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...
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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.