From: "Paul Hager" <hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: My interview will air Oct 7, on Ch. 18, West Lafayette, IN
Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 00:45:42 -0500

	The title says it all.  I was interviewed for the "Dealing
with Drugs" segment of the Ch. 18 news.  I spoke in my capacity
as the ICLU Drug Policy Task Force Chair and as a member of the
Drug Policy Foundation.  Although I didn't say anything that
hasn't been presented on the net at one time or another, my
interrogator, Jeff Smith, seemed completely captivated.  We 
ended up going through 2 complete 15-min tapes and were well
into a 3rd when we stopped.  Jeff said that the interview went
about 4 times longer than usual.  The actual segment on the news
only runs about 2 minutes so he's going to have a lot of material
from which to select.

	In describing alternatives to the drug war, I told Jeff
that my own position was full legalization.  However, I said, there
was a broad coalition opposing the drug war with people like me,
William F. Buckley, and Milton Friedman representing the full legalization
position and people like Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore representing
the medicalization position -- which I then described.  I got some
digs in against Clinton's idea of boot camps and "shock training", 
likening them to concentration camps or Bedlam-style insane asylums.

	I presented the idea of "victimless crimes" and said that the
drug laws created such a category.  Jeff wanted me to react to a 
scenario: 3 cops bust a guy in a trailer park for 1/2 kilo of pot
and call in several backup cars.  I said that scarce police resources
were spent to apprehend a person doing no measurable harm to society
while possible thefts or assaults -- crimes WITH victims -- were
taking place.  I said that was the tradeoff that the drug war
forced us to make and said that there was evidence to support that
this tradeoff was real and not theoretical (I cited Rasmussen and
Benson).  Jeff said that the show usually presents the latest bust and
that the segment with me would be a departure.  This led me to 
believe that they will show the bust that he described with me
providing the voice over.

	Jeff wanted to know if I thought legalization would
ever come about.  I said that I firmly believed that reason and
accurate information always prevail in the long run -- thus that
it was inevitable that the drug war would end.  I said that the
public is ultimately pretty smart and will respond if facts are
put fairly before them.  I said some things about alcohol prohibition
and how the public became fed up with the gang wars fought with
machine guns, the rise of organized crime, and the use of children
as drug couriers for alcohol -- "does any of this sound familiar?"
I said.  Once the public became aware that we had a prohibition
problem and not a drug problem, change would come swiftly.

	One interesting moment came after the interview.  The
subject of crack came up.  Earlier I had said that the Surgeon
General had identified tobacco cigarettes as the most addictive
drug and Jeff came back to that asking, "but what about people
selling their bodies for crack?"  I answered that, at the end
of WWII, there were a lot of people in Europe who were selling
their bodies for psychoactives like chocolate and tobacco.  I
said that price and demand were the key factors in the equation
and that in conditions of scarcity, either through unavailability
and/or black market price, such behavior was to be expected.

	The interview will be edited down and will air on the 
6 o'clock news on October 7.  Jeff promises to send me a VHS
copy so I'll get a chance to see how I come off.

ADDENDUM:

	On the way back to Bloomington, I stopped off at a
MacDonald's to get a burger and fries.  I became aware that the
music that was being piped in was 60s psychedelic.  As I settled
down to eat, what should come on but White Rabbit -- for a moment
I thought that I had been transported into a Hunter S. Thompson
road novel: call it "Fear and Loathing in Lafayette".  The kids
behind the counter had no idea what was going on -- their little
DARE-indoctrinated minds didn't realize the deprogramming that
was taking place -- wouldn't realize it until it was too late and
they were waist deep in lizards and pulling out their own eyeballs.
Snapping from my reverie, a moment of chilling confusion: had I
merely THOUGHT about the lizards and the Oedipus bit, or had I
yelled it out loud?  I very quietly and deliberately got up and
walked out.

[with apologies to HST]
-- 
paul hager		hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu

"I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
                       --from _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt
Newsgroups: alt.drugs