HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/macneil.lehrer

Internet Message Format | 1996-05-06 | 18KB

From: [e-mail] (Sol Lightman)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Transcript: Surgeon General and more
Date: 10 Dec 1993 21:54:56 GMT
Message-ID: <2ear7g$[e-mail]>

[ Article crossposted from alt.drugs ]
[ Author was Derek Smith ]
[ Posted on 10 Dec 1993 03:50:14 GMT ]

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

*****
By the way, I was watching NextStep last week on the
Discovery Channel, and they did a story about e-mail.  They
gave the e-mail address of the preseident and vice-president
as:

[e-mail]
[e-mail]

They said the president receives approximately 40,000
electronic mailings each day, and every one is read by a
staff member.  Please send in a short note supporting
Dr.Joycelyn Elders for at least having an open mind...If
anyone thinks this should be posted to another newsgroup,
please forward it.
*****

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
    udge 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.

--
The University of Massachusetts at Amherst                |  _________,^-.
Cannabis Reform Coalition                               ( | )           ,>
S.A.O. Box #2                                            \|/           {
415 Student Union Building                              `-^-'           ?     )
UMASS, Amherst MA 01003      [e-mail]  |____________  `--~ ;
                                                                       \_,-__/
* To find out about our on-line library, mail a message with the
* pattern "{{{readme}}}" contained IN THE SUBJECT LINE.
* You will be mailed instructions; your message will be otherwise ignored