the television cameras can get
it on camera.  If someone came up here and started selling drugs,
there'd be no television camera.  It doesn't get on evening
television.  There were people selling drugs up on Wall Street when
I was police commissioner of New York but it wasn't open-air drug
dealing.  If you go in someone's office with your briefcase and sell
some cocaine, that's not captured on television.  You're not walked
out with your hands behind your back.