Guests on this program were: Kevin Pollak, Joseph Califano, Ken Curtis,
Morgan Fairchild

{snip}

Panel Discussion

Bill: Let us meet our panel. He is a privacy activist and the founder of
privacy protection services, Ken Curtis. Ken!

[ Applause ]

How are you, Ken?

He's the chairman of Columbia University's national center on addiction and
substance abuse, Joe Califano.

Joe!

[ Applause ]

Hey, former cabinet secretary, we should have mentioned that in your -- she
is an actress, author, activist and fantasy figure in this one.

She is performing in Garry Marshall's "Crimes of the Heart" at the Falcon
Theater in L.A., Morgan Fairchild.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Hello, gorgeous.

Morgan: Love being your fantasy figure, honey.

Bill: You always are. He co-stars with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the huge
new movie "End of Days." They'll be killing lots and lots of people in
theaters everywhere starting Wednesday, Kevin Pollak.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Okay, well, Ken, you know, I -- boy that stinks.

Kevin: Thank you.

Bill: But I defend your right to smoke it.

Kevin: And stink.

Bill: And stink.

Kevin: Sure.

Bill: But, Ken -- I read your thing in the intro there, what is your title
there?

Ken: Well, I sell my urine, I'm not sure I have a title.

Bill: Well, there was one in --

Ken: Privacy protection services.

Bill: Privacy protection services. You sell your pee.

Ken: I sell my pee. I am the pee man.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: For people who have upcoming drug tests.

Kevin: Oh, I see.

Bill: We live in a Soviet-style country now.

Ken: We do, it's very repressive.

Bill: We knocked the Berlin Wall down, and we brought communism here.

Ken: That's good.

Bill: We violate people's fourth and fifth amendment right and make them
take drug tests. And Ken subverts this by, for $69, will sell them his pee.

[ Laughter ]

He is not the only one. Tommy Chung has a thing called "Urine Luck."

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

Joseph: Now, wait but --

Bill: But Tommy Chung isn't here. If he wants to come and plug his pee, let
hit come on this show.

Joseph: Far be it for me to get into a pissing contest with you.

[ Laughter ]

But I hope you don't sell to airline pilots.

Ken: Yeah, right.

Kevin: To guys that run trains.

Ken: Well, I don't support reckless behavior in jobs.

Joseph: Of course not, but anybody can buy the urine.

Ken: I will sell my urine to anyone that wants to protect their privacy
rights.

Kevin: But will you sell it before its time? That's really --

[ Laughter ]

Bill: You mean, like wine.

Ken: Always make a production run, but I don't sell it before its time.

Bill: Right. Okay, so you're saying that the safety of people --

Joseph: Is very important.

Bill: Is very important.

Joseph: It's like second-hand smoke. It's like the danger of second-hand
smoke.

Bill: Is it more important than the Constitution of the United States?

Joseph: Of course.

Ken: Is it more important --

Bill: Of course it is?

Joseph: Of course, you have to recognize, you know, you can't yell, "Fire"
in a theater, remember that old saying?

Bill: Right.

Joseph: Okay. Selling urine to guys that are flying -- that are using pot
and flying airplanes or running trains or driving buses with school
children on it is yelling "Fire" in a theater, and that's dangerous.

Bill: Yeah, but Joe, now, they want to drug-test lots of people, like
teachers.

Joseph: Look, we're not gonna --

[ Talking over each other ]

Bill: There's lots of people who are not driving trains who have to undergo
a drug test.

Joseph: We are not gonna drug-test our way out of the drug problem in this
country. I couldn't agree with that more. It's individual choice. It's
family values. It's all the stuff I know you believe in deeply, Bill.

Ken: It's individual responsibility and common sense.

Kevin: You'll sell it to anyone, though, right?

Ken: I'll sell it to anybody who wants to protect their privacy rights. My
product has no bearing whatsoever on workplace safety. The National Academy
of Finances comes out year after year and says workplace drug testing has
no impact whatsoever on workplace safety. It's a statistical fact. Ever
since the inception of drug-testing, workplace activists have not gone down.

Joseph: I don't want my child's bus driver when my 6-year-old is going to
school --

Ken: Neither do i, but there's better ways to do it.

Joseph: -- Smoking pot and buying your urine in order to avoid --

Ken: There are much better ways to assure your child's safety than
drug-testing someone at the point of hire. That bus driver should have to
pass an impairment test everyday before he climbs on that school bus. When
a highway patrolman pulls you on the side of the road --

Joseph: If you give him the urine when he goes in to take that little test
on the day before he goes to drive, uses your urine --

Ken: They don't test 'em every day though, Joe. They test 'em once when
they're hired.

Joseph: No, no, they should test kids that are driving --

Ken: They should test them every day. If we're interested in safety, we
should do impairment testing, not urine sampling.

Bill: They just let 11 kids die because they climbed this preposterous,
stupid bonfire-thing. That somehow is okay, but let's make sure --

[ Applause ]

Joseph: Bill --

Bill: That everybody is tested all the time.

Joseph: I think that bonfire thing is preposterous. They shouldn't allow
that any more than they should allow sororities and fraternities to say
that a guy has to drink a whole fifth of liquor without stopping before he
can become a member, and lots of kids die and get sick from that. I agree
with you on that.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: I don't know, I was never a fraternity member. You were.

Kevin: Hello?

Bill: No? You have a cigar?

Kevin: I have a cigar. I was a member of that fraternity, yes, I am.

[ Laughter ]

And I certainly don't need anyone's urine to say so. We have a kitten, you
now, we got to take in for the shots and they said they wanted a stool
sample for the cat. Would you provide --

Ken: I never got into that yet, but we might expand it. If they start
looking into our bowel movements, I guess I'll start providing that too.

Morgan: What I want to know is why -- what kind of circle of friends do you
have if you have no buddy that can provide with you a clean urine sample?

Bill: That's right.

Morgan: Free of charge, free of charge.

Ken: Well, there are really very few people that can offer the kind of
sample that I do. I lead an exceptionally clean lifestyle, I don't do any
drugs. And there are very, very few people that can offer up a sample that
is absolutely clean of all substances.

Bill: And it makes -- yes, it makes a good point about the fact that, you
know, when, Joe, your group partnership for a drug-free America, America is
not drug-free.

Ken: And never will be.

Bill: Very few people have a friend that's not on some drug, although it
may be a legal one.

Ken: And there's a lot more reasons than just illegal drugs not to provide
a urine sample. There are all kinds of informations that are gained from a
urine sample that have nothing to do with illegal drugs. This is a privacy
issue. If they are interested in safety, there are better ways and less
invasive ways to achieve safety than looking into somebody's urine. They
can get DNA, which the government that is called for databasing.

Bill: And hold your water. I got to take a commercial.

[ Laughter ]

Announcer: Join us tomorrow when our guests will be Lynn Redgrave, Larry
Flynt, Victoria Jackson and Bob Enyart.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right, let's -- Ken, let's get off your bladder and onto a
related topic.

There is a big trial that's been going on out here, two men who were
involved just pleaded guilty 'cause they had to, and I said before that I
think, you know, drugs -- certainly kids shouldn't be doing them, certainly
we should take it seriously, but is it worth subverting the Constitution
and losing democracy?

Okay, in this trial, these two men, Peter McWilliams and Todd McCormack,
were on trial because, basically what they had done was grown marijuana
based on the 1996 voter-approved referendum out here, proposition 215.

You remember it. They passed medical marijuana.

Okay, in the trial now, the government, the prosecutors contended and won
from the judge that they were not allowed to mention in the trial that they
had cancer, that they had AIDS, that proposition 215 passed.

They weren't allowed to mention these things in the trial because it would
confuse the jury, because juries are confused by relevant facts.

[ Laughter ]

Is stopping drugs worth ruining what this country stands for, I guess is my
question, Joe.

Joseph: Oh, of course.

Bill: Not to load the issue.

Joseph: Bill, of course not. That's not what we're about. In that trial --

Bill: But that's what they're doing.

Joseph: In that trial, those two individuals were indicted for sell -- for
growing and distributing --

Bill: That's what the government says.

Joseph: 6,000 marijuana plants. They pled guilty to that, 6,000 marijuana
plants.

Bill: Because they were not -- they pled guilty because they had no other
choice.

Joseph: It's the selling and distributing that was the crime, not the using --

Bill: But they weren't selling and distributing. That's what they -- the
pled guilty to that.

Joseph: They did plead guilty to that --

Bill: Because -- they pled guilty because they were not allowed to
introduce and say to the jury, "I have cancer and the state passed medical
marijuana."

You don't think barring those two facts from the trial was wrong?

Joseph: Those facts are gonna be relevant --

[ Applause ]

Bill: Wait, wait -- not allowed to tell the jury those two facts?

Joseph: They are allowed -- that will be relevant in their sentencing, okay?

Bill: Their sentencing?

[ Laughter ]

Ken: It sounds a little late, doesn't it?

Bill: It's a little late.

Kevin: Whoa, whoa, whoa. They're in the -- "I'm dying, I need the pot."

Joseph: They had enough plants there to make about 10 million joints.
That's more than they need to take care of their own problem.

Ken: That's simply not true. They were using a growing technique called the
Sea of Green, which is -- which grows very, very small marijuana plants.
It's a genetic type --

Morgan: Ken, you know a lot about this.

Ken: I do know a lot about this. I do know a lot about this. I've been in
contact with them all along throughout this trial process.

And what this was, was a end run by the federal government to get around
proposition 215, they came in and subverted the state's rights and went
against the referendum of the people in this state to prosecute these
people for something that is well within their rights to do and less
harmful than aspirin.

[ Applause ]

Joseph: Let me just make one -- there's a very important distinction here.
Medical marijuana is an issue for doctors, for scientists. If it helps
people, if we find out that it helps people, fine.

Bill: Find out?

Joseph: Wait a minute, Bill, but just let me finish 'cause you went through
this quickly. When you're moving at that level, hundreds of thousands of
dollars involved here incidently, this is not some guy sitting at home --

Ken: There's no evidence whatsoever of any money being made on this
marijuana, Joe, none.

Joseph: Nonsense, nonsense, all you have to do is read the paper.

Bill: I did.

Joseph: All right, $120,000.

Ken: Is there any evidence that they made money? He gave them a book advance.

Ken: He's a publisher.

Joseph: 6,000 marijuana plants, come on.

Ken: He is publisher --

[ Talking over each other ]

Bill: But this is the problem, is that the people who are prosecuting the
drug war know nothing about drugs. Barry McCaffrey didn't know what a bong
was. And I'm sorry, Joe, but you don't know what 6,000 pot plants are, and
they're not for distribution. They were not for that. And they could not
add up to 100,000 joints.

Ken: Who is going to supply medical marijuana? If somebody doesn't stand up
and grow it, who is going to supply it to the people who need it? The
government?

Joseph: They were growing these plants --

Ken: There are three people in this country that have medical marijuana.

Joseph: You're wrong about that.

Kevin: They were growing the pot because the government wasn't supplying
them enough, or the quality wasn't good enough?

Bill: Well, when does the government ever supply --

[ Laughter ]

Is that where you're getting it from, Kevin, the government? I got to get
your connection.

Kevin: Right. But this is what I'm asking, is that --

Bill: Well, because proposition 215 passed in '96, where the people --
somehow the will of the people, the conservative byword, the will of the
people, somehow when the people are for marijuana or gay marriage or
assisted suicide, suddenly the will of the people goes right out the window.

[ Applause ]

Suddenly the people are morons who have to be corrected.

Ken: The reason that the government is against medical marijuana is because
the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance industry are tied in with
trying to make Marinol, which is a derivative or pharmaceutical copy of
marijuana. They can't make money. The government can't make money off of
it. The pharmaceutical companies can't make money off of marijuana.

Bill: But Ken, once again I have to make money, and we will do so right now.

Bill: All right, so we were talking about medical marijuana. I know, Joe,
that is not your issue, and you are -- yeah.

Joseph: I really want to make the point. Medical marijuana is not the issue
for us.

Bill: Yeah.

Joseph: The issue for us is nonmedical marijuana being used by kids and the
danger of those -- that's where it's at.

Bill: And today there is something we can agree on, which is that the news
came out from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America --

[ Laughter ]

I laugh at that, you know, because it's a truth, because America's not
drug-free.

Joseph: Well, kids are getting smarter about it.

Bill: But the kids aren't taking less drugs and I've always been for --
kids should not take drugs. Kids should not take drugs.

[ Applause ]

Kevin: What is the age cutoff for a kid, by the way?

Bill: When they can smoke a cigar, Wise-ass?

[ Laughter ]

But however, you know what was in the same article? You know what they're
getting a lot more of? Piercings and tattoos.

Kevin: Ouch.

Morgan: Why, why?

Joseph: You walk down the street in New York -- ears, noses, tongues.

Kevin: And you're talking about the on the job having to go to the --
having the urine sample. To me, the piercing has to stop for the service --
food service industry. You know, when the waitress that takes the order has
a bolt through her tongue, I get nauseous, literally. I don't understand that.

Bill: Oh, you don't find that sexy?

Kevin: No, not when I'm eating -- food.

Morgan: And, Bill, tell us why you find that sexy.

Kevin: Hello.

Bill: Because I've felt it.

[ Laughter ]

Kevin: Whoa!

[ Applause ]

Bill: I don't need to say where I felt it.

Ken: I think the two issues are tied together. I think that the children
are rebelling against their parents by tattooing and piercing as well as
not taking drugs, you know? They do exactly the opposite of what the
parents do.

Bill: They're like, "If George Bush was on drugs, I don't want any part of
that."

Ken: That's right.

{snip - went on to unrelated topics}