12/31/17 Ngaio Bealum

Audio file

CENTURY OF LIES

DECEMBER 31, 2017

TRANSCRIPT

DEAN BECKER: The failure of drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors, and millions more now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century Of Lies.

DOUG MCVAY: Hello, and welcome to Century Of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Well, 2017 is coming to a close, and so, to try and make sense of this past year, I reached out to a good friend, Ngaio Bealum. Comedian, writer, political commentator, and a very good friend.

Ah, it's -- what a flipping year. What a flipping year. The only way to make sense of all this kind of thing is to speak to somebody who is accustomed to speaking truth to power, who is accustomed to speaking his own mind, and who has one of the freshest and most -- and just one of the best perspectives I could ever, and that's my friend, Ngaio Bealum. Ngaio, it is so good to be on the, on Skype with you now. How are you doing?

NGAIO BEALUM: Oh, my gosh, I'm blushing now, thank you. How are you? I'm doing great. You know, trying to make a way. Trying to make a way.

DOUG MCVAY: We do what we can, we do what we can.

NGAIO BEALUM: With what we have, amen, sir.

DOUG MCVAY: Ah, oh, brother, so now, 2017 is, as we speak it is December, my gosh, it's December 29th.

NGAIO BEALUM: Yes.

DOUG MCVAY: 2017 is finally coming to an end.

NGAIO BEALUM: Finally.

DOUG MCVAY: Yeah. What --

NGAIO BEALUM: It's been a long year.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, has it.

NGAIO BEALUM: It's been a long year.

DOUG MCVAY: What do you think? What do you think, where are we at in, you know, California's about to legalize, at the same time, we have -- at the same time, Jeff Sessions is the attorney general. So, yeah.

NGAIO BEALUM: Yes. This is exactly where we are. We're very yin and yang right now. We're a step forward, a step back, two steps forward, half a step back. There's a lot going on, man. I think overall it's great. I think California, the roll-out, of course, is going to be bumpy. Apparently they all are, if you look at how Colorado, how Oregon, how Washington, how Nevada went.

We are two, three days away from marijuana being -- and you know, people say legal, and yes, it is more legal, but it's really a huge decriminalization, and a giant regulation, of marijuana more than a straight-up legalization as maybe the hippies envisioned it 15, or 20, or even 10 years ago.

But I think it's going to be really good. Right now, things are very slow. I don't think that the state has handed out more than a hundred and fifty or so licenses for anything from cultivation to retail, so I would advise Californians not to burn their medical marijuana cards just yet.

DOUG MCVAY: Well, you know, it's not -- you're right, as far as how everything has gone in Oregon, the roll out, slow, and people were encouraged, and they're still encouraging people to --

NGAIO BEALUM: Yes.

DOUG MCVAY: -- roll over to the medical, they're smashing the medical system to try and encourage them to get over toward recreational, so --

NGAIO BEALUM: Well, there's more money.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, well, exactly. A little more tax revenue, and -- and in a state that only, you know, we [the state of Oregon] only tax beer one cent per pint.

NGAIO BEALUM: Right.

DOUG MCVAY: I mean, what sense does that make? It's 20, 25 -- 20 percent sales tax on weed, and a one cent per pint tax on beer. I mean --

NGAIO BEALUM: Which one is going to cause you more social troubles?

DOUG MCVAY: Well, indeed. The, you know --

NGAIO BEALUM: Right? Beer doesn't pay for itself in that sense.

DOUG MCVAY: Far from. The OLCC [Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission] brags about how much money they bring in, $216 million a year, they make it over two years, but $216 million a year. The CDC says that excessive alcohol use costs the state more than $3 billion. Billion with a B.

NGAIO BEALUM: Oh, really?

DOUG MCVAY: Yeah. I mean --

NGAIO BEALUM: That's not just like the whole country, but the state of Oregon is $3 billion from alcohol use? I guess if you add up all --

DOUG MCVAY: I'm just saying, you know, when you look at the numbers, when you can get the numbers, it is -- yeah. I mean, it's scary. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

NGAIO BEALUM: Right. And yet, we're still not prohibiting alcohol, which is fine with me, I don't think we should. But it's just interesting to see those things.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, indeed. The whole idea of treat marijuana like alcohol, okeh, great idea, let me know when you want to start.

NGAIO BEALUM: Right. We'll tax it for one penny every 16 ounces. I mean, I'm totally in.

DOUG MCVAY: Or, go the other way, and tax, and put a 20 percent sales tax on beer, wine, and distilled liquor. We don't have a sales tax in Oregon, so, the idea of a sales tax was just, woo, weird.

NGAIO BEALUM: It's -- yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one of those things, you know, I often look at these, and I think we've discussed this before, I look at these marijuana taxes almost as like protection money. Right? You know, we're going to cut the state in on a piece, so that we're not bothered. We can just continue to operate, in the ways that we have.

Although a lot of these new regulations, man, it's just kind of funny, because, you know, once you get the state involved, man, so now you've got to have your water rights correct, you've got to have your ADA compliance correct, you've got to have good bathrooms for everybody, you've got to have certain set-ups on your farm and these things, and, it's a challenge.

It's been a challenge for a lot of the mom and pop growers, for sure, because they don't operate on giant million dollar margins, right? Marijuana's always been kind of a small, decentralized thing, and so this is going to be the challenge, is to keep a lot of the people who've been doing this for years and years, to keep them legit, and not drive them further underground, right? As long as marijuana is illegal in Nebraska and Georgia and Texas and Iowa and Idaho, there will still be a market for underground weed in California, since it grows the best weed in the world. We'll always have outlaw customers until federal prohibition is ended.

DOUG MCVAY: There are a lot of Oregonians, unfortunately, who have run afoul of the law thinking the same thing, in other states, with, with loads. It's --

NGAIO BEALUM: Yeah, I heard about that guy, didn't he get caught with a bunch of wax or something, in Idaho or someplace obscure?

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, we got that, we had somebody who got stopped in the, around Illinois with a, with a truck load. It, you know, it -- somebody flew from, no I think, no I'm sorry, the guy who landed a plane came out of California. But still, it's the --

NGAIO BEALUM: There's a couple that was driving to Vermont. I don't think they were coming up from Oregon, I'm not sure where they were coming from, but they had sixty, 70 pounds, like an 80 year old couple.

DOUG MCVAY: Ah yes, for Christmas gifts.

NGAIO BEALUM: Yeah. Well, duh! I mean, that's a great gift, they should have just come to my house. I would have helped them out.

DOUG MCVAY: There's a joke somewhere in there about chimney smoking, if you -- you're the comedian, so --

NGAIO BEALUM: I was going to say, we can call that guy Father Spliffmas.

DOUG MCVAY: Not bad. Not bad.

NGAIO BEALUM: Thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: Yeah, yeah.

NGAIO BEALUM: That's actually my nickname in the winter, they used to call me. Let my beard grow and start handing out weed, they just call me Father Spliffmas.

DOUG MCVAY: Ah, you're still a few years -- you're still a few years from having that white a beard, my friend.

NGAIO BEALUM: Ah, it's getting there, brother, you haven't seen it in a minute, so, I'm definitely -- there's more salt than pepper on the old table there these days.

DOUG MCVAY: Ah. You make me laugh. So, --

NGAIO BEALUM: More salt in the beard, less salt in the diet. That's -- that's what we're working on these days.

DOUG MCVAY: I do like it. I do like it. In fact, you bring up a good point when you talk about the folks in the, some of these large -- you mentioned water, people who are planning these mega-farms, I think they're forgetting that y'all have very strict water regulations. That's going to --

NGAIO BEALUM: Oh my gosh, that's going to be like the next war, is going to be fought over water. Yeah, so, it's already like that right now. Like, if you're trying to set up a farm and you can't prove where your water comes from, or you don't have a well, they're not going to let you, they're not going to let you have a farm. Right? Because, you know, all the farmers in Fresno and all those other guys, and all the water rights. It's Chinatown, Jake. All the water rights are a big deal out here in California, which is very often a drought stricken state, so you better have your water together before you even put a seed in the ground.

DOUG MCVAY: On the other hand, the investors, or at least the people touting for investors, aren't going to be really playing that part up. But you know, hey, downside risk.

NGAIO BEALUM: Listen, caveat emptor, as they always say.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh indeed, oh indeed. Now, I know that it's almost a year out, but, do you think there's a chance we might see some, we might see a reversal in the 2018 elections? And, I'm thinking more about the GOP takeover, do you think we have a chance, the Ds, I mean, would it really -- people argue whether it would matter, I think, looking at Jeff Sessions and looking at some of the stuff that the clown sitting in -- sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania is doing --

NGAIO BEALUM: Sure.

DOUG MCVAY: -- yeah, I think it might have made a difference, actually. And having a Democratic Congress wouldn't be great but at least we might be able -- I don't know, I mean, it ....

NGAIO BEALUM: I think a Democratic Congress can only help. Only help. Any time we push, and see, and this is, if we're talking just, not just drug politics but politics in general, this is one of the challenges, when you have, like, leftist absolutist or purity test cats. You've got to push people left, man, it's -- it's incremental sometimes, it's step by step, it's inch by inch, like Roy Kaufmann out of Portland, one of my favorite people, always says: Battles don't stay won.

So you think you won equal rights, you think you've got civil rights in the law, and they come chipping away at them bit by bit by bit, and so you have to continue to push left, right? So you've got to vote, if you're in a -- if you're in a red state, you've got to vote blue. If, you know, you don't have a choice, it's not a choice between Hillary and Jill Stein, those aren't the two candidates, it's a choice between Hillary and Trump, you've got to pick the left-most one that you can get for your dollar. Right?

They're always like, well, you're voting for the lesser of two evils. I'm just voting for less evil. And then the next time I hope I get to vote for even less evil. And then after that I'd like to vote for even less evil, until eventually -- evil's never, not going to go away, right, evil is always with us, we studied the yin and the yang, but if you can get it down to a really, really small amount, it won't bother you nearly as much. Right? And that's what I'm always saying.

You know, and that's one of the challenges. When you're younger, you think maybe you could just do everything in one fell swoop, we're going to elect all these guys and then everything is going to change, and kittens will fly out of our butts, and unicorns will make us tea, but it's incremental, man, it's so incremental sometimes.

You've got to push and push and push and push and push. Governments move slow, right? The first petition, or initiative, to legalize marijuana in California was 45 years ago. Right? and we didn't get anything done until two years ago. So that's 43 years of climbing up hill, of signing petitions, of being activists, of showing up in court, of civil disobedience, of good people going to jail. Forty years to get to where we are now, and we're still not done. Right?

Activism is always the right thing. So, this is where we're at. So you've got to continue to push left. And I'm not saying that you can't have crazy left talking points. You don't have to start negotiating from the center. Start negotiating from the left, but keep pushing everything leftward as you go. Right? Don't, just because someone isn't as left as you'd like them to be, if they're further left than the Republican, which by definition they really are, then you go with that person, and you keep going until you get to where you need to go.

DOUG MCVAY: Exactly. People think that, oh you support this person, so this is what you believe. It's like no, I support this person because they're the better alternative. I want them to go further.

NGAIO BEALUM: They're the better alternative.

DOUG MCVAY: Yeah.

NGAIO BEALUM: They're the one --

DOUG MCVAY: They're the ones who are listening, how's that, you know?

NGAIO BEALUM: Right. And then once we get those guys, maybe we can get a different person, or even push them further left. And that was the thing that really, I'm really disappointed in Hillary not winning the electoral college, because I felt like, even though she was way more center or even right on a lot of things than I would have liked her to be, she showed a willingness to be pushed. Right? She showed a willingness to follow the prevailing winds, and so if everybody's pushing her that way, she would go that way, which I thought would be great.

DOUG MCVAY: Right. It's a sailing thing, right? That's tacking.

NGAIO BEALUM: And, and, but yeah -- and so now, instead of, instead of --

DOUG MCVAY: It's, in order to reach -- you can't go straight into port, you have to go one side or the other and then eventually.

NGAIO BEALUM: -- pushing forward, instead of making progress -- huh, how about that -- we're not fighting a, what would you call it, not a retreat, but we're fighting to hold ground instead of to gain ground. Right? So now, we've got to push back against everything. We've got to dig in our trenches.

I really just wanted to try to push people a little more left and enjoy my legal weed, but now I've got to be out here fighting fascists in the street, and arguing with nazis, and doing all this, because this guy getting elected has emboldened the racists. Right? They think it's their turn to shine, they think it's, oh now it's time, it's cool to be a racist white nationalist again. It's never been cool. Right? And so we can't -- we can't all these guys to even think that they have a small sliver of an iota of a chance of getting their b******t across, because it's not time for that.

This is not -- it's not their day. Right? Hate crimes are up in Oregon. In Eugene, hate crimes are up, and that's one of those things, too, in the cannabis industry. How did y'all guys, you've got a person, two people running a cannabis testing facility, full-on white nationalists, if not neo-nazis, in Eugene. In Eugene! Eugene, Oregon. We can't be having this. We can't have this around. Marijuana's supposed to end racism, not perpetuate.

DOUG MCVAY: Ah. That's a nice -- that's a good tagline. You're absolutely right.

NGAIO BEALUM: Thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: I mean, this is the -- we're, they've, the --

NGAIO BEALUM: I've been practicing my sound bytes.

DOUG MCVAY: The news came out about that, she was eventually forced out of the, forced out of the company, but --

NGAIO BEALUM: As she should have been.

DOUG MCVAY: At the same time, though, her thing was like, oh, this is unfair, this is unfair, I'm just, heritage -- and it's, as a --

NGAIO BEALUM: Unfair to whom?

DOUG MCVAY: Well, exactly, and as a white person, I mean what --

NGAIO BEALUM: To whom is it unfair?

DOUG MCVAY: As a white person, what "white heritage" exactly are you talking about, is that German, is that Irish, is that Italian, is it East European?

NGAIO BEALUM: Swiss?

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, I'm sorry, when you get into the white, these white supremacists, the east Europeans and the Italians and the Irish, we're not really white, so, what exactly is this, you know, just because we share the same -- you know, just because we might share the same kind of skin color --

NGAIO BEALUM: Lack of melanin.

DOUG MCVAY: -- doesn't mean we have anything to do with that stuff. Oh, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

NGAIO BEALUM: It's ridiculous, and it's, it's not cool, and I'm glad that -- I'm glad that she lost her business. I don't really care. I don't -- you know, punching nazis is self defense. Nazis not having work is self defense. These guys have killed millions of people, they just -- they kill, they continue to kill people, and we can't have them around.

DOUG MCVAY: Oh, indeed, oh indeed. It's a -- and now, it seems that has actually, the local paper is running an article about the city of Eugene and how, oh my goodness, guess what, it's actually a haven for people of that ilk. There are a lot of --

NGAIO BEALUM: Way more than we think. Listen, we can all dig into the history of Oregon, which barred black people per the constitution of the state [note: the racial exclusion clause of the Oregon state constitution was rendered moot by the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, yet the exclusion clause was not removed from the state constitution until 1926].

DOUG MCVAY: The endemic -- when I say that racism is systemic, it's endemic, and little things like just legal -- I mean, so, I've been, you know I'm a data nerd.

NGAIO BEALUM: That's just one of those things, like, and I think that's also a challenge, too, that we have to look at, too, because everybody, and a lot of people here, especially in America and on the west coast, we're all very concerned about not -- people are very concerned about not being seen as racist, and I'm not really tripping off of people being racist so much as dealing with racism. You understand?

Like you talked about, it's systemic, it's endemic. Right? People have been banned from things by law, the law itself is often very racist, and that's really where the challenges come in and the things that people have to look at, but they don't want to look at it because it's mind blowing, if you realize that the whole system is messed up.

DOUG MCVAY: Yeah, you know I'm a data nerd, of course. So I'm looking at the, the data, it's -- we're recording this on Friday, January -- Friday December 29th.

NGAIO BEALUM: You've been broke.

DOUG MCVAY: I'm a month ahead of myself. Friday, January -- Friday December 29th, I'll get that right eventually. We're recording this on Friday, December 29th. I just -- I just heard back from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. There are about a dozen or more reports that they were supposed to release this year. I asked them about some of the major ones, like Prisoners in 2016, Public Police Contact. These are some really important surveys.

Oh, guess what. They don't have them done, they have no idea when they're going to be released. These are the ones that are supposed to be released every year.

NGAIO BEALUM: Sure.

DOUG MCVAY: More and more, the FBI, their report came out, the UCR, so much less information than they used to put out. It's, I mean, they're removing data. Their criminal victimization reports that they come out with, tells you about how many victims out there. Back about a decade ago, they reported on what the offenders looked like, who, you know, the -- so, you know, violent offenses. They stopped doing that almost a decade ago.

They finally issued a report recently. The -- so, we know how many offenses are committed, and we know how many of these, according to the data, about 53 percent of the violent victimizations that are committed each year are committed by white people.

NGAIO BEALUM: You don't say?

DOUG MCVAY: Yeah, that's the numbers, 53.27 percent are committed by white people. But the number of people in state prisons for violent offenses, well they're 30 percent of the total who are in there for violent offenses, 37 percent are black.

If you go to arrests --

NGAIO BEALUM: Well, you don't want to ruin some white kid's life because he raped a girl.

DOUG MCVAY: Well, there you go.

NGAIO BEALUM: He's still got potential.

DOUG MCVAY: Exactly. And it's not -- and it goes back down to the arrests, too. Just a little over a third of the arrests for violent offenses are of white people, even though they're committing more than half of the offenses. When I tell people it's systemic, that it's, I mean, if you just look at the numbers, they go, well maybe they're committing more crimes. No, that's not what's happening. They're just being arrested more, they're being blamed more --

NGAIO BEALUM: They're just getting away with more.

DOUG MCVAY: -- and being punished more. Yeah, and people who look like me, people who are white, are arrested less often, we're treated more -- we're treated more kindly when we're in the system. It's --

NGAIO BEALUM: Yeah.

DOUG MCVAY: It's absurd, it's wrong. It's just wrong.

NGAIO BEALUM: Yeah. Yeah. I feel you. Vote everybody. Smoke weed and vote.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Ngaio Bealum. If you get a chance to see him live, you should. You can follow him on twitter, he's @Ngaio420, that's @NGAIO420.

You are listening to Century of Lies, we're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. I'm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

According to the Pentagon, the United States has 14,000 uniformed military personnel in Afghanistan currently. That's uniformed military personnel, doesn't include civilian employees, that doesn't include State Department, that doesn't include CIA, that certainly doesn't include any of the civilian contractors.

With that in mind, here's Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, addressing the Security Council regarding heroin production in Afghanistan.

YURI FEDOTOV: Members of the Council, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity to brief the Security Council. Like my friend and colleague Mister Yamamoto, I addressed this Council on Afghanistan a year ago. At that time I reported that UNODC's 2016 Afghan opium survey showed a worrying reversal in efforts to counter illicit drugs, and highlighted the need to address this destructive threat.

Today, one year later, the situation has become much worse, with our 2017 Afghan opium survey showing unprecedented highs in opium poppy cultivation and production. Estimated production is up by almost 90 percent to nine thousand metric tons. The area under opium poppy cultivation has risen to 328,000 hectares. Those are absolute records in the entire history of Afghanistan.

Let us make no mistake: we face a genuine crisis, and our response must be urgent, swift and decisive. The expected surge of high quality, low-cost heroin poses a number of negative consequences for Afghanistan, its neighbors, and many other transit or destination countries. Increased opiate consumption and related harms may be expected in many parts of the world.

Afghanistan and the international community have struggled for many years to address the formidable challenges posed by drugs and related threats of organized crime, terrorism, and corruption. Recent analysis confirm inter-regional links between organized crime and terrorist groups exploiting drug trafficking.

At the 2016 Brussels Conference, partners of Afghanistan endorsed the ambitious reform agenda presented by the Afghan government, and pledged continued political and financial funding to support this country on its path towards stability and development. Nevertheless, we must recognize that in recent years, attention has progressively shifted away from the threats posed by drugs.

We must reverse this trend, or risk the further expansion and destabilizing influence of non-state actors, organized criminal groups, and violent terrorists. What needs to be done, as priority steps?

First, foremost, comprehensive counternarcotic programs which mainstream drugs in national development agenda are essential. This includes promoting alternative development to create new jobs as well as access to education, financial services, and markets for farmers and their families.

Second, for effective operational responses to reduce supply, we must focus on all aspects of counternarcotic capacity building in Afghanistan, including support for intelligence-led investigations, controlled delivery, eradication programs, dismantling of opium processing labs, integrated border management, financial intelligence units; and law enforcement as well as prosecutorial capacities to disrupt criminal networks.

Third, we need to further strengthen regional and international cooperation to stop precursor chemicals from being diverted and trafficked into Afghanistan to manufacture heroin.

Fourth, we must continue to build the interdiction capacities of key countries along trafficking routes, with an eye to enhancing long-term effectiveness rather than focusing on immediate seizures.

Fifth, we need to intercept illicit financial flows, supporting effective prosecution as well as asset confiscation and asset recovery.

And finally, prevention and treatment responses must be urgently scaled up, most of all in Afghanistan, which continues to struggle with the severe health consequences of opiate misuse.

Mister President, UNODC is working with Afghanistan, neighboring countries, and wider region to promote the integrated responses needed in line with the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] and the recommendations of the UN General Assembly Special Session on the world drug problems.

We are currently seeking to step up regional and inter-regional action to counter the opium cultivation and production increases, and to respond to related threats of crime, terrorism, and corruption. This includes comprehensive and inclusive support to implement the Afghan National Drug Action Plan, with Afghanistan on the lead.

But we cannot succeed without engagement and renewed commitment, including financial commitments of Member States. The international community cannot afford to do less. I thank you for your attention to this urgent problem. UNODC stands ready as always to support you. I thank you.

DOUG MCVAY: That was Yuri Fedotov, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, addressing the Security Council on heroin production in Afghanistan.

About those numbers I alluded to in my conversation with Ngaio, without going into a rant about research priorities, here's how it works: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the violent victimizations between 2012 and 2015, approximately 53.27 percent of all of those victimizations where they could identify the race and ethnicity of the offender, 53.27 [percent] were a white offender. A large majority of those offenses were against white victims.

There are more victimizations, violent victimizations with white offenders than there with black or Latino offenders, and yet, the number of prisoners in state prison for violent offenses, 30 percent are white, 37 percent are black. The numbers just don't add up. And when you talk about arrests, more blacks and Latinos are arrested for violent offenses than whites, even though whites seem to be committing more of the crimes.

So, they're arrested more often, blacks and Latinos are sentenced to prison more often, and yet whites are committing more crimes. If people wonder why we say that the system is racist, the numbers speak for themselves.

And finally, loyal listeners know we have been talking about the urgent need for harm reduction, including safe consumption spaces, here in the United States. Harm reduction has made a lot of progress in the last few years. There's been a lot of concern about what this new administration will do.

We've already heard about the CDC being warned against using phrases like evidence-based. Now, back before the Obama administration, all the way through the '90s and the Clinton years and then in Bush, the phrase "harm reduction" was considered taboo by researchers, putting that into a grant proposal meant that you would not be funded. And so people avoided that. Well, under Obama, we saw that change.

And so the safe injection sites and safe consumption spaces argument that's been going on quite a lot, we haven't really heard much from the feds until recently. On December 13th, the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Vermont issued a statement warning people who'd been discussing safe injection facilities there in Chittenden County, quote: "exposure to criminal charges would arise for users and SIF workers and overseers. The properties that host SIFs would also be subject to federal forfeiture." End quote.

We've all been wondering what direction this administration was going to go when it comes to harm reduction. Unfortunately, we may now have an indication from the US Attorney's Office in Vermont.

And, that's it for this week. Thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies. We're a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network, on the web at DrugTruth.net. IÔÇÖm your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs are available via podcast, the URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

The Drug Truth Network is on Facebook, please give its page a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook too, give its page a like and share it with friends. Remember: Knowledge is power. Follow me on Twitter, I'm @DougMcVay and of course also @DrugPolicyFacts.

We'll be back next week with thirty more minutes of news and information about the drug war and this century of lies. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay saying so long. So long!

For the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVay asking you to examine our policy of drug prohibition: the century of lies. Drug Truth Network programs archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.