Transcript for VOJNA s drogami (The WAR on drugs with Clifford W. Thornton Jr.)

I have the opportunuity to do a short interview with Mr. Clifford Thornton Jr on the subject of the WAR on drugs

What is happening with the drug situation is that

every year the total for drug arrest goes up.

And the reason for that is that more and more people are starting to use drugs.

The last statistical analysis taken by the UN says

drug use has risen over the world something like 12 percent,

especially among young people.

And see, one of the reasons why people like myself do the work we do

is because we understand that.

And young people, if we can cut the number of young people getting into using drugs,

then we have a better chance of stopping people from going on into harder drugs.

And understanding that young people get into drugs basically through the illegal drug market,

that is, through marihuana.

What we want to do is legalize marihuana outright to cut the access.

Most people don't realize that

what we have in place right now with the war on drugs and drug prohibition

is that we have a very liberal market.

and what that means is that anyone that wants to secure the drugs can get them.

And we're talking eight, nine, ten year olds.

And it is much harder to find, or buy or purchase alcohol and cigarettes

because those drugs are inside of the law

and they are easier to combat and come down on proprietor selling the illegal to young people.

So to answer your question Pinky,

those figures have been rising from the last 15 to 20 years when they started taking statistics on that.

And its gonna get exceedingly worse.

And the main tenets of the drug war is first of all,

to interdict as many drugs as possible,

to drive up the price so people can't regularly secure these drugs

and secondly to keep them away from our children.

Those two main tenets of the drug war has absolutely failed.

FAILED

So the question we should be asking is this:

Do you think it's a good policy to have a rate of interdiction of less than 10 percent

and spending 50 billion dollars for 90 percent failure rate?

Is that a good, proper vision?

And when we loook at the overal situation of this Pinky,

and talk about how drugs proliferate in this society,

we have to understand and ask two questions:

Do you think that the war on drugs is worth?

and secondly, more important question:

Do u think that people will ever stop using these drugs?

Drug war has absolutely failed.

FAILED

Let's create a simple equation, Pinky.

One one side you have the drug dealers and the drug cartel.

And we're talking about a worldwide economy,

according to UN, of 600 billion dollar a year, underground illegal drug market.

On the other side of the equation you have the authorities,

you're talkin' about the prison system, you're talkin' about the lawyers, the doctors, the urine industry,

you're talkin' about all of the counselors that you need, so forth and so on.

Both sides are depend upon each other for their existence!

Because what keeps them in place, in the middle of this equation,

are the laws governing drug policy.

The drug policy keeps these both sides of the equation in business.

I don't go talk to people expecting them to change their mind.

What I do expect is the information that I give them

is now for them to put this infromation through critical thinking.

Critical thinking is something that is lacking in today's society.

It's more or less a immature reaction to problems and so forth.

Again, when you talk about radical or revolutionary things, you're only talking about one thing:

the redistribution of income and wealth.

And tha'ts what people are most afraid of.

AFRAID OF