This Is Your War On Drugs
May 20th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Got pot? If so, take comfort that you’re one of an estimated 80 million Americans who’ve at least tried the supposedly dangerous Schedule 1 drug, But do you know where your drug money actually goes? Is it funding terrorists, as the post-9/11 advertising campaign would have you believe?
Well, no, according to American Drug War: The Last White Hope, a compellingly researched new documentary by Austin filmmaker Kevin Booth that does an admirable job of following the money.
In the case of the United States’ war on drugs, the modern incarnation of which was launched by Richard Nixon in 1971, Booth makes the case that the ostensible battle is more accurately an economic incentive program for the private prison industry, funded out of self-interest by the Partnership for a Drug Free America (essentially a front group for legal drug industries, i.e. pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and tobacco) and waged by a series of increasingly ineffective administration-appointed Drug Czars, including current title-holder John Walters. You’ve never heard of him, Booth argues, because the current drug economy is working the way it should: drugs are flowing, prisons are full, and Wall Street is happy.
In painting this ugly picture, Booth traces the connections between the Iran/Contra debacle, infamous Los Angeles street dealer Ricky Ross, controversial CIA-cocaine connection journalist Gary Webb, Oliver North, Panamanian henchman Manuel Noriega, Phoenix’s tough-love anti-drug sheriff Joe Arpaio, pro-pot comedian/martyr Tommy Chong, the PATRIOT ACT, and the equally inscrutable war of terror.
Along the way, Booth questions why Afghanistan’s heroin production actually increased after the American invasion, gives Clinton-era Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey enough on-camera rope to make him look like a self-satisfied and not entirely bright tool, recontextualizes Osama bin Laden as a drug kingpin propped up by prohibition, and makes a convincing case that the drug war is not so much winnable as fund-able. The Office of National Drug Control Policy is budgeted at $18.5 billion for 2008.
Meanwhile, the burgeoning private prison industry finds itself a beneficiary of the million-plus nonviolent drug offenders currently behind bars in the U.S.
Observer fans will be curious to see reference to staff reporter Forrest Wilder’s Daily Texan reporting on the for-profit prison industry, and yet another examination of the drug war gone awry in Tulia, told through interviews with lawyer Jeff Blackburn and recently deceased fall-guy Joe Moore.
Booth’s narrative is hardly subtle (though he does manage to make it personal by including the legal and illegal drug-related deaths of his brother and friend), and the slightly ham-handed approach (Booth would have you believe that the solution to all these problems is to be found in Amsterdam-style decriminalization of “organic” drugs like marijuana and mushrooms) does a good job of hammering home the essential point: America’s war on drugs is incredibly costly, appallingly ineffective, and irretrievably entrenched.
American Drug War is strong medicine, impeccably sourced, and the DVD — which recently took top honors in four consecutive film festivals —is due to hit stores May 27. If you already agree with its premise, you’ll find further ammunition for your next argument. And if the film’s hypothesis sounds to you like just another round of paranoid conspiracy-theorizing, you just might learn something from it.
