Organizations

10/17/22 Sanho Tree

Program
Cultural Baggage Radio Show
Date
Guest
Sanho Tree
Organization
Institute for Policy Studies

Sanho Tree is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and has been Director of its Drug Policy Project since 1998. A former military and diplomatic historian, his current work encompasses the reform of both international and domestic drug policies by promoting alternatives to the failed prohibitionist model. In recent years the project has focused on ending the damage caused by the drug wars in Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. Establishing humane and sustainable alternatives to the drug war fits into the IPS mandate as one of the major contemporary social justice issues at home and abroad.

Audio file

05/13/20 Doug Fine

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Doug Fine
Organization
Institute for Policy Studies

This week on Century, it's part two of our conversation with Doug Fine, the farmer, hemp activist, journalist, and author whose new book American Hemp Farmer has just been released by Chelsea Green Publishing; plus we hear from Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, on human rights and the drug war.

Audio file

COL 
051320
TRANSCRIPT
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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. 

HOST DOUG MCVAY: Hello and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay editor of drugwarfacts.org on today's edition of Century part 2 of my conversation with Doug Fine, the jounalist, hemp farmer activist and author of his new book American hemp farmer is out. It's great and we'll hear about that in a moment. But first Students for Sensible Drug Policy is a US based nonprofit organization with an international Focus. It's a terrific organization. I have the honor of being on its Advisory Board. I was an actual board member for a brief time; SSDP held its annual conference recently. It was originally to be held in Baltimore, but due to covid-19 in the resulting Shut down it was moved online fortunate for me because I was able to attend there were a lot of great speakers were going to hear from one of them. Now. Sanho Tree is the director of the drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He's a longtime drug policy reformer, a military and National Security historian and a great friend. He spoke at SSDP conference on the topic of Human Rights and the drug war.

SANHO TREE: Drug policy have been doing this for 22 years now, is one of the most interdisciplinary problems of ever study and that's what makes it hard to solve and it makes it hard to talk about the totality of this problem. But if we only stick to our own silos we end up talking to ourselves. So I want to find ways or lenses for for wasting talk to your colleagues and friends about these connections. So I do a lot of work on the axis of authoritarians and the War on Drugs. So there are these it's not a formal alliance by any means but there are these right-wing Global governments that have waged vicious drug wars and how they're reacting to covid. I think it teaches us a lot. So the most obvious example, I think would be the Philippines where the drug war is the most deadly and brutal at right now president duterte since he took power and 2016 has killed by many estimates up to 30,000 people.

No one really knows the final of the ultimate death toll so far that's been on pause for a little bit because of the Lockdown but he's using many of the same tactics to keep people who are often very very poor don't have more than you know days worth of food stocked stockpiled in their shacks and letting them from going out and getting food. In fact, he's issued shoot to kill orders for people who resist the curfew and cause trouble and one person has already been killed as a result to that but he's been able to get away with not only the drug war but also these brutal lockdown tactics by playing the strongman tactics that that made him very politically popular and he still is very popular within the Philippines. But he gives simple answers to very complex Solutions. This is a common thing you'll see whether it's was talking about Donald Trump or president Erdogan and turkey or president or Bond and hungry or president both scenario in Brazil. These are really far right wing governments that take a cornucopia of social ills projected onto minority groups and say aha. That's why we have all these problems in our society just unleash holy hell on these people get rid of them kill them if you want and that's how we get to a better world. So president Duterte I think is the most obvious example of that but what he's been doing reminds me very much of what what what the czarist Russian secret police did in the 19th century.

They wage a pogrom right, a pogrom is where you take a cornucopia of social ills under czarist Russia, projected onto a minority group in this case. It was Jews in the 19th century. And you say aha. They're the reason we have all these problems just unleash holy hell on this group. And that's what they did and president duterte flipped that formula and adapted with the drug war. Now. The drug war is awful and it's bad But what's really important about this is that once you condition your police forces, once you're once you take your security forces and get them to be able to identify the track and then to murder extrajucitially people that you don't like once you train them to do that. Then you've got a really powerful and dangerous tool, right? It's getting their cops to kill. The first person is the hard part. The next hundred murders are really easy after that. And so it's very important for us then to look at the drug war and how it's going to be used because they can take that apparatus and then turn it on a dime to go after other targets curfew violators under under, you know, Corona virus. Or they can go after Labor organizers next year feminists, indigenous organizers, sexual minorities.

It's very easy to use a kind of scapegoating tactic and that apparatus to go after people and so I think it's an exterminationist policy, eliminationist policy and one that is morbidly being used talked about by various political actors. There's some very cynical stuff going on. So the current  President in Brazil came to power last year. They called the Trump of the tropics far far far right president. He was a he was a military officer in the Junta in the 80s. In the dictatorship and these pot openly about returning to a dictatorship he is a huge coronavirus denier he says it's just a little flu and he absolutely refuses to go along with these lockdown policies and his help him that he's on the brink of firing as health minister right now and this court ends very badly for the rest of the world because if we are able to manage to to suppress this problem in the northern hemisphere as we go into summer.

You know he'll be there winter down there and Brazil is a huge reservoir of this virus and it could come rocketing back to us in the next season so these things have Global implications and so we need to pay attention to this axis authoritarians not just how they avoid the drug war but how they use social control and President also when he ran for office at my spoke openly and admiringly at president Duterte in the Philippines say I'm going to do even more than he did in terms the drug war so this is kind of a tality we're dealing with right now in Columbia another country that you know done a lot of work in Colombia over the years and they're thinking of returning to this disastrous policy of aerial fumigation of spraying to try to destroy these crops, but beyond that there's also the problem of human rights Defenders and people who work for social justice under the drug war are being targeted have been targeted are especially being targeted in recent years, especially after the recent peace deal. Because there's a graph for land for power for resources in Columbia. And a lot of these people are now being threatened and assassinated. Some of them have worked on drug policy issues in the past. They also work on indigenous rights issues and peasants rights issues. And what's happening with the lockdown is that once these people are in quarantine, they can't go out and so now the death squads know where to find them and hunt them down. I think that's an incredibly sobering thing to keep in mind quite apart from from the drug war. 

SANHO TREE: In Guatemala, We just found out the two days ago that the US has been deporting people taney's for immigration violations who are positive who are actively you know ill and sending them back to Guatemala, which I think is an absolutely sick and disgusting and in saying thing to do we're sending vectors back to to these regions to spread this disease and I think quite frankly it fits very nicely with Steven Miller's agenda which is always been to conflate immigration with crime disease rape all these the social ills that you know, go back to the Third Reich in terms of that kind of dehumanization and scapegoating and now he's able to then take these people send them back create more disease and that forces that that gives them a feedback loop and say Ah, that's another reason we have to keep you know, these enforcement policies in place is because they carry the disease.

Well, we're actively contributing to that in a horrific way in other places. There are more guests in a perverse way optimistic things going on in in places like El Salvador, Brazil, Cape Town. There are gangs that have been fighting and feuding for many many many years killing each other and they're now actually declaring truces amongst themselves and trying to provide basic social services and enforce the lockdown. Where their own governments won't do it. So they're the ones kind of keeping order and making sure people get fed. This is a double-edged sword because these are criminal groups, but on the other hand, it's a great way of illustrating the struggle for legitimacy. The state should not have to fight this hard to establish legitimacy within their own borders. It really highlights what they haven't been doing and people who've been involved in the drug war have known that for a long time.

These are marginalized populations that never did really taken care of and it's no mystery why these gangs were able to get traction today? Because they're actually fulfilling a role in state won't or hasn't been able to and then finally just want to show you a couple of images to think about these are some photos from let me see from the Philippines. This is when I talk about disease, this is a major prison in the Philippines, right? This is taking back in 2016 it in it's been over crowded but especially so after president Duterte declared his drug war and so those who were able to turn themselves in got locked up and we've been our I've been saying for years. We need to pay attention to disease. It's not just now under coronavirus but in situations like this where you have these right-wing governments to lock people up in horrendous conditions.
 
This is a breeding ground for disease and tuberculosis is bad enough, but now we have strains of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which scare me as much as this Coronavirus. Because we literally have no cure for them. And once that comes out it could play the rest of the world. We need to take these kinds of situations very very seriously and then finally in closing what we're living through today keep in mind. This is not unlike what indigenous peoples confronted 500 years ago in this hemisphere that a disease with people have no natural immunity is taken over and caused unprecedented damage, some estimates up to 90% of the indigenous peoples in this hemisphere were wiped out before they even laid eyes were able to lay eyes on a white person the disease travels much faster than the colonizers. So as we think about things like Columbia and how do you deal with drug cultivation and and helping the human rights of drug producers? We need to also keep in mind the rights of indigenous peoples and how we're affecting their lands and their lives and their life with aid. So thank you very much. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was Sanho Tree director Drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He was speaking at the students for sensible drug policy annual conference, which was held online at the beginning of May. You're listening to Century of lies. I'm your host Doug McVay Doug Fine is a solar-powered goat herder a comedic investigative journalist and a Pioneer voice in hemp and regenerative farming. He's cultivated hemp in four US states is we genetics or in five more. He's an award-winning culture and climate correspondent for NPR the New York Times And The Washington Post among others his books include first legal Harvest, not really an Alaskan mountain men, Farewell My Subaru, too high to fail and hemp bound. Well Doug has a new book. It's just been released. It's called American hemp farmer available at bookstores everywhere, you know once book stores are open again. It's published by Chelsea Green publishing. You heard the first part of our interview on last week's show so here's part two.

DOUG MCVAY: I'm very particularly interested to know moving forward. And now how are things looking for Hemp Farmers. 

DOUG FINE: This is still the really early postnatal period for the industry. We are truly embryonic as big as the industry is becoming we're embryonic and so everything now has these really wide jolting changes in One Direction or another that are you could have you could predict them by the behavior of markets in general by the way people behave in Gold rushes and all that and all that business and that's why I so harp on the the fact that a lot of it's going to come down to customers choosing their regions Farmers on those products rather than something that they see on TV that's actually a publicly traded Corporation or whatever, you know, I love our system and I love a free market and I love Everyone having options. I just urge people to make the free choice to support a community based regionally-based B Corporation or cooperative farmer owned entity that's going to win-win and get you the better product. So at this moment there's a lot of panic amongst farmers who left in and really went all in with just CBD because the wholesale Market predictably, you know has shown Corrections.

DOUG FINE: It's like always as folks give me remember from Black Market cannabis. It creeps up the further one gets away from Harvest Time and that's true in any commodity but the prices that people may have been sort of already, you know, pricing out their new tractor or their new truck. Those aren't the kind of prices that you're seeing if you're just growing for CBD and that's why I think it's so important to brand for value-added products one side of the plan architecture. We haven't discussed it. We talked a little bit about flour and a little bit about seed one side that we haven't talked about yet is fiber.

The fiber of the plant as I'm sure most listeners will know is outstanding performance. I wear hemp clothing all the time. I'm wearing hemp Yoga Pants by Pacific Northwest company right now. My sweetheart likes to there's a TMI alert. She likes to make my underwear out of Organic hemp provided by the women-owned Enviro textiles of Colorado. So it's all about performance for me. It's not I’m in the hemp World therefore I should just the part. It's this is what I like to wear works. Well, it feels good. So at it and it lasts a long time so fiber requires large acreage and it's going to be no trick no easy trick. I should say to get fiber established back in the US it's going to involve the herding cats, which is you know, what it what it's like to get Farmers cooperate because if I crunched the numbers in the new book and even for the smallest of the professional TurnKey fiber processing facilities that run about five to eight million dollars, you need to have minimum of around 3100 acres and that's a small-scale operation feeding that processing facility and in a place like a North Dakota and Nebraska.

That's no problem. Um, I mean that's like Joe to round the corners got more than 3100 acres but in most places it's going to evolve Farmers cooperating just on the fiber regardless of what they're doing with the other side of the plant and my favorite next-generation hemp. I'm going to say it application that I haven't you know, this one will solve a lot of problems. This one feels a lot of gaps in this sort of righteous low-carbon my life.

DOUG FINE: I and many others have been trying to live live and that Is hemp-based supercapacitors in next-generation batteries. So the premise on this as a Layman is for of the types of next-generation batteries that are going to not just charge our phones quickly or devices quickly, but charge our entire solar-powered homes super quickly our vehicles super quickly our equipment quickly. We want to move away from these Rare Earth minerals many people are aware of the damage those cause Right. So guess what? I don't know. I'm a spiritual man. So I won't say it turned me religious probably more spiritual but I learned that hemp has somehow known to evolve in this sort of waffle like pattern at the at the Nano level at the 1 carbon level in such a way that it outperforms any other known nanomaterial many of them are not very environmentally friendly it outperforms any other known nanomaterial slightly in performance and at 1000 of the cost not to mention one one trillionth of the environmental cost being a regenerative so visualize the hemp fiber on your Tesla or some other electric vehicle with the embedded solar, you know collectors in the actual vehicle charging a battery that is not only made from hemp but it's compostable and recyclable and I think we're going to see that in 10 years or less. That's my prediction. Straight here for you today Doug

DOUG MCVAY: I mean the drug. The drug side is obviously whether it's CBD or the or just smokable we did is the the one that gets people's attention. But yeah change that last question around a little bit. So do you think that with with some of these fiber products with things like these hemp batteries with things, you know hempcrete and other kinds of things mean infrastructures are real thing. Do you think that hemp, do you think Hemp is going to be some kind of what do you think happens going to do for the farmers could hemp could hemp save some of the the what the farm economy that we that there still is one God knows.

DOUG FINE: there is yeah. So yes, I would say the answer to that question is I do believe that hemp and other crops in the digital age have the potential to revive rural economies. It's going to be up to Farmers to make brave decisions to grow regeneratively. To realize that the practice of farming is not seasonal anymore. It's your round. The farmer has to be a farmer and an entrepreneur. That's jolting and hard. I've experienced this in the real world and talk about it in the book that the best farmers are often the hardest to convince that there's more to it these days than just selling stuff to wholesalers. So and then a lot of it is going to be up to customers folks listening to this broadcast to say I am going to read every label and everything.

I buy it. I'm going to try and do Everything that I can to support local broccoli, hemp and everything farmers, and when it comes to the wider thing The Wider question does have the potential to actually help mitigate climate change and save Humanity. I would say not just him but hemp and other crops have the strong potential to help mitigate climate change in a significant Way by turning our entire Industrial Pipeline from a petrochemical based one to a Biomaterials based one so hemp is kind of leading the way for whatever reason the intelligence of the hemp plant is it's the spearhead of a Renaissance in biomaterials. And this is not like oh because it feels good or even oh we better do this to save the Earth.

It's a performance issue Sherwin-Williams paint never moved away from hemp seed oil as a stabilizer in their paint because they couldn't find anything better. There's some really funny correspondence between their marketing director and the head of of cannabis prohibition. Harry Anslinger about dude. We need the hemp seed oil for our product. What are you doing making us important? And we all know that that came to a head with hemp for victory during World War II George Bush senior's life saved by his hemp cord, but on his parachute, but will it happen? I'm an optimist Doug. There's a lot of things that have to go right but it has to happen because I want Humanity to Survive and Thrive and if that happens, we have to mitigate climate change and cultivating hemp regeneratively and support the farmer entrepreneurs to do that. He is one of the best things we can do to help bring about that reality. 

DOUG MCVAY: You've published this you can do the book tour and all that. But what's next for you

DOUG FINE: besides prepping my own fields and growing hemp to do my own part to mitigate a few and you know, tons of climate cup carbon. I am putting together a TV show of the same name American hemp farmer where I'm profiling farmers of like mind who are trying to do the same thing that I am which is support their families communities and the planet by making a good I mean a good living regionally-based. The only thing the only thing that's different about the new entrepreneurialism is that it stays Regional base to end game is not selling out and having shares and like living in that kind of way. It's the long-term community based potential for the plant and and the industry. Yeah. So the TV shows that I love joking around and having a good time. So it's an opportunity as the host to kind of, you know show my ineptitude on a tractor while making the key point that you know, these particular farmers are growing Clover right around there hemp plant which not only builds nitrogen and is a great polyculture technique but keeps the grasshoppers that are bothering their neighbors out of their own field. So it's a one part humor one part earth-saving and one part practical profile of farmers

DOUG MCVAY: apps and influencers and now a reality show. Truly the 21st century is a return to the roots and and regenerative practices of our grandparents.

DOUG MCVAY: The the listeners don't realize how far we go back here. I mean I have I have memory the last time I saw you was at another United Nations event in New York. I think that was the last time I physically saw you that was really interesting. The Bolivian indigenous folks came there and get a ceremony right there in the street across from the UN while you and I are hanging out and so listeners should know. Doug has full green light to tease Doug as Doug does to tease Doug.  So please tease

DOUG MCVAY: I I just I just thought it was fascinating. It's a reality show. It's a reality show about him farming. I mean, I would watch that. I don't know I would watch that. I would I want to 

DOUG FINE: thank you 

DOUG MCVAY: the I'd watch that. I will watch that. Wow. Okay. So American hemp farmer look for it on look for it on Channels Near you I'm I'm wow. So, uh, so where can people find it work me find your book you're doing the you have a website for it. They want your social media other people follow you

DOUG FINE: thank you for asking that. Yes at Dougfine.com. There is information on all the books and some media appearances tedtalk the United Nations testimony, you mentioned and places to get all the books as well as live events in the Portland area. I've got Powell's, the Great, the mighty policy of books on June 23rd at 7 p.m. Hope to see everybody there. And on social media is organic Cowboy one word the two C the middle at organic Cowboy

DOUG MCVAY: terrific. Terrific. I'm going to try and make it to that reading. I hope to see you when you are here. Now. Do you have any closing thoughts for any closing thoughts for our listeners?

DOUG FINE: I would say to all the folks out there who enjoy the cannabis plant in any one of its forms to realize that that very enjoyment can be manifest as playing a positive role for the future of humanity. The return of the cannabis plant is not only the biggest Economic Development the biggest economic Market sector development since Silicon Valley came on strong in the late 70s just in sheer impact and dollar value but it also for those of us who know about cannabis and and how it works in our bodies and our brains. It is precipitating a shift a sort of dark It's always darkest before the dawn kind of feeling and many of us have the situation with grannies that have rediscovered cannabis for their arthritis.

And and it's it's a it's a giggly positive development as opposed to and again their folks, Enjoy a drink. Every now and then that's fine. But you know as opposed to sort of the barroom fight pituitary lizard brain stuff that happens in some of the drugs that have been popular while we have been forced to shut down our endocannabinoid system. So in closing for folks to enjoy the cannabis plant if you actually think about it as part of your home maintenance program, but also as part of your pro Humanity activism in terms of supporting outdoor cultivated, Grown cannabis and hemp and thinking of it as one plant realizing We're All in This Together. I do think that Humanity I get a twinge when I say that because it sounds a little pollyannaish but I do think Humanity has a chance 

DOUG MCVAY: and on that note. My guest today has been Doug fine. His new book is American hemp farmer. It is a great read. I recommend it highly look for it in your favorite bookstore go to an independent bookstore. That's locally owned. That's the right way to do it Doug the best of luck to you and thank you man 

DOUG FINE: Doug. It's so great to connect with you again. And I hope to see you in June. If not sooner. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was my conversation with the hemp activist farmer journalist and author Doug Fine his new book American hemp farmer published by Chelsea Green publishing is out now and again a quick reminder. The bookstore event that we discussed in that interview is actually not going to be happening, certainly not on that date the state of Oregon and many other places remain. They shut down because of the covid pandemic be sure to check local listings and look at the website DougFine.com public service time. If you are one of the lucky ones who are able to work from home and earn a paycheck if you're able to cover your housing and other bills and you still have something left over then please consider helping out those less fortunate community service agencies are always hurting and now more than ever.

They need your help syringe service programs, Food banks shelters; we’re spoiled for Choice really which is quite sad and also part of the point. The need is great and it's getting greater those of us who can really need to step up. Thank you. That's it. 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 will be back in a week with 30 more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform in the failed War on Drugs for now for the DrugTruth 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.

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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. 

HOST DOUG MCVAY: Hello and welcome to Century of Lies. I'm your host Doug McVay editor of drugwarfacts.org on today's edition of Century part 2 of my conversation with Doug Fine, the jounalist, hemp farmer activist and author of his new book American hemp farmer is out. It's great and we'll hear about that in a moment. But first Students for Sensible Drug Policy is a US based nonprofit organization with an international Focus. It's a terrific organization. I have the honor of being on its Advisory Board. I was an actual board member for a brief time; SSDP held its annual conference recently. It was originally to be held in Baltimore, but due to covid-19 in the resulting Shut down it was moved online fortunate for me because I was able to attend there were a lot of great speakers were going to hear from one of them. Now. Sanho Tree is the director of the drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He's a longtime drug policy reformer, a military and National Security historian and a great friend. He spoke at SSDP conference on the topic of Human Rights and the drug war.

SANHO TREE: Drug policy have been doing this for 22 years now, is one of the most interdisciplinary problems of ever study and that's what makes it hard to solve and it makes it hard to talk about the totality of this problem. But if we only stick to our own silos we end up talking to ourselves. So I want to find ways or lenses for for wasting talk to your colleagues and friends about these connections. So I do a lot of work on the axis of authoritarians and the War on Drugs. So there are these it's not a formal alliance by any means but there are these right-wing Global governments that have waged vicious drug wars and how they're reacting to covid. I think it teaches us a lot. So the most obvious example, I think would be the Philippines where the drug war is the most deadly and brutal at right now president duterte since he took power and 2016 has killed by many estimates up to 30,000 people.

No one really knows the final of the ultimate death toll so far that's been on pause for a little bit because of the Lockdown but he's using many of the same tactics to keep people who are often very very poor don't have more than you know days worth of food stocked stockpiled in their shacks and letting them from going out and getting food. In fact, he's issued shoot to kill orders for people who resist the curfew and cause trouble and one person has already been killed as a result to that but he's been able to get away with not only the drug war but also these brutal lockdown tactics by playing the strongman tactics that that made him very politically popular and he still is very popular within the Philippines. But he gives simple answers to very complex Solutions. This is a common thing you'll see whether it's was talking about Donald Trump or president Erdogan and turkey or president or Bond and hungry or president both scenario in Brazil. These are really far right wing governments that take a cornucopia of social ills projected onto minority groups and say aha. That's why we have all these problems in our society just unleash holy hell on these people get rid of them kill them if you want and that's how we get to a better world. So president Duterte I think is the most obvious example of that but what he's been doing reminds me very much of what what what the czarist Russian secret police did in the 19th century.

They wage a pogrom right, a pogrom is where you take a cornucopia of social ills under czarist Russia, projected onto a minority group in this case. It was Jews in the 19th century. And you say aha. They're the reason we have all these problems just unleash holy hell on this group. And that's what they did and president duterte flipped that formula and adapted with the drug war. Now. The drug war is awful and it's bad But what's really important about this is that once you condition your police forces, once you're once you take your security forces and get them to be able to identify the track and then to murder extrajucitially people that you don't like once you train them to do that. Then you've got a really powerful and dangerous tool, right? It's getting their cops to kill. The first person is the hard part. The next hundred murders are really easy after that. And so it's very important for us then to look at the drug war and how it's going to be used because they can take that apparatus and then turn it on a dime to go after other targets curfew violators under under, you know, Corona virus. Or they can go after Labor organizers next year feminists, indigenous organizers, sexual minorities.

It's very easy to use a kind of scapegoating tactic and that apparatus to go after people and so I think it's an exterminationist policy, eliminationist policy and one that is morbidly being used talked about by various political actors. There's some very cynical stuff going on. So the current  President in Brazil came to power last year. They called the Trump of the tropics far far far right president. He was a he was a military officer in the Junta in the 80s. In the dictatorship and these pot openly about returning to a dictatorship he is a huge coronavirus denier he says it's just a little flu and he absolutely refuses to go along with these lockdown policies and his help him that he's on the brink of firing as health minister right now and this court ends very badly for the rest of the world because if we are able to manage to to suppress this problem in the northern hemisphere as we go into summer.

You know he'll be there winter down there and Brazil is a huge reservoir of this virus and it could come rocketing back to us in the next season so these things have Global implications and so we need to pay attention to this axis authoritarians not just how they avoid the drug war but how they use social control and President also when he ran for office at my spoke openly and admiringly at president Duterte in the Philippines say I'm going to do even more than he did in terms the drug war so this is kind of a tality we're dealing with right now in Columbia another country that you know done a lot of work in Colombia over the years and they're thinking of returning to this disastrous policy of aerial fumigation of spraying to try to destroy these crops, but beyond that there's also the problem of human rights Defenders and people who work for social justice under the drug war are being targeted have been targeted are especially being targeted in recent years, especially after the recent peace deal. Because there's a graph for land for power for resources in Columbia. And a lot of these people are now being threatened and assassinated. Some of them have worked on drug policy issues in the past. They also work on indigenous rights issues and peasants rights issues. And what's happening with the lockdown is that once these people are in quarantine, they can't go out and so now the death squads know where to find them and hunt them down. I think that's an incredibly sobering thing to keep in mind quite apart from from the drug war. 

SANHO TREE: In Guatemala, We just found out the two days ago that the US has been deporting people taney's for immigration violations who are positive who are actively you know ill and sending them back to Guatemala, which I think is an absolutely sick and disgusting and in saying thing to do we're sending vectors back to to these regions to spread this disease and I think quite frankly it fits very nicely with Steven Miller's agenda which is always been to conflate immigration with crime disease rape all these the social ills that you know, go back to the Third Reich in terms of that kind of dehumanization and scapegoating and now he's able to then take these people send them back create more disease and that forces that that gives them a feedback loop and say Ah, that's another reason we have to keep you know, these enforcement policies in place is because they carry the disease.

Well, we're actively contributing to that in a horrific way in other places. There are more guests in a perverse way optimistic things going on in in places like El Salvador, Brazil, Cape Town. There are gangs that have been fighting and feuding for many many many years killing each other and they're now actually declaring truces amongst themselves and trying to provide basic social services and enforce the lockdown. Where their own governments won't do it. So they're the ones kind of keeping order and making sure people get fed. This is a double-edged sword because these are criminal groups, but on the other hand, it's a great way of illustrating the struggle for legitimacy. The state should not have to fight this hard to establish legitimacy within their own borders. It really highlights what they haven't been doing and people who've been involved in the drug war have known that for a long time.

These are marginalized populations that never did really taken care of and it's no mystery why these gangs were able to get traction today? Because they're actually fulfilling a role in state won't or hasn't been able to and then finally just want to show you a couple of images to think about these are some photos from let me see from the Philippines. This is when I talk about disease, this is a major prison in the Philippines, right? This is taking back in 2016 it in it's been over crowded but especially so after president Duterte declared his drug war and so those who were able to turn themselves in got locked up and we've been our I've been saying for years. We need to pay attention to disease. It's not just now under coronavirus but in situations like this where you have these right-wing governments to lock people up in horrendous conditions.
 
This is a breeding ground for disease and tuberculosis is bad enough, but now we have strains of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, which scare me as much as this Coronavirus. Because we literally have no cure for them. And once that comes out it could play the rest of the world. We need to take these kinds of situations very very seriously and then finally in closing what we're living through today keep in mind. This is not unlike what indigenous peoples confronted 500 years ago in this hemisphere that a disease with people have no natural immunity is taken over and caused unprecedented damage, some estimates up to 90% of the indigenous peoples in this hemisphere were wiped out before they even laid eyes were able to lay eyes on a white person the disease travels much faster than the colonizers. So as we think about things like Columbia and how do you deal with drug cultivation and and helping the human rights of drug producers? We need to also keep in mind the rights of indigenous peoples and how we're affecting their lands and their lives and their life with aid. So thank you very much. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was Sanho Tree director Drug policy project at The Institute for policy studies. He was speaking at the students for sensible drug policy annual conference, which was held online at the beginning of May. You're listening to Century of lies. I'm your host Doug McVay Doug Fine is a solar-powered goat herder a comedic investigative journalist and a Pioneer voice in hemp and regenerative farming. He's cultivated hemp in four US states is we genetics or in five more. He's an award-winning culture and climate correspondent for NPR the New York Times And The Washington Post among others his books include first legal Harvest, not really an Alaskan mountain men, Farewell My Subaru, too high to fail and hemp bound. Well Doug has a new book. It's just been released. It's called American hemp farmer available at bookstores everywhere, you know once book stores are open again. It's published by Chelsea Green publishing. You heard the first part of our interview on last week's show so here's part two.

DOUG MCVAY: I'm very particularly interested to know moving forward. And now how are things looking for Hemp Farmers. 

DOUG FINE: This is still the really early postnatal period for the industry. We are truly embryonic as big as the industry is becoming we're embryonic and so everything now has these really wide jolting changes in One Direction or another that are you could have you could predict them by the behavior of markets in general by the way people behave in Gold rushes and all that and all that business and that's why I so harp on the the fact that a lot of it's going to come down to customers choosing their regions Farmers on those products rather than something that they see on TV that's actually a publicly traded Corporation or whatever, you know, I love our system and I love a free market and I love Everyone having options. I just urge people to make the free choice to support a community based regionally-based B Corporation or cooperative farmer owned entity that's going to win-win and get you the better product. So at this moment there's a lot of panic amongst farmers who left in and really went all in with just CBD because the wholesale Market predictably, you know has shown Corrections.

DOUG FINE: It's like always as folks give me remember from Black Market cannabis. It creeps up the further one gets away from Harvest Time and that's true in any commodity but the prices that people may have been sort of already, you know, pricing out their new tractor or their new truck. Those aren't the kind of prices that you're seeing if you're just growing for CBD and that's why I think it's so important to brand for value-added products one side of the plan architecture. We haven't discussed it. We talked a little bit about flour and a little bit about seed one side that we haven't talked about yet is fiber.

The fiber of the plant as I'm sure most listeners will know is outstanding performance. I wear hemp clothing all the time. I'm wearing hemp Yoga Pants by Pacific Northwest company right now. My sweetheart likes to there's a TMI alert. She likes to make my underwear out of Organic hemp provided by the women-owned Enviro textiles of Colorado. So it's all about performance for me. It's not I’m in the hemp World therefore I should just the part. It's this is what I like to wear works. Well, it feels good. So at it and it lasts a long time so fiber requires large acreage and it's going to be no trick no easy trick. I should say to get fiber established back in the US it's going to involve the herding cats, which is you know, what it what it's like to get Farmers cooperate because if I crunched the numbers in the new book and even for the smallest of the professional TurnKey fiber processing facilities that run about five to eight million dollars, you need to have minimum of around 3100 acres and that's a small-scale operation feeding that processing facility and in a place like a North Dakota and Nebraska.

That's no problem. Um, I mean that's like Joe to round the corners got more than 3100 acres but in most places it's going to evolve Farmers cooperating just on the fiber regardless of what they're doing with the other side of the plant and my favorite next-generation hemp. I'm going to say it application that I haven't you know, this one will solve a lot of problems. This one feels a lot of gaps in this sort of righteous low-carbon my life.

DOUG FINE: I and many others have been trying to live live and that Is hemp-based supercapacitors in next-generation batteries. So the premise on this as a Layman is for of the types of next-generation batteries that are going to not just charge our phones quickly or devices quickly, but charge our entire solar-powered homes super quickly our vehicles super quickly our equipment quickly. We want to move away from these Rare Earth minerals many people are aware of the damage those cause Right. So guess what? I don't know. I'm a spiritual man. So I won't say it turned me religious probably more spiritual but I learned that hemp has somehow known to evolve in this sort of waffle like pattern at the at the Nano level at the 1 carbon level in such a way that it outperforms any other known nanomaterial many of them are not very environmentally friendly it outperforms any other known nanomaterial slightly in performance and at 1000 of the cost not to mention one one trillionth of the environmental cost being a regenerative so visualize the hemp fiber on your Tesla or some other electric vehicle with the embedded solar, you know collectors in the actual vehicle charging a battery that is not only made from hemp but it's compostable and recyclable and I think we're going to see that in 10 years or less. That's my prediction. Straight here for you today Doug

DOUG MCVAY: I mean the drug. The drug side is obviously whether it's CBD or the or just smokable we did is the the one that gets people's attention. But yeah change that last question around a little bit. So do you think that with with some of these fiber products with things like these hemp batteries with things, you know hempcrete and other kinds of things mean infrastructures are real thing. Do you think that hemp, do you think Hemp is going to be some kind of what do you think happens going to do for the farmers could hemp could hemp save some of the the what the farm economy that we that there still is one God knows.

DOUG FINE: there is yeah. So yes, I would say the answer to that question is I do believe that hemp and other crops in the digital age have the potential to revive rural economies. It's going to be up to Farmers to make brave decisions to grow regeneratively. To realize that the practice of farming is not seasonal anymore. It's your round. The farmer has to be a farmer and an entrepreneur. That's jolting and hard. I've experienced this in the real world and talk about it in the book that the best farmers are often the hardest to convince that there's more to it these days than just selling stuff to wholesalers. So and then a lot of it is going to be up to customers folks listening to this broadcast to say I am going to read every label and everything.

I buy it. I'm going to try and do Everything that I can to support local broccoli, hemp and everything farmers, and when it comes to the wider thing The Wider question does have the potential to actually help mitigate climate change and save Humanity. I would say not just him but hemp and other crops have the strong potential to help mitigate climate change in a significant Way by turning our entire Industrial Pipeline from a petrochemical based one to a Biomaterials based one so hemp is kind of leading the way for whatever reason the intelligence of the hemp plant is it's the spearhead of a Renaissance in biomaterials. And this is not like oh because it feels good or even oh we better do this to save the Earth.

It's a performance issue Sherwin-Williams paint never moved away from hemp seed oil as a stabilizer in their paint because they couldn't find anything better. There's some really funny correspondence between their marketing director and the head of of cannabis prohibition. Harry Anslinger about dude. We need the hemp seed oil for our product. What are you doing making us important? And we all know that that came to a head with hemp for victory during World War II George Bush senior's life saved by his hemp cord, but on his parachute, but will it happen? I'm an optimist Doug. There's a lot of things that have to go right but it has to happen because I want Humanity to Survive and Thrive and if that happens, we have to mitigate climate change and cultivating hemp regeneratively and support the farmer entrepreneurs to do that. He is one of the best things we can do to help bring about that reality. 

DOUG MCVAY: You've published this you can do the book tour and all that. But what's next for you

DOUG FINE: besides prepping my own fields and growing hemp to do my own part to mitigate a few and you know, tons of climate cup carbon. I am putting together a TV show of the same name American hemp farmer where I'm profiling farmers of like mind who are trying to do the same thing that I am which is support their families communities and the planet by making a good I mean a good living regionally-based. The only thing the only thing that's different about the new entrepreneurialism is that it stays Regional base to end game is not selling out and having shares and like living in that kind of way. It's the long-term community based potential for the plant and and the industry. Yeah. So the TV shows that I love joking around and having a good time. So it's an opportunity as the host to kind of, you know show my ineptitude on a tractor while making the key point that you know, these particular farmers are growing Clover right around there hemp plant which not only builds nitrogen and is a great polyculture technique but keeps the grasshoppers that are bothering their neighbors out of their own field. So it's a one part humor one part earth-saving and one part practical profile of farmers

DOUG MCVAY: apps and influencers and now a reality show. Truly the 21st century is a return to the roots and and regenerative practices of our grandparents.

DOUG MCVAY: The the listeners don't realize how far we go back here. I mean I have I have memory the last time I saw you was at another United Nations event in New York. I think that was the last time I physically saw you that was really interesting. The Bolivian indigenous folks came there and get a ceremony right there in the street across from the UN while you and I are hanging out and so listeners should know. Doug has full green light to tease Doug as Doug does to tease Doug.  So please tease

DOUG MCVAY: I I just I just thought it was fascinating. It's a reality show. It's a reality show about him farming. I mean, I would watch that. I don't know I would watch that. I would I want to 

DOUG FINE: thank you 

DOUG MCVAY: the I'd watch that. I will watch that. Wow. Okay. So American hemp farmer look for it on look for it on Channels Near you I'm I'm wow. So, uh, so where can people find it work me find your book you're doing the you have a website for it. They want your social media other people follow you

DOUG FINE: thank you for asking that. Yes at Dougfine.com. There is information on all the books and some media appearances tedtalk the United Nations testimony, you mentioned and places to get all the books as well as live events in the Portland area. I've got Powell's, the Great, the mighty policy of books on June 23rd at 7 p.m. Hope to see everybody there. And on social media is organic Cowboy one word the two C the middle at organic Cowboy

DOUG MCVAY: terrific. Terrific. I'm going to try and make it to that reading. I hope to see you when you are here. Now. Do you have any closing thoughts for any closing thoughts for our listeners?

DOUG FINE: I would say to all the folks out there who enjoy the cannabis plant in any one of its forms to realize that that very enjoyment can be manifest as playing a positive role for the future of humanity. The return of the cannabis plant is not only the biggest Economic Development the biggest economic Market sector development since Silicon Valley came on strong in the late 70s just in sheer impact and dollar value but it also for those of us who know about cannabis and and how it works in our bodies and our brains. It is precipitating a shift a sort of dark It's always darkest before the dawn kind of feeling and many of us have the situation with grannies that have rediscovered cannabis for their arthritis.

And and it's it's a it's a giggly positive development as opposed to and again their folks, Enjoy a drink. Every now and then that's fine. But you know as opposed to sort of the barroom fight pituitary lizard brain stuff that happens in some of the drugs that have been popular while we have been forced to shut down our endocannabinoid system. So in closing for folks to enjoy the cannabis plant if you actually think about it as part of your home maintenance program, but also as part of your pro Humanity activism in terms of supporting outdoor cultivated, Grown cannabis and hemp and thinking of it as one plant realizing We're All in This Together. I do think that Humanity I get a twinge when I say that because it sounds a little pollyannaish but I do think Humanity has a chance 

DOUG MCVAY: and on that note. My guest today has been Doug fine. His new book is American hemp farmer. It is a great read. I recommend it highly look for it in your favorite bookstore go to an independent bookstore. That's locally owned. That's the right way to do it Doug the best of luck to you and thank you man 

DOUG FINE: Doug. It's so great to connect with you again. And I hope to see you in June. If not sooner. 

DOUG MCVAY: That was my conversation with the hemp activist farmer journalist and author Doug Fine his new book American hemp farmer published by Chelsea Green publishing is out now and again a quick reminder. The bookstore event that we discussed in that interview is actually not going to be happening, certainly not on that date the state of Oregon and many other places remain. They shut down because of the covid pandemic be sure to check local listings and look at the website DougFine.com public service time. If you are one of the lucky ones who are able to work from home and earn a paycheck if you're able to cover your housing and other bills and you still have something left over then please consider helping out those less fortunate community service agencies are always hurting and now more than ever.

They need your help syringe service programs, Food banks shelters; we’re spoiled for Choice really which is quite sad and also part of the point. The need is great and it's getting greater those of us who can really need to step up. Thank you. That's it. 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 will be back in a week with 30 more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform in the failed War on Drugs for now for the DrugTruth 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.

08/21/19 Sanho Tree

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Sanho Tree
Organization
Institute for Policy Studies

This week on Century of Lies, part two of our conversation with Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, plus a report on the Colombian peace process.

Audio file

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

SEPTEMBER 21, 2019

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 McVEY: Hello and welcome to Century of Lies. I am your host, Doug McVey, Editor of drugwarfacts.org.

Today we are gonna start off with Part Two of my conversation with Sanho Tree. Sanho is the Director of The Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. There was actually a hearing at the Irish Parliament that a Committee of the Iractis held on the situation in Columbia, the peace process there. A couple of trade union representatives (high officials), came in to talk and one of the messages that stood out most is that Columbia is the most dangerous place in the world right now to be a union organizer.

SANHO TREE: Yeah. It’s another common thread –being an environmental defender these days to protect the environment – it used to be that Brazil was the most dangerous place, right? It still is incredibly dangerous, President Bolsonar is fascist and is basically declaring war on indigenous peoples and is vowing to open up the Amazon and will basically bulldoze it. He only sees commercial development as being the only reasonable thing to do with the Amazon and of course, those are the lungs of the earth, incredibly sensitive and vital environmental areas are gonna be deforested now. Just this month the Philippines actually surpassed Brazil as being the most dangerous place to be an environmental defender, so large agra-businesses are taking over land and the people who are protesting are the ones being targeted now. It’s no coincidence these are all right-wing governments and you’ve got a lot of social defenders being targeted. They need our help and our solidarity right now.

DOUG MCVEY: God, and of course, people can find out more by following you and there’s also the Washington office on Latin America and The Latin American Working Group. There are a few good organizations – some trade union groups that are also – I think Human Rights Watch has some good things happening. The NGOs are active, that’s’ the good part. The NGOs are the targets now.

SANHO TREE: The NGOs are active; the government isn’t very active. We don’t really have a foreign policy in the State Department, we have Trump’s tantrums and a lot of people just hunkering down trying not to get noticed, or do anything really. It’s just madness in Washington these days. You used to have these formal mechanisms of policy formation and you have inter-agency coordination, and you work out the bugs, and you cross your T’s and dot your I’s, and look at all the different interactions and how its gonna ripple effect. None of that these days. It’s whatever the President wants and they can overturn policy that took years to develop and turn it over in an afternoon with a tweet. It’s extremely demoralizing for people in government who are actually trying to do good things – they are just basically trying to survive at this point. The pettiness with which this White House will reach down in to the bureaucracy and punish people it views as disloyal to the President is frightening, in fact the JAG – the military prosecutors who prosecuted the NAVY Seal for war crimes in Afghanistan a few months ago, Trump has ordered that they not get the commendations. So they are being punished for actually prosecuting a NAVY Seal who committed war crimes. Just think about that. They did their jobs and for that Trump is punishing them.

DOUG MCVEY: Well that’s a good segway to get back to the United States. We’ve seen how bad things can get in the Philippines and we’re watching the civil war that is supposed to be ending – not ending

So let’s get back to the U.S. Now of course we’ve had a kinder, gentler drug war these past few years. The opioid overdose crisis has resulted in more people understanding that getting Naloxone in to the hands of not just first responders but also friends and family and people who use opioids themselves is a smart thing to do and that’s been happening. We’ve had people pushing the idea – people fighting hard for the idea of supervised injection facilities and safe consumption facilities around the country. More and more talking openly about the need for those, so that’s a good thing.

SANHO TREE: Yeah.

DOUG MCVEY: Yeah, it is --

SANHO TREE: It is--

DOUG MCVEY: --and we had a Drug Czar candidate the first one, Tom Moreno, the former Representative from Pennsylvania whose bright idea it was to convert prisons and jails in to inpatient treatment facilities. The guards just wouldn’t have badges and that’s pretty much the only change and you know, as bad as that was you at least knew that there was still a kinder, gentler – the democrats and the liberals would – and I was talking to you before this, one of the candidates, Andrew Yang, I was looking through his drug policy platform and one thing that stood out was mandatory 3-day stays in a facility for all overdose victims so that they can be convinced to go in to treatment.

SANHO TREE: Yeah.

DOUG MCVEY: Because the one thing that’s certainly gonna get you to go in for medical care when you’ve had an overdose is the notion that you’re going to be locked away – but it won’t be called a jail. They’ll convert it.

SANHO TREE: Right.

DOUG MCVEY: Yeah. They won’t have badges. That’s how you can tell. This is just – and there is that, but we seem to have changed because we have an effective treatment for opioid use disorder because we have the protocols and know how to use methadone, we know how to use buprenorphine and they are actually pretty successful and we’re talking more and more about the need for heroin assisted treatment because we need to go there—

SANHO TREE: Um-hmm.

DOUG MCVEY: We’re just so different than the meth fear – the meth hysteria from a few years back, a decade or so back or the crack hysteria from the 80s. So much different, but they’re also different drugs. There’s stimulants and we don’t have substitution treatment. We don’t have the maintenance treatment because even though there’s research showing that it works – Dextramphetamine – John Grabowsky down in Texas, brilliant guy. Anyway, even though there is some research showing it works for some reason, we won’t do it. Of course now we’re seeing more meth in the state of Oregon and various other places. We’re seeing a return of meth, we’re hearing about more cocaine out there and I am gonna say it until it actually happens, which unfortunately won’t be too much longer; there are chemists out there working on what is called Caphanones and those are stimulants. They are going to make some that have the up – the rush of the methamphetamine with the sort of smooth appeal of the cocaine. It’ll be a designer drug, it’ll be scary powerful and people will die. Anyway.

SANHO TREE: (UNINTELLIGABLE). Side effects and consequences, yeah. We don’t know about these things. This is precisely –

DOUG MCVEY: So what do you think about (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of America, my friend?

SANHO TREE: This is precisely why I am glad they haven’t debated drug policy in the Presidential Debate’s yet. When you have two dozen candidates and each one gets sixty seconds it’s very difficult to talk about complex policy proposals. Later on when you narrow down the number of candidates and you might get 3-4 minutes, then maybe you can have a slightly more substantive session. You really get the amount of time necessary to really flush out these alternatives. For instance, they can talk about methadone and Bupanorphine, but they’re not gonna talk about Safe Supply Movement – #SafeSupply, check it out. What they are doing in British Columbia for instance, where doctors can prescribe Hydromorphone or Dilaudid to people with opioid use disorders, so that they’re not forced to go out into the street and play Fentanyl roulette. That’s like a no brainer to me. We know how to prevent people from dying from unintentional Fentanyl overdose and we’re not doing it. It sends the wrong moral message I guess, to keep people alive. That is the implication, right? If you’re a politician who doesn’t support it that at some level – and you know its gonna lead to more deaths, then you’ve got to think that the wages of sin ought to be death and that will somehow send the right message, which is the old standby rational for a lot of this stuff.

If it’s your child or someone that you love who overdoses at a festival or something because you didn’t have pill-checking, drug testing. If you oppose these basic kinds of basic harm reduction measures than I think as a politician you are basically supporting a randomized death penalty – that someone else’s loved one should pay the price and that somehow that’s gonna send a message to the rest of the world to not do this? It doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked and they are just killing people for no good reason.

DOUG MCVEY: Throw us a ray of sunshine. Jesus. This is depressing.

SANHO TREE: (LAUGHTER). I am an optimist. As a former historian, my heroes are the people who worked in the civil rights movement in the 40s and 50s. Less so the 60s. My heroes were the suffragettes working a century ago in the turn of the 1900s. Back when people thought the odds were so stacked against you that you’ll never see these kinds of changes in your lifetime, and yet, within a generation – within a dozen years people have seen tremendous change. It is possible – so we mustn’t lose sight of that. Hell, we went through alcohol prohibition and then repealed –

DOUG MCVEY: (LAUGHTER).

SANHO TREE: --all within one generation. In hindsight, the only thing that’s inevitable is change itself and sometimes it’s even for the better.

DOUG MCVEY: As a great man once said, “Perspective – use it, or lose it”. Right?

SANHO TREE: (LAUGHTER) Yeah.

DOUG MCVEY: Again, we are speaking with Sanho Tree, he is the Director of the Drug Policy Project at The Institute for Policy Studies. He’s a military historian and a writer and a researcher and a brilliant – brilliant person who is so involved in so many things. We must make sure that people know where to follow you on social media so give them that stuff.

SANHO TREE: My Twitter handle is: @sanhotree, or you can go to my website at: www.ips-dc.org.

DOUG MCVEY: And there you go. Actually there’s a lot of stuff at the IPS website that go well beyond drug policy and they’ve been talking about drug policy for a very long time. Liberals thought that this is an issue they wouldn’t touch but they knew there were some conservatives who would talk about marijuana and maybe some other stuff. You know Buckley was out there doing his thing, and the conservatives thought this was an issue they didn’t want to touch but they knew there were some liberals out there who were talking this kind of stuff, but it was hard to find. I don’t know maybe it’s because it seems so counterintuitive. The conservative support is something that people know about more. We just think of the Democrats as being scared and spineless and running away, and the fact that IPS, which is very, very proudly progressive – more on the left. Would it be fair to call it a left?

SANHO TREE: Yeah.

DOUG MCVEY: Okay. Thank you. Left is still right and right is still wrong.

SANHO TREE: (LAUGHTER)

DOUG MCVEY: The fact that an institution like IPS has been involved in that for some years I think is terrific. I wish more people realized that. Like I say, its – credit where it’s due.

SANHO TREE: Thank you. We’ve been around 54 years now. It’s been quite a ride. If you haven’t been involved in politics yet, this is the time to do it. If you’re angry that they haven’t impeached Trump and your local member or congress has not supported impeachment yet – ask yourself, have you contacted them? Have you called them? Have you written them? They’re not mind readers and if you haven’t contacted them then perhaps you are part of the problem as well. There are a lot of us thinking similar things out there in the world but we are all atomized unless we start acting together, and only then can we actually produce some change.

DOUG MCVEY: And with that – Sanho, thank you so much for all of your time. Thank you so much for your time and for all that you do. God bless you.

SANHO TREE: My pleasure.

DOUG MCVEY: That was my conversation with Sanho Tree, Director of The Drug Policy Project at The Institute for Policy studies. They are a think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

NIXON: America’s Public Enemy #1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. I have asked the congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive.

DOUG MCVEY: You’re listening to Century of Lies. I am your host, Doug McVey, Editor of drugwarfacts.org.

Now the top of that interview I mentioned a discussion that had been held at the Iractus at the Irish Parliament on the Columbian peace process with a joint committee on foreign affairs and trade and defense. We are gonna hear now from the conclusion of that discussion.

We’re gonna hear Senator Paul Gavin, he’s a labor party member of the Irish Senate – the Shanderan. Then we’ll hear from Mariella Cohan, she is Senior International Officer with the Trades Union Congress.

SEN. PAUL GAVIN: Thanks indeed and thanks for allowing me, I am a guest here this morning as well. I want to pay tribute to Justice for Columbia. I was fortunate enough to be part of their most recent delegation. I want to pay particular tribute to the Force Trade Union because it’s so significant with the support that your union is giving to this civil society organization. They really are punching at a very high level because one of the most significant things from our visit was the fact that the Columbian government felt to need to meet with us at the end of the week and I thought that was very significant and in its own way, very positive. I want to share just very briefly if I may, Chair, a couple of the quotes because we did meet a whole range of people from trade unions, socially (UNINTELLIGIBLE) elitists. A very week, actually, because it is such a beautiful country but the level of oppression there is quite shocking, frankly.

One of the human rights defenders said to me directly, “we’re witnessing a genocide of social trade union leaders and human rights defenders”, and that is a shocking statement to hear. Perhaps a service statement was Ada Avella, who is a Member of Parliament for the Patrific Union Priority. She’s like myself, a lifelong trade unionist. She said, “There aren’t so many trade unionists killed lately, but then there aren’t so many of us left”. What an absolutely shocking statement to make. I was disturbed by what Mariella told us in terms of the new restrictions on visiting the transition zones because we visited Tierra Grata in the northeast of Columbia in the La Paz District. We could see firsthand that the potential is here to deliver something significantly economically in terms of independence but it just isn’t happening for lack of support and it was disturbing when we raised it with the government in that meeting at the end of the week. Effectively we were met with denial and I found that disappointing. The other thing is I was supposed to speak with an Irish Republican – I didn’t hear the language of a peace process from the government ministers and I found that particularly disturbing. We were firsthand witnesses and yet we were told that we were effectively – the word ‘lies’ was used a number of times and I just didn’t hear that language that we would expect from a peace process and indeed what we would hear from our own peace process despite the challenges from time to time. Perhaps the most moving part of the mission was to visit Cahbio, a town in north Corka because what we saw there in a community setting was pictures on the wall of local community leaders who had been murdered in the last couple of years – young men. Many of the members of the Fenswa Grove Agricultural Trade Union – and it I have to say, I won’t name the Irish company – but this community setting was surrounded by property owned by an Irish company and they said to us that the Power Ministries were using the land to come out in the dark to attack and kill the people and as an Irishman, I found that particularly disturbing.

We had a very positive meeting with Allison Milson and one of the things she did commit to do was to go and visit that mine and if I may be so bold as to suggest that a further activist committee might be just to write to the Ambassador to ask her about that visit – has it taken place and what are her reviews on it because as my colleague Shaun said – and by the way, Shaun sends his apologies – he had to go to Parliament. We as a country should not be importing “blood” coal. I did note that in a recent response to Tom Ishter, it indicated he would have a further look at this and I really hope he does because it’s very much not in keeping with a lot of the very good work and fairness that’s been done by Ireland.

I want to just finish by asking a couple of questions. The first is, you mentioned the local elections in October and that was a big topic when we were over there. How can these elections be free and fair – or how free and fair are they likely to be given that we met people and you have mentioned it yourself, telling us that they’ve been threatened. Their lives are being threatened. Very hard to run an election when people’s lives are being threatened and again, as a number of people have said it just struck me that there’s a vacuum where the defense of leaders should be. There’s a gaping vacuum, and again, I have to say particularly the representatives at the Justice Department and the police. There just seems to be a denial and yet the facts are there – the facts are in in terms of that.

That leads on to the second question and it’s a difficult question and perhaps I am asking for an opinion but in terms of the (UNINTELLIGBLE) members being killed by right wing public para-militaries. These para-militaries are writing with impunity that’s very clear. The question I want to ask is, are they also acting in collusion with the state?

I think that is it, Chair, I just want to thank Justice for Columbia for giving me the opportunity to go out there. I really do hope that our Irish government really does speak with a strong, loud voice and I would acknowledge the work of Ed McGilmore’s role, by the way, in relation to this issue because I have to say, just on a personal human level I found it deeply shocking to meet people as relatives of killed and this is – the number of deaths are increasing. The number of deaths have been increasing since the Peace Process was signed. Very hard to keep the Peace Process going when one side are being slaughtered. Thank you.

MARIELLA COHAN: Chair.

CHAIR: Thanks, Mariella.

MARIELLA COHAN: On the delegations I would just add to that it should be in fact FOR status for supporting the peace monitor delegations. One feature of the delegations is they are meeting everyone, you know? I would recognize the government for having engaged with those delegations at the Embassy in London and the Minister’s meeting at the highest level. That’s been incredibly valued that there has been that engagement and I think it gives credibility to the delegation that they are meeting with everyone. The HEP, The UN, The institutions, the parties and in terms of the environment and I think there are concerns around the extractive industries and the impact that is having on the environment – you heard about the mine and licenses be given respecting the indigenous land in Afro Columbian land that’s constitutionally provided for the respect for those lands. There are campaigns around fracking as well and obviously the concern around the possible fumigation of crops with Glyphosate, which is incredibly toxic. So there are concerns around the environment.

On the elections – I think obviously having international observers would be incredibly important but one of the concerns sometimes is the observers come just a day before and the problem in Columbia isn’t just about the day of the election. It’s about what happens before the election. It’s about the violence and intimidation that comes in the build up to an election and as I said, the MOE, and in our consent through their report, The Electoral Observer Mission, they released a report at the end of May saying that since last October, five mayoral candidates and two aspiring councilmembers were amongst the 75 registered political assassinations and that 37 political activists had survived assassination attempts. I think the elections come in a context of what has happened before and I think there needs to be attention put on that issue and maybe some monitoring at this stage, obviously, for the FARC – it’s the first time they’ll be participating in our collections and they’ll be quite exposed so that’s going to be very difficult. I am not sure, I think the EU has sent observations before in elections previously so it would be important to see what kind of monitoring can take place and obviously the UN mission has a mandate for the political (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to verify the political reincorporation at the FARC so they will be monitoring this situation as well.

In terms of the collusion I would say all the different killings of the members of the FARC obviously vary and in some cases it has been directly the Army – like the case of DeMarc Torres I mentioned – other cases. It’s been BLN, paramilitary groups may be linked to dissidence as well so it’s very complex and it does depend on the region as well. Some of them would be clearly politically motivated, others would be not sure what the reasons would be. I think the importance is about where there has been the state involvement for those to be brought to justice. I think the whole (UNINTELLIGIBLE) of paramilitaries – in the peace agreement there is a special investigative unit that is supposed to be set up to dismantle and investigate the paramilitaries. There was a hug back and forth with the formal attorney general over this unit because the whole point of the unit was to be completely autonomous and it had to then be created under the attorney general’s office because of his opposition to it and it would be important to support that unit to have its autonomy to actually investigate and dismantle that paramilitary groups and also to look at the political – there was supposed to be kind of a pact – a political pact across the country in terms of taking violence out of politics. In terms of changing the hate and the HOP has a role there in terms of the reconciliation as well. One key feature of the agreement is that it’s comprehensive and it’s interlinked and if you start chipping away and taking bits other bits don’t work, so you have to implement it as a whole. If FARC members don’t have legal guarantees than why would they offer the truth? So there’s all these kind of questions that need to be – the government needs to see the agreement as a whole.

Just to reiterate what Kevin said in terms of hosting both parties, we think any opportunity for signatories to the agreement to be recognized as such and to give their views would be really valuable.

MALE VOICE: This won’t fix (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

CHAIR: I just noticed when I was over there that President Dukais is on record as supporting Nacasio Martinez to be the new head of the Army. This is a man accused of serious human rights abuses. Again, it’s a very disturbing message to be sending I just wonder if you have any views on that.

MARIELLA COHAN: Yeah, there have been concerns. There was a New York Times report in May that highlighted that there was a return to the combat kind of a pressure on soldiers to report wins in combat and that obviously in the past those incentives under the Reedly Administration have led to the execution scandal where thousands of civilians were murdered by soldiers and presented as if they were guerillas killed in combat and received promotions and bonuses and rewards, so there was a big scandal around this piece.

I understand the Minister of Defense took back some of those orders and reformed some of them but there are still some there that are concerning. This particular General had been implicated in some of those crimes so there was a lot of concern that he was being promoted and actually the opposition parties tried to block that in the congress. It is very concerning and the whole kind of doctrine within the military of the internal enemy and the enemy of the state is something that was discussed a lot. During the piece it talks about having to change the culture and the Army becoming protective of the people.

DOUG MCVEY: That was a portion of a debate before the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs in Trade and Defense of the Irish Parliament, the ARACTUS. You heard Senator Paul Gavin, he’s a Labor Party Member of the Irish Senate, and Mariella Cohen, and she’s a Senior International Officer with the Trades Union Congress. They were discussing the Columbian Peace Process.

Well that’s it for this week. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies, we are a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network – on the web at DrugTruth.net. I have been your host, Doug McVey, Editor of DrugWarFacts.org

Drug Truth Network programs are available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network homepage at DrugTruth.net. The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook, too, give it a like and share it with friends. You can follow me on Twitter I am: @dougmcvey, and of course also @drugpolicyfacts. We’ll be back in a week with 30 more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVey saying so long.

08/14/19 Sanho Tree

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Sanho Tree
Organization
Institute for Policy Studies

This week on Century of Lies, part one of our conversation with Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. Sanho talks with Doug about the presidential race, the rise of the authoritarian right, the drug war in the Philippines, and much more.

Audio file

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

SEPTEMBER 14, 2019

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 McVEY: Hello and welcome to Century of Lies. I am your host, Doug McVey, Editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

We’ve got a good show for you this week, let’s get to it.

SANHO TREE: I am Sanho Tree, Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

DOUG MCVEY: Sanho, I haven’t talked to you for a while. There is so much going on out there in the world it’s tough to narrow it all down. Our listeners may be aware that there is a presidential race coming up in a little over a year. The candidates on the democratic side are fighting to become the nominee.

For the most part, drug policy has been conspicuously absent from these debates – from this election. We’ll talk about weed, we may talk a little bit about marijuana at one level if their forced – but that is it. But that is it! 70,000 overdose deaths in the year in the number of opiate – Anyway. What’s going on?

SANHO TREE: It’s electoral politics as usual. Drug policy – the democrats are generally in favor of either legalization or decriminalization so that’s the fight. It’s not really something that they are going to go in to a slugfest over as an election issue when they are generally on the decrim/legalization side.

It was interesting however when Michael Moore was on Seth Myers show this week – or it may have been last week – but in that he talked about the politics in Michigan and how Trump won it by less than 10,000 votes or something and how the 2018 election had legalization on the ballot so in the midterms, they had the best turnout ever, especially amongst the young people. He has made a quick pitch for putting these things on the ballot in other states. This is what Carl Rove – you know, George Bush’s evil genius strategist – did in 2004, he put the anti-gay marriage initiatives on a bunch of state ballots right before the election and it helped put Bush over the top. When that election was – it was John Kennedy’s election to lose basically. The Iraq war was so unpopular, but it worked for the republicans. It looks like if the democrats can get enough interesting ballot initiatives especially marijuana legalization on key ballots that could really help boost turnout.

This is going to be a turnout election – it’s hard to model this one because it’s so unusual. A lot of the conventional analysts are going with the old tried and true polling methods and the Trump campaign is supposedly pioneering a different turnout model where they can micro-micro target people down to the individual level using Facebook, and probably some Russian assistance as well but they know exactly now who they think they need to turn out who haven’t voted before. It’s going to be a very close election – or a very interesting election to watch.

DOUG MCVEY: Interesting. Serious question – the news is still filled with stories about the overdose crisis, the numbers of people dying. We are now seeing that indicators – the indicators that I have been pointing out for the last couple of years – it sucks some times to be right – that show that there has been a trend toward increasing stimulant use whether its methamphetamine or amphetamine or cocaine. We are seeing more of that now, even in the overdose figures. Presidential race – 70,000 people dying from various kinds of controlled substances in a year – why is it off the radar?

SANHO TREE In some ways I am kind of glad that it is off the radar because this is not the best forum in which to talk about very complex problems, especially ones that have fairly counterintuitive solutions. It does not mix well with sound bite politics in the middle of a campaign. Historically, this is where we’ve gotten really bad legislation because politicians think people will only understand or remember easy answers and with drug prohibition, the easy answer is usually the wrong answer. What you don’t want is for candidates to get in to an easy bidding war because you only have 60 seconds or whatever before the moderators cut you off. It’s hard to really talk about different models of drug control or harm reduction in that kind of space so it turns in to a bidding war of who is going to be more restrictive, who is going to arrest more people. Joe Biden, once again, said I want to jail those pharmaceutical industries that sold us the opioids as though you can just jail your way out of every problem. It doesn’t lend itself to thoughtful solutions unfortunately. It’s such an important issue – but we need to have a better format in which to discuss these things I think.

DOUG MCVEY: Then of course Biden has experience with that exact thing having been an architect to the 1986 and the 1988 drug bills, speaking of bidding wars. My God.

SANHO TREE: And here I think that is a good distinction to make. This is where drug policy is coming up in the presidential debates and it’s about the past, it’s about people’s records as prosecutors and as drug warriors. I think that’s an entirely valid debate. It’s a good one to have right now and it really does show some distinctions between the various candidates. Biden of course being the architect of the modern drug war in many ways and Kamala Harris has a long history as a prosecutor as does Amy Klovachar, and it’s good to hold these people to account because for so many decades, the conventional politics was that you couldn’t go wrong being a prosecutor and then going for higher office and you could usually brag about how many people you’ve put away. Now we have seen the results of mass incarceration and the war on drugs and now it’s not so fashionable and they’re nervous about talking and defending their histories visa vie the drug war and I think that’s a good thing.

DOUG MCVEY: I agree. I think that the real uncomfortable part is when it starts going beyond just the drug war – I mean we have had the last four years – its Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland and so many people – it’s too many to name, we wouldn’t have time in the show. The horrible levels of brutality and violence that we put up with by police – at some point you have to say that the prosecutors are implicit in this. They are condoning this. There is a legal term for this – they are suborning this violence and brutality. They are suborning the lies which police regularly do on the stand in the course of their investigations. They lie, they fudge, and they make stuff up. It’s not a pleasant thing to say – it hurts, but it’s true. I think those fundamental questions – I think that’s one of the reasons why all we are hearing about Kamala Harris is she said she listened to Tupac when she was Howard, but he wasn’t recording back then.

Honestly? That’s the level – oh dear God! How about we talk about what did she do when the police murder Oscar Grant in Oakland on that New Year’s Eve night/ New Year’s Day morning. How about we talk about what she did with any of the corrupt police officers and any of the other officials in the state of California or while she was the district attorney in San Francisco, and on the other hand, how much did she just have to put up with.

Prosecutors know that those cops are lying. They know that they are boing told a line of stuff but hey, you are gonna get the conviction – it’s the only way to get the conviction.

SANHO TREE I think it’s time that we have hit a tipping point in many ways where people are fed up with conventional prosecutors and I will be very blunt, I have a biased against prosecutors when they run for office because historically it has always been seen as a stepping stone to a higher office. You’ve had lots of these local prosecutors racking up as many notches on their belts as they can thinking that it’s an easy sell at election time, but now as people are waking up to the fact that it’s their family members and friends and neighbors who are being locked up for all kinds of ridiculous crimes that they see the excesses of this and I for one, presume prosecutors are not good candidates unless they demonstrate that they’re actively trying to reform the system like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, now that’s a great model for a prosecutor – one that you could be proud of but historically these other prosecutors thought they could just score some wins and that’s the mentality that is so troubling. When you are a prosecutor it’s all about winning. Scaring a suspect in to the straight and narrow is not a win – you have to win. It all becomes half measures are no win. So how do you get a win? You throw everything at the defendant whether they deserve it or not because your objective is now to win at all costs – to put that notch in your belt. What’s best for the community, what’s best for the offender – these things don’t factor in when it comes .to this game mentality. They literally turn it in to a game they have to win but they lose sight of the fact that these are human beings. They come from communities; there are families associated with this and getting your 100% win by throwing the book at someone is not the same as justice or helping a community or repairing harms that have been done. We need to rethink the way prosecutors behave in this country and how we elect them.

DOUG MCVEY: We are listening to an interview with Sanho Tree, he is the Director of the Drug Policy Project at The Institute for Policy Studies. You can find out more about Sanho by going to his website: IPS-DC.org. You can also follow him on Twitter: @sanhotree. We will have more from him in just a moment. You are listening to Century of Lies, I am your host, Doug McVey, Editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

Seattle Hempfest is August 16, 17 and 18 this year. For the first time in many years I am unable to attend which hurts. It is the thrill and joy of my life to be associated with Hempfest and I just wish I could be up there this year but too much stuff piled up. I hope they have a great time. Here are some sounds from a previous Hempfest:

DOUG MCVEY: Three days of Hempfest and we are talking about food and well you would. Aside from getting hungry – I went to the Iowa State Fair every year when I was a kid because I lived in central Iowa and that is pretty much the highlight of my year, which tells you a lot about Iowa, and the midway with all that food and all these (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and there is more food than five Iowa State Fair’s.

MALE VOICE: You can get a chicken and waffle cone here. They’ll put some chicken in a waffle cone and then you can just walk around with maple sauce and whatnot. They also have the deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich is still here. The mini donuts place is still here. I haven’t seen the chocolate strawberry people in a while, but there’s pork buns – everything from pork buns to soul food. You can get anything you want here – it’s just one of the best festivals in the world. That’s how I feel about it.

DOUG MCVEY: I agree and aside from the food there is also all the vendors. It’s a dozen Shakedown Streets rolled in to one.

MALE VOICE: It’s if Shakedown Street was two miles long with better music.

DOUG MCVEY: Geeze, much better.

MALE VOICE: Fewer drum circles

DOUG MCVEY: (LAUGHTER). That’s the other thing that I was missing and I am so glad of it, too.

MALE VOICE: And no nitrous.

DOUG MCVEY: This is true. You know, fewer people than I have in years past. I mean occasionally you would hear people trying to sell joints once – once so far, and that’s been about it

MALE VOICE: What weed?

DOUG MCVEY: It was joints. Yeah.

MALE VOICE: Oh yeah. I mean you could still find them. There’s a couple of cats – they usually stick to the outskirts of the park now so you can pick it up on your way in or whatnot. The underground economy is still pretty good – the underground cannabis scene is actually still pretty interesting. I was just out at Eyeshot Island and a lot of those guys, they are still underground. This stick to underground. They don’t like any of this dispensary weed or this recreational weed. They find it overproduced and uncared for and not always cured correctly and sometimes flushed badly. There’s a lot of challenges in creating it. I think that a lot of people think that you just buy a license, open a farm and start growing good weed, and that is not how it goes, man. Weed is like craft beer. It’s like a good wine. It’s like Air loom tomatoes, you still have to take care and put love in your product to have anything viable in a lot of these legal states. Everybody is just thinking bigger is necessarily better and you’re just – I almost cussed – you’re just messing up the prices for everybody. You’re costing yourself money and you’re costing other people money and I don’t think it is necessarily the way to go.

DOUG MCVEY: That was Ngao Bealum, my good friend the comedian. He’s up there at Seattle Hempfest on the 16th, 17th, and 18th. He’ll be emceeing on stages. He will be doing a set – he will be doing all kinds of stuff and by gosh, I do miss him. I hope he does well – I hope that the whole thing goes well for everyone. Have a great time up there in Seattle the 16th, 17th, and 18th of August. Find out more at Hempfest.org.

Now let’s get back to that conversation with Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at The Institute for Policy Studies.

Talk to me about what’s happening in the Philippines. Give folks an idea of how bad it has been just in case we have new listeners who haven’t heard yet.

SANHO TREE: Its bloody, it’s awful. This is one of the dictators that Trump admires a great deal, President Dutuarte – Rodrigo Dutuarte of the Philippines.

He came in to the office about six months before Trump won his election and he has pioneered a lot of the fascist, authoritarian tactics that Trump adopts 6-12 months later, so it’s really worth following the Philippines to see because Dutuarte has really pioneered a lot of the Trump nastiness in terms of smashing through checks and balances, political norms, battering those things down, locking up his opposition. The most prominent Senator, Lyla Deleema who criticized his drug war since he came in to office was jailed on trumped up drug charges. She is awaiting trial, she has been held for about two years now. He has only been in office for two and a half years. So she has been behind bars! So when Trump says lock her up; Dutuarte has already done that and he’s gone after other politicians and journalists trying to silence them with fabricated charges and technicalities, any excuse to lock people up. That is how he is trying to silence his critics.

The UN Human Rights Commission voted about three weeks ago to block a formal investigation in to the human rights situation in the Philippines and of course President Dutuarte and his Foreign Secretary condemned this. This said they were not going to go along with it – they won’t cooperate – whatever that means. I don’t know if that means they are turning them away at the airport or they just don’t meet with them, or provide data but the UN voted to investigate because it’s gotten that serious. There’s been about 27,000 – 30,000 people killed by some estimates, over the past two and a half years under Dutuarte’s drug war. Police will confer, but I think 6,600 or so have been investigated as drug related killings, but the rest are under investigation. They are a poor country these things will never be finalized or investigated because I don’t think the police have an interest in doing that because it’s largely the police and the people that are hiring or working with that are doing the killings. We have these very murky numbers but tens of thousands of people have died basically. Killed either by death squads or by police in shoot outs, and they always say they were resisting arrest therefore we had to shoot them. So these investigations constantly turn up. Suspects who have been shot dead, but they have handcuff marks around their wrists meaning that they were probably handcuffed and the police excuse that they reached for a gun and were about to shoot us so we had to shoot them rarely holds up. They often plant a gun with no serial number next to the person they’ve killed. Very often it will be a left handed shooter, and they will plant the gun by the right hand. They’ve even been caught on CCTV dragging young people off to their deaths.

It’s not a mystery who is doing the killing for the most part in the Philippine’s and yet President Dutuarte still remains popular although he’s losing support amongst the poor because those are the only people he is killing basically. He still has majority support and it does not bode well for the rest of the world. Especially if societies haven’t been through a lot of drug reform, they still have these old stereotypes in their head about drugs and drug users it’s very easy for rightwing authoritarians to demagogue this issue and so that is how President Dutuarte has been able to do this. Basically it’s based on a series of monstrous, monstrous lies by the president.

It’s a highly networked Facebook nation – not so much Twitter, but everyone’s on Facebook and it allows him to bypass a lot of traditional media; fact checkers, so to speak. You see this in Brazil. President Bulsonaro, when he won his campaign last year it said that he won it through WhatsApp, the messaging app owned by Facebook. That allowed him to communicate his lies directly to voters and bypass the fact checkers. These are dangerous things. Dutuarte for instance, repeated one of the most heinous lies that if you smoke Shaboo, which is what they call meth in the Philippines – if you smoke meth for more than six months your brain will shrink to the size of a babies brain. I have had people tell me it will shrink to the size of a walnut and therefore they are a poor country. There is no treatment available when you’ve done that much damage – therefore we have to kill these people. So you will see interviews with average citizens off the street and police and other officials saying matter-of-factly, yeah, we have to kill them. There is nothing we can do. So there’s a basic lack of information fueled by a mountain of lies and unfortunately it has taken hold amongst the people and it’s not unreasonable for them to buy in to these easy answers. In Central America, for instance, where there’s so much bloodshed from gang violence and often drug prohibition fueled violence, you would think people would be tired of the drug war but if you’re a working class person trying to survive, you don’t have time to read The Economist every night and look at the counterintuitive nature of drug prohibition. What you see, however, is lots of blood. If it bleeds, it leads. That gets the headlines, it gets the front page gory photos in the newspaper and people see lots of drugs and violence and they want it to stop.

It’s understandable that people would fall for an easy answer. If drugs are bad – why not have a war on drugs. This is what this country had to grapple with for decades and it took us that long to realize, oh, wait a minute – it’s kind of counterintuitive that the more you fight the war on drugs the more valuable they become and it drives more people in to this economy, etc., etc., and prohibition is fueling a lot of this mess. That hasn’t reached the Philippines – that kind of messaging, or many parts of the world for that matter so people do fall for easy answers. I think a lot of authoritarian politicians realize this – this is one of those easy areas to appeal to people at a visceral, gut level of revulsion and hatred. So when you see Trump talking about infestation and vermin in Baltimore, he’s using language going straight back to the Nazi’s and their propaganda. In fact, one of the most vial propaganda films of all time is called The Eternal Jew put out by the Nazi’s that explicitly uses images of rats and vermin and dehumanization of Jews to link all of these things together and so you see that being used by Trump against immigrants. He’s appealing – as are many of these authoritarians and fascist around the world – appealing to visceral emotions. These are some of the most primal hatreds and biases that humans possess before what we would call civilization happened. Your primal fear is of the neighboring tribe at the other side of the valley. They don’t worship the same gods as we do, they’re not as hygienic and clean as we do, they poop near the water source or they have bad habits, or they steal. These are the oldest stereotypes of the ‘other’. As we became civilized and came together and realized that you can live in a community and shared values, etc., and you wouldn’t kill each other or steal from each other. We are going backwards and these authoritarians are pushing these very primal buttons about the ‘other’. So what they say about immigrants, what they say about drug users, what they say about Jews – they are able to dehumanize human beings at a very primal level. It’s the opposite of civilization is where Trump and these authoritarians are taking us.

Unfortunately it works. You can mobilize people through hatred and fear much more easily than rational discourse if the conditions are right and we are seeing that in Hungary, we are seeing that in the Philippines, in Brazil, and other countries and I am very, very fearful. This messaging works – it gets traction, and the right wing is on the march. No one thought this was possible a decade ago. People thought if you go that racist, that primal surely enough educated people will rise up and it will backfire, but as Donald Trump has shown us, you can’t go too low. We’ll see if his turn out model works or not, I sincerely hope it doesn’t. It is a very dangerous time politically.

DOUG MCVEY: I just hope that we end up in the same concentration camp – at least somebody to talk to.

SANHO TREE: (LAUGHTER)

DOUG MCVEY: There’s a handful of things – I mentioned the rise of stimulants and of you’ve been working doing policy analysis and actually doing visits down to Columbia for a very long time. I don’t know if you’ve been down there lately but one of the people I would talk to about what’s going on down there. I have heard reports about increased cocaine production in South America. I have also heard some real problems with implementation of the peace process, that mostly the government is simply – dragging its feet isn’t the right way to put it – they are standing firmly and unwilling to move. Nothing is dragging.

SANHO TREE: Yeah.

DOUG MCVEY: How are things going in Columbia and should we be worried about that?

SANHO TREE: Yeah. The killings are – especially in the former Guerilla controlled areas – are staggering. The number of killings by various armed groups that has filled a vacuum so when the FARC Guerilla’s finally laid down their weapons after five decades of civil war in Columbia – the longest running civil war on this hemisphere – when they finally put down their weapons people cheered but we warned, even before the demobilization that if the state did not fill the vacuum and take over those areas that previously occupied by the Guerillas and with legitimacy build infrastructure so that farmers have other options rather than growing coca – and do all of the things necessary to fill that vacuum left when the Guerilla’s put down their weapons and demobilized then others would fill that vacuum and that is exactly what has happened. You have organized criminal groups, you have former rightwing paramilitary death squads that are now operating as drug gangs, and you even have some Guerilla factions that refuse to put down their weapons and are now trafficking drugs and growing coca in these regions. It’s a free for all. You have got people interested in land grabs so big farmers or agra-business or well-cut gold mining, emerald mining, people are just invading these territories, many of which are environmentally extremely fragile. A lot of these are indigenous territories or belong to peasant farmers but it’s easy to grab land unfortunately when you don’t have rule of law, when you don’t have state security forces to enforce those laws so that’s what is happening. The social and human rights defenders in these regions are the ones being targeted. The ones who are raising their voices to say there is something going – bad things are happening, we need help. Those are the ones being assassinated and its many, many dozens in the past year.

DOUG MCVEY: That was part of my conversation with Sanho Tree, Director of the Drug Policy Project at The Institute for Policy Studies, and he is a good friend. Its good talking to him. We will have more from him on next week’s show. For now though, that’s it. I want to thank you for joining us. You have been listening to Century of Lies, we are a production of the Drug Truth Network for the Pacifica Foundation Radio Network – on the web at DrugTruth.net. I have been your host, Doug McVey, Editor of DrugWarFacts.org

Drug Truth Network programs are available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network homepage at DrugTruth.net. The Drug Truth Network has a Facebook page, please give it a like. Drug War Facts is on Facebook, too, give it a like and share it with friends. You can follow me on Twitter I am: @dougmcvey, and of course also @drugpolicyfacts. We’ll be back in a week with 30 more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. For now, for the Drug Truth Network, this is Doug McVey saying so long.

02/13/18 Sanho Tree

Program
Century of Lies
Date
Guest
Sanho Tree
Organization
Institute For Policy Studies

This week we talk with guest Sanho Tree, longtime drug policy reformer and Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, about White House drug policy, harm reduction, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden.

Audio file

TRANSCRIPT

CENTURY OF LIES

February 13, 2019

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.

This week, we're going to hear parts of my interview with Sanho Tree. He's a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a good friend. Let's get to it.

Sanho Tree is the Director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and is a longtime -- you're a national security expert, a military historian, you've been working on drug policy for a little over twenty years now.

Recently, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, you know, the Drug Czar's office, finally released a new National Drug Control Strategy. I mean, I have it here on my screen, and really, it's, I mean, anybody, if you have five minutes, anybody could read the damn thing. There are 20 pages.

These things used to have like 150, 200 pages. they actually used to produce statistics and data, I mean, that was one of the reasons for ONDCP existing. Twenty pages. So have you had a chance to take a look at the 20 pages from the administration?

SANHO TREE: Well, I figure they're a year late in producing it, I'll take a year to read it. Not that it matters anymore, because, yeah, once upon a time these things did matter. It kind of set doctrine and direction.

But, as with anything in this Trump administration, policy is whatever the last tweet the president sent out, and he could reverse it on a dime. And so it's driving his bureaucracies crazy, to undermine people who are -- not to say they're doing good work, but, you know, a lot of -- traditionally, when you roll out a big policy, you have all this inter-agency coordination, you know, everyone weighs in.

It takes months if not years to coordinate this stuff, and then you have a roll-out. With the Trump administration, they do all this work and then Trump just changes his mind in a tweet, and, you know, a year's work goes up in smoke, and it's completely demoralizing for his bureaucracy that he's in charge of, that he's supposed to be leading.

And he wonders why people leak all the time. It's because they're pulling their hair out. There is no policy in this country, except what the king says it is.

DOUG MCVAY: Well, one of the things that is a policy is that he wants to build a stupid fence down at the border. Wall, fence -- it's a fence. You've spoken about this quite a bit, in fact I had a bit of your webinar on the show not long ago. But, could you give folks the quick and dirty version, why is the wall not going to work?

SANHO TREE: It's bronze age technology, basically, and humans have had, you know, thousands of years to develop countermeasures to walls, starting in the Middle Ages. Even back then, they were tunneling underneath the wall to cause it to cave in around castles.

There's catapults, there's, you know, and then, Trump says he doesn't want a solid wall anymore, it's going to be big, beautiful slats, as we have now, because the Border Patrol wants to be able to see what's on the other side.

And when you have four inch slats with four inch gaps, traffickers switch to three and a half inch wide packaging, and you can literally pass it through the wall. So when you think that a dose of fentanyl is a couple of grains of sand's worth of fentanyl, that's a lot of drugs you could pass through that wall over its 2,000 mile length, or however long Trump wants to build it.

So, there's also underground, the tunnels, there's submarines, there's ultralights, there's drones, there's every manner of way to to get around this wall. Plus, the most, the most overwhelming way by which drugs come into this country from Mexico is through legal ports of entry, not through these desert areas.

And so, why would they even bother going out and doing these risky things out in the desert, when they already have a good thing going through these checkpoints.

DOUG MCVAY: Because, yeah, the fence is just a stupid idea, but I wanted to talk about it for a minute just because it is a thing. One of the --

SANHO TREE: And we're just a couple of days away from the next shutdown, let's be clear about that. Trump has threatened it, and he's actually serious about doing it again, despite the fact his own party is just pulling their hair out saying don't do this.

DOUG MCVAY: This is true, as we record, we do not have a new budget, there's not a new continuing resolution, and so we're faced with the possibility of another federal shutdown. Again. It doesn't stop the DEA, doesn't stop the US Attorneys, but it does seem to -- but it certainly puts a crimp in a lot of other stuff.

Speaking of US Attorneys, before we even talk about the person who's about to be the new Attorney General, confirmed by the Judiciary Committee without much fuss, unfortunately.

Over on the east coast, up in Philadelphia, there's been an effort to establish supervised consumption sites, these sanitary injection sites, overdose prevention sites, hell, there's a lot of different names for them.

They've been hoping to do that in Philadelphia, and moving closer, there are a lot of cities around the country where they've been making some effort.

Some US Attorneys have spoken up and said hey, you can't do this, this is illegal. Recently, the US Attorney in Philly -- the US Attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania actually filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Safehouse from becoming a supervised consumption facility, and asking for a judicial opinion to say that these SCSs, these supervised consumption sites, are federally illegal.

Now, back in the Obama administration, we had two different drug czars attend a Harm Reduction Coalition conference, one in 2012, one in 2014. One of them, Kerlikowske, only sent a DVD, but still, they spoke up and were present at the Harm Reduction Coalition. Could you speak for a moment about the dramatic change in drug policy that we're actually seeing?

SANHO TREE: Well, it reflects the change at the top. So we've gone from, you know, a somewhat evidence driven policy under Obama to a visceral driven policy under Trump. And it's whatever his gut feeling is, whatever his gut tells him, what is popular with his rightwing base.

And so he's talked openly about, you know, mass murder, admiring President Duterte's drug war in the Philippines, and saying we've got to get tough, we've got to, you know, start killing people.

And his policies are going to start killing people. So I think, you know, what we have now is a policy of harm maximization, not harm reduction. They're -- not only are they clamping down on opioid prescriptions for people who are already dependent on these opioids, and then -- thus pushing them into the black market, into the underground market.

It is increasing harm and risk to people in life threatening ways, and it's something that, you know, that's red meat for Fox News and for that gut-level analysis, quote unquote analysis. But it's actually extremely dangerous, and harmful.

DOUG MCVAY: I mentioned the US Attorney's office. Of course, we now have a new Attorney General, or rather, at the time of this recording we're going to have a new attorney general. He's been confirmed by the Judiciary Committee, now we're just left with a pro forma vote of the Senate. It's a majority Republican, won't be a surprise, our next Attorney General will be William Pelham Barr.

The Eighties are coming back. Any thoughts about our new Attorney General?

SANHO TREE: Yeah, I mean, it's a real throwback. He literally was the Attorney General for H. W. Bush for less than a year, and he comes from that old school drug war thinking of being tough is the solution, and he doesn't have a problem with mass incarceration. He's been Mister Tough Guy.

However, he's bound by current realities, which have caught up to him. So he supports, he says, the Cole Memo, set under the Obama administration. So he says he wouldn't go and prosecute marijuana businesses that have complied with that thus far.

But he -- that's partly an acknowledgement to the political reality of what's coming up in 2020. So, not only are the public opinion polls dramatically different, so, twenty years ago it was less than 38 percent or something in favor of legalization, now it's 66 percent.

So there's a demographic shift in the country, but also a third of the Senate seats are up for reelection in 2020, including seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Alaska, states where Republican Senators are going to have to defend their seats, and where they have legal marijuana.

And, you know, other state that are, you know, where marijuana is polling rather well, that Republican continue to have to hang onto those seats. And so Democrats need three or four seats to take back control of the Senate, for people like Cory Gardner in Colorado, this is a very big deal, and he needs security to make sure that the federal government isn't going to invade his state to overturn what the people of Colorado have already decided.

DOUG MCVAY: It's going to be interesting. I mean, we're going to hear a lot of -- we're going to get lip service, we're going to get a lot of pandering, and we may actually see some legislation, too. I mean, it's -- it feels like they're being forced. But this, it's safe.

You're listening to Century of Lies. I'm your host, Doug McVay. We're listening to an interview with Sanho Tree, he's a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a drug policy reformer, as well as a national security expert and military historian.

So, there's an election in another two years, and at -- last time I checked, there were nine people who have announced that they are either running or considering running for the Democratic nomination.

What should be we be asking, if people get a chance to ask one of these candidates, what should they be asking them?

SANHO TREE: Well, that's a good question.

DOUG MCVAY: Thank you.

SANHO TREE: Let me think about this.

DOUG MCVAY: I try, that's this -- but, I mean, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, it's more a question of, like, I mean, for instance, we talked about harm reduction a minute ago, and the US Attorney in Philadelphia who is filing suit to stop the supervised consumption site that they're trying to put up there.

How can we get these candidates to make a good, positive statement about harm reduction? What kind of -- how should we be phrasing those sorts of questions?

SANHO TREE: I think, you know, it's important to put the value on human life, on keeping people alive, and healthy, regardless of whether they're using or not using. If you believe that their lives have value, then our end goal should be keeping those people healthy and alive, to the point where, when they perhaps are ready to give up using, then they're still alive and haven't contracted some, you know, terminal disease or overdosed already.

And to ask these politicians, who does it really help, at this point, to crack down on prescribers? For people who have long term issues and have been using these opioids for a long time, to suddenly get them, to force them to taper off or to stop using because you have some moral agenda that you think, you know, you want to make a point at their expense?

Which pushes them into the illicit markets, where they have to play Russian Roulette with fentanyl laced drugs, and where, you know, they once had access to a supply of legally prescribed drugs of known purity and dosage, to throw them into the, you know, the tender arms of the underground markets, where you don't know what you're getting and people really can die, very, very quickly that way.

How does that help people? And I think politicians need to come up with those kinds of answers. While they're prosecuting in Philadelphia at the federal level, look at Canada. they're going the opposite direction, at least in Vancouver, right?

So, not only do they have prescription heroin maintenance for, I think, up to fifty patients because of the paperwork involved, they have to cap it, it's too cumbersome, but fifty people are able to get pharmaceutical grade heroin from, imported from Switzerland, instead of being forced to go out and hunt on the streets for, you know, who knows what to inject.

And other patients who can't get into that program are now being able to receive prescription hydromorphone, or dilaudid, for a lot of injection drug users who've used heroin for a long time, they find that it produces very much the same or similar effect, and so it's been very -- shown to be very effective.

And so here, the state is allowing people to get, you know, pharmaceutical grade drugs of known dosage and purity, so that they can at least stay alive during these very dangerous times.

DOUG MCVAY: Indeed, and I -- as far as the supervised consumption sites, those have been springing up, and overdose prevention sites, which are, you know, basically a little more barebones, those have been springing up all across the nation of Canada. But you're right, as far as the heroin and injectable hydromorphone -- glad you caught that one.

There was an excellent, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently held an excellent two-day public workshop on opioids and the, and opioid prescribing and harm reduction, treatment, and in fact I've played some of the audio from that on the show. It's -- it has just been, I mean, there's a lot of great stuff out there.

There's a lot of great information. It scares me that it won't go anywhere. You know, I mean, we've got -- the drug strategy comes out, it's 20 pages. The Bureau of Justice Statistics is, you know, it just, it's later and later, their reports come out later and later, they don't have as much information.

They've stopped -- they do this survey, the National Criminal Victimization Surveys. This year, they put in once again some information about the offender, the race of the offender as well as race of the victim. They took that out for several years, which was interesting, because when you looked at the data, you saw that in terms of sheer numbers, white men committed more crimes, more violent crimes, than any other population group.

We're not, I mean, it's, when you get into the arrests and the prosecutions and the imprisonment, those, you know, those numbers aren't reflected. But, anyway, they finally started putting that back in, which is great.

But more and more. The CDC, I haven't seen a Hep C surveillance for a year or so. They're a little behind on some of the other, on some of the other surveillances, the HIV/AIDS. On the other hand, they're putting out a lot of information before it's really even final on overdose deaths, on opioid related deaths and overdose deaths.

It worries me. There's this great information coming out, but it, you know, will it ever see the light of day. I guess we can -- I guess we just have to keep trying, right? Sorry, I just went onto a little bit of a rant there.

SANHO TREE: There, I mean, there is no adult supervision in this government anymore. You'd think, you know, at the secretarial level, at least, you know, they might take some interest in conflicting stuff coming out, or not coming out, or being produced or not being produced. That doesn't even matter anymore.

I mean, you've got these comic book characters, from Rick Perry to Ben Carson, in charge of these agencies. It's unthinkably laughable. You know, if someone had predicted this three years ago, you would have been laughed out of the room. And that is who's running our government now.

DOUG MCVAY: Recently, Joe Biden was in the news expressing regret for his role in the, well, in creating the drug war, the modern drug war, and all these bad laws. He expressed regret. He did that about a decade ago, too, he expressed regret, said that they were well intentioned but had been misinformed.

If only they had known. If only, Sanho, if only they had known. I, I can't, the words. Just, what do you think of his expression of regret?

SANHO TREE: I think he needs to spend the next, the rest of his days expressing that regret, and undoing the horrors that he's caused. He was not just a bystander, he wasn't just going with the flow, he was one of the architects, one of the, you know, greatest cheerleaders of the modern war on drugs, and so he has special responsibility.

And it's not going to, you know, just saying you have some regrets is not going to cut it, not by a longshot. We have a number of former prosecutors, for instance, running now, that also have a lot of explaining to do, that you can't go by this, play the old school '90s playbook of being tough on drugs and thinking, you know, that's how you keep your nose clean and advance in politics.

Well, guess what? Justice has caught up with you now, and you've got some explaining to do. So for former prosecutors like Klobuchar or Harris, they also have some explaining to do. Just this morning, Kamala Harris was on a radio show and laughingly said, oh yes, of course, I smoked pot and I support legalization. You know, times have changed, all this, you know, stuff.

Well, she didn't support legalization when it was up for -- on the ballot initiative in California in 2016, and when she ran for reelection in 2014, for Attorney General, her opponent came out for legalization and her reaction to that was to literally laugh and say, well, he's entitled to his opinions, and mock him for his position.

And now we learn that she's, you know, supposedly been supporting legalization all along, or that she certainly smoked it, and enjoyed it. So she's got some more explaining to do. I mean, it's certainly not going to be amusing to the people who are behind bars because of her prosecutions.

DOUG MCVAY: See, and that's just it, we have, I mean, it feels like all someone has to do is say something that isn't stupid about marijuana and suddenly, you know, and suddenly they can be forgiven for all kinds of wrongs.

SANHO TREE: Yeah, and I also think activists really need to take the DA races very seriously. You know, those prosecutors matter, and they're not all awful. Most of them are, they're mostly not my friends, but there are some very good ones that need to be held up.

And we, you know, activists need to know that this is another way to really undo a lot of the harms of the drug war at the local level. So Philadelphia, for instance, not the federal prosecutors clamping down on the safe injection sites, but at the state level, Larry Krassner, or at the local level Larry Krassner has been a tremendous leader in terms of undoing the drug war.

Suffolk County, Massachusetts, is another place. So these races do matter, and all too often people leave that, you know, those names on the ballot, you know, they don't check them either way because they haven't really researched who to vote for. They're thinking it doesn't matter.

But if you do get a good prosecutor running for office, it's important to support them.

DOUG MCVAY: Of course, folks, I'm speaking with Sanho Tree, he's the director of the Drug Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, he's a longtime activist and social justice activist, civil libertarian, national security historian, military historian. You have done so much cool stuff.

SANHO TREE: Or I can't keep a steady job. Either way.

DOUG MCVAY: More than twenty years doing this thing, so that's not too bad.

How much use do you get from your background, the national security studies and military history? How much use is that in this drug policy field that you're in?

SANHO TREE: It's actually tremendously helpful. You know, I've had everything, a career in human rights and military diplomatic history, investigative journalism, all these things come together when you're talking about the war on drugs, particularly the international war on drugs.

This is one of the most interdisciplinary issues I've ever encountered, and that means understanding how the different pieces fit together, and one of the reasons our government and our politicians and bureaucrats haven't been able to, you know, address and implement effective drug policies is that it's -- it cuts across so many different bureaucratic silos that have enormous budgets, and they're only focused on what they're doing.

So, the drug eradication people only care about wiping out, how many hectares can you eradicate? The interdiction people only care about how many kilos can you stop? The, you know, and so on and so forth. And so there, very often they're working at cross purposes, and there's no one whose job it is to look at this from, you know, forty thousand feet and look down on it, saying, wait a minute, this is insane.

But if you look at it from the ground level of all these different bureaucracies, they're doing what's in their interests, to secure their budgets, and meet their very limited, narrow goals for the next appropriations cycle.

And so, studying institutions and how bureaucracies work is key to understanding how the drug war works, and if you ever want to stop it, you need to tackle it from that kind of altitude. Right?

And you would think the drug czar's office would be, you know, someone to look at this from the 40,000 foot level, but when Joe Biden and others helped create the drug czar's office originally, they put it in the White House. It's the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

So instead of, you know, removing it from politics and giving it some, a marginal degree of independence to really assess this thing without fear of political repercussions, they put it in the White House, so it becomes one of the most polarized aspects of White House operations.

Looking soft on drugs is something every administration has tried to avoid. And so that gets in the way of reasonable and evidence based policies, very often.

DOUG MCVAY: There was a, of course, which committee would be, would have oversight. The -- back when the thing was created, there was actually a little bit of a tussle between Biden in Judiciary and Glenn over in Government Affairs. Made more sense to me to have it in Government Affairs, because then you would have that, like, whole government kind of, you would be in position to break down silos and to actually take that forty thousand foot view.

But instead, Biden, who was the champion of this stupid office and of the stupid drug czar thing, Biden made it happen, made it stay in Judiciary. Judiciary, which meant that it was going to come from a law enforcement, criminal justice perspective. I mean, that's what they do.

SANHO TREE: Exactly. You want a big stick or a bigger stick? Those are the options. And, you know, when, I remember back in 2001 or 2002, I worked with Senator Paul Wellstone's office. This was at the beginning of Plan Colombia, and, you know, every study has shown that it's, you get far more bang for the buck if you fund treatment and prevention domestically than if you do -- try to eradicate drugs at the source.

And that was well understood. Study after study had shown that. And so we tried to get some of that money moved from the Foreign Operations account into Health and Human Services, where it could actually do some good in terms of prevention.

And you run into, instantly, the bureaucratic nightmare. First of all, no subcommittee of Congress, or committee, wants to reduce their budget. Ever. And they certainly don't want to give it to a different committee or subcommittee. And so you can reprogram some of that money in Foreign Operations, away from drug eradication, for instance, and into international tuberculosis or HIV prevention. You can do some of that here and there.

But to get it into domestic treatment, even though we all know that's where it needs to go? Is almost impossible. It's an incredibly heavy lift to work across committees, and across bureaucratic silos like that.

There's too much money involved and no one wants to give any of it up.

DOUG MCVAY: And that's where the big problem is. Like I say, it's the -- we need to start forcing law enforcement to just, okeh, prove it. Why should we think that, why should we believe that any of these programs, why should we believe that more police will help? Why?

Sounds -- just because it sounds like it should? I mean, hey, how do we --

SANHO TREE: Well, if you look at it from their perspective, again, bureaucratically, they're doing something very clever. All right? It's a win win for them. So if drug use rates start to, you know, go down a little bit, they say, ah ha, we've finally found the right formula, now let's ramp up our funding. If it goes the other direction, and people start using more drugs, they say, oh no, we have to redouble our effort, now let's really ramp up our funding.

This is how we built this incredibly huge drug war bureaucracy and squandered more than a trillion dollars in my lifetime on this problem.

President Duque, the new rightwing president of Colombia, has said that he wants to restart the aerial eradication of coca plants, this time possibly using drones. So, new and improved, with drones this time, which, you know, number one, there are lots of guns in the area, after five decades of civil war, so it will be a good opportunity for skeet shooting.

But you can't chemically eradicate your way out of this problem. You can't coerce farmers into not being hungry. You can't ignore the fact that they don't have, you know, the basic elements that we take for granted in terms of ever wanting to produce legal crops, or switching over to other types of crops.

You can't just make that happen overnight, at gunpoint, without investing in these communities. And that's what they're not doing. Next week, President Duque's coming to Washington, and, you know, the first lady of the United States is going to meet with the first lady of Colombia to talk about drugs.

I don't know what they're going to accomplish. They're not going to eradicate drugs at the source, but they can eradicate their respective husband's incredibly backwards policies, that would have much more effect.

DOUG MCVAY: That was my interview with Sanho Tree, he's a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs their Drug Policy Project. He is also a military historian and national security expert, as well as a long time drug policy reformer.

And for now, that's it. I want to 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. I’m your host Doug McVay, editor of DrugWarFacts.org.

The executive producer of the Drug Truth Network is Dean Becker. Drug Truth Network programs, including this show, Century of Lies, as well as the flagship show of the Drug Truth Network, Cultural Baggage, and of course our daily 420 Drug War News segments, are all available by podcast. The URLs to subscribe are on the network home page at DrugTruth.net.

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We'll be back in a week with thirty more minutes of news and information about drug policy reform and the failed war on drugs. 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.