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News (Media Awareness Project) - US: Transcript: Stossel: War On Drugs, A War On Ourselves (Part 1 of 2)
Title:US: Transcript: Stossel: War On Drugs, A War On Ourselves (Part 1 of 2)
Published On:2002-07-30
Source:ABC News
Fetched On:2008-01-22 21:53:40
WAR ON DRUGS, A WAR ON OURSELVES

ANNOUNCER This is an ABC News Special. The world is going to pot. Country
by country, drug laws are going up in smoke.

MAN That's good weed.

ANNOUNCER In Amsterdam, we found a new Dutch treat: coffee shops with
marijuana on the menu. RED Chocolate bon-bons. We have them in all three
kinds of chocolate.

ANNOUNCER And a church basement where addicts have their prayers answered.

JOHN STOSSEL, ABC NEWS Feel good? (Man nods)

JOHN STOSSEL Feel great?

ANNOUNCER But in America, police smash down doors, filling prisons with
thousands of drug offenders.

GIRL I just say my mom's living in New York. I don't like to tell them
where she is.

ANNOUNCER Now this police chief says it's a losing battle.

CHIEF JERRY OLIVER, DETROIT POLICE DEPARTMENT It's insanity to keep doing
the same thing over and over again. ANNOUNCER Should America be leading the
war on drugs or following Europe's new tolerance?

JUR VERBEEKS When we interfere, then the problem is more bigger.

ANNOUNCER The president says we have to spend billions to fight drugs
because...

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH Drug use threatens everything. Everything.

ANNOUNCER But this judge says it's time to make drugs legal.

JUDGE JAMES GRAY, SUPERIOR COURT, CALIFORNIA So, let's make it available to
adults--brown packaging, no glamour.

JOHN STOSSEL It means government as drug dealer.

ANNOUNCER So much time and money spent, is it hurting the drug trade or
Americans? Tonight, War On Drugs, A War On Ourselves.

ANNOUNCER Here is John Stossel.

JOHN STOSSEL, ABC NEWS Have you used illegal drugs? The government says a
third of you have, and about 5 percent of you use them regularly. It's
probably more, because how many people answer honestly when the government
asks? So what do we do about this? America's approach has been to go to war.

1ST OFFSCREEN VOICE What's the time?

GROUP OF POLICE OFFICERS (In unison) It's show time!

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Police departments fight the war every day.

1ST POLICE OFFICER Put your hands up.

2ND POLICE OFFICER Turn the car off!

3RD POLICE OFFICER Police! Lay on the floor.

4TH POLICE OFFICER Lay down. Lay down.

5TH POLICE OFFICER Police! Search warrant!

PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH When we fight against drugs, we fight for the souls
of our fellow Americans.

6TH POLICE OFFICER Get down. Get down.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) There's pressure on police to do more.

CHIEF JERRY OLIVER, DETROIT POLICE DEPARTMENT Pressure from the politicians
or pressure from the community to do something about it.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Jerry Oliver is Detroit's police chief.

JERRY OLIVER It puts policing in the position of being involved in tactics
that are desperate.

7TH POLICE OFFICER Police!

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) What does he mean by desperate?

JERRY OLIVER Since the transactions are normally between a willing buyer
and a willing seller, it causes the police to snoop. (In police car) Out of
state tag, 9-5... (To reporter) ...to sneak, to stoop and to snare
individuals sometimes in ways which, even though I'm in the business and I
know that it is legal, it's questionable. (In police car) It's clear down
there. You can send those decoys in.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He may say it's questionable, but on this day his
officers are out on the street pretending to be dealers. Dozens of people
drive up and ask to buy drugs. Then the cops radio ahead.

JERRY OLIVER Fourteen, she's out now. You can come make your move.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) They tell uniformed officers, 'Arrest the customer.'

1ST WOMAN What's the problem?

8TH POLICE OFFICER You know what you did there, right?

1ST WOMAN Nothing. I was attempting to buy some marijuana.

8TH POLICE OFFICER That's all you had to say, ma'am.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Fifty police officers were involved in this sting,
although most of those arrested were trying to buy less than $25 worth of
pot. Even when they make a big seizure, the head of narcotics isn't
convinced that they're making progress.

1ST MAN Last year we had probably our largest cocaine seizure in history.
However, it hasn't seemed to have an impact on drying up the amount of
drugs are that actually coming into the city.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) "Hasn't had an impact." That's the story all over
America. In the past 10 years arrests have gone up nearly 50 percent, but
the number of users and the supply of drugs has stayed about the same.

9TH POLICE OFFICER Here you go.

10TH POLICE OFFICER Got it? Got some more?

JOHN STOSSEL Are we making progress?

ASA HUTCHINSON, DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR Absolutely.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Asa Hutchinson, President Bush's choice to run the
DEA--the Drug Enforcement Administration--travels the world telling people
we're winning the drug war.

ASA HUTCHINSON Overall drug use in the United States has been reduced by 50
percent over the last 20 years.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) But was that because of government's policies, or was it
just people wising up after the binges of the '70s. (OC) Drug use is down.
It's not down lately. The last 10 years, it hasn't dropped.

ASA HUTCHINSON The--we have flat-lined. I believe we lost our focus to a
certain extent.

JOHN STOSSEL It is hard to see how we lost focus because you're spending more.

ASA HUTCHINSON I don't believe that we had the same type of energy devoted
to it as we have in certain times in the past.

11TH POLICE OFFICER Open up!

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) It's not clear how you'd measure energy, but federal
spending on the drug war has kept going up. It's up 50 percent over the
past 10 years. And President Bush wants still more.

GEORGE W BUSH ...to reduce illegal drug use in America.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And that's just the Washington money. Cities and states
spend still more.

JERRY OLIVER Up to three-quarters of our budget can somehow be traced back
to fighting this war on drugs.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Three-quarters of the budget, yet the drugs are available
as ever.

12TH POLICE OFFICER Didn't I just ask you if you had some heroin on you?

2ND MAN That was--that--I--I didn't even have this in my pocket, man.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Since the arrests fail to stop the sellers, a newer
tactic is to have authorities go after buyers.

13TH POLICE OFFICER Have a good day.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Here in Detroit, they're confiscating cars.

JERRY OLIVER This vehicle now belongs to city of Detroit's Narcotic Bureau.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) This officer's car--now chasing down a drug buyer--was
confiscated on a previous raid. They've taken so many cars, the police lot
looks like a dealership.

3RD MAN Can I take my truck home or no?

2ND OFFSCREEN VOICE No.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) It costs people $900 to get their car back.

JERRY OLIVER We're taking cars, we're taking property, we're taking houses.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Taking them and selling them. They bust up the furniture
just to get rid of it. They don't even save the TV sets. Too much trouble,
say the police. We just want to clear out the house and sell it.

2ND WOMAN Wonderful, wonderful. They should take it.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Most of the neighbors are thrilled.

2ND WOMAN Good, take the house. Take the one next to it. Take the furniture
and take the owners to court.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) But when government confiscates houses or cars and sells
them, it keeps the money. The drug war gives officials an incentive to take
more. Is this what we want, all the seizures, all the arrests?

JERRY OLIVER We will never arrest our way out of this problem. All you have
to do is go to almost any corner in any city, it will tell you that.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Oliver was once a big believer in the drug war. Not anymore.

JERRY OLIVER If we did not have this drug war going on, we could spend more
time going after robbers and rapists and burglars and murderers. That's
what we really should be geared up to do. Clearly we're losing the war on
drugs in this country. (To suspect) You told me you wasn't going to--you
was going to stop selling dope. (To reporter) It's insanity to keep doing
the same thing over and over again.

JOHN STOSSEL "Insanity?" It's an odd statement from a police chief, but we
hear the same frustration from others. In 1998 we visited this neighborhood
in the Bronx, a neighborhood struggling with drugs and crime. Four years
and 15,000 narcotics arrests later, the drug dealers are still everywhere.
The kids know where they are.

4TH MAN Every single block, find over there, over there, down there.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And the violence is constant. Every week they hear gunshots.

3RD WOMAN I fear for my child. I mean, every morning she walks to school.
What--what am I supposed to do, buy her a bulletproof vest? I mean, this is
really serious.

4TH WOMAN Gunshots going off, 9:30, 10:30, 11:30. I'm scared.

JOHN STOSSEL The government says we're winning the war on drugs.

4TH WOMAN Well, not on Briggs Avenue and 196th Street, they're not.

JOHN STOSSEL Overall, crime is down in America and in the South Bronx, too.
But drug use, the drug supply? Plentiful. If we're waging a war, it is hard
to see how we're winning.

ANNOUNCER Next, "Reefer Madness." (Clip shown from "Reefer Madness")

ANNOUNCER The movie, the myth and the truth, when we return. (Commercial break)

ANNOUNCER War On Drugs, A War On Ourselves, continues. Once again, John
Stossel.

JOHN STOSSEL We know the terrible things drugs can do. We've seen the
despair, the sunken face of the junky. No wonder those in government say
we've got to stop that, we have to fight drugs. (Clip shown from drug
commercial)

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) The government-subsidized ads are a vivid reminder of
what drugs can do to people and their families. (Clip shown from drug
commercial)

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Polls show most Americans agree, drug use should be
illegal. (Clip shown from drug commercial)

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Or as former drug czar Bill Bennett put it...

BILL BENNETT This is a deadly and poisonous activity, it should be against
the law. People should be in prison for long periods of time for doing it.
It's a--it's a matter of right and wrong.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) But when right and wrong conflict with supply and demand,
nasty things happen. Government declaring drugs illegal doesn't mean people
can't get them. It just means they get them on the black market where they
pay much more for them.

FATHER JOSEPH KANE The only reason that coke is worth that much money is
that it's illegal. Pure cocaine is three times the cost of gold. Now, if
that's the case, how are you going to stop people from selling cocaine?

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Father Joseph Kane is a priest in that Bronx neighborhood
we saw earlier.

JOSEPH KANE Peace, my brother. God bless you.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He's come to believe that while drug abuse is bad, drug
prohibition is worse because the black market does horrible things to his
community.

JOSEPH KANE There's so much money in it. I mean, it's staggering.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) The war on drugs designed to help Americans has had three
unintended consequences. First, it sucks children into the underworld.
Second it corrupts cops. And third, it creates crime. Let's take them in order.

JUDGE JAMES GRAY, SUPERIOR COURT, CALIFORNIA We are recruiting children in
the Bronx, in--in barrios, all over the nation because of drug money.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Judge James Gray is a superior court judge in Orange
County, California, who spent years locking drug dealers up. But now he's
concluded it's pointless, because drug prohibition makes the drugs so
absurdly valuable.

JAMES GRAY The money to be made from the sale of the illegal drugs is a
bigger problem than the drugs themselves.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Judge Gray drove with us through Father Kane's neighborhood.

JAMES GRAY Why should a kid in this neighborhood work in this corner
grocery when he can make five times the amount of money in an afternoon
selling drugs?

JOHN STOSSEL Is that right? Is the money that good?

GROUP OF MEN It is.

5TH MAN That's how it started out. I saw every--I saw all the things that
the drug money would get other people.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) These young men, now ex-cons, say they were sucked into
the drug trade by their local role models: the dealers. (OC) They were the
cool people in the neighborhood?

5TH MAN Yeah, you could say--that people looked up to.

6TH MAN You see somebody, you know, they got a fancy car and they got nice
jewelry and all the girls are after them, you know? And you just get that,
you know, that mentality that that's--that's the right thing to do.

JOSEPH KANE What guy would look for a job if you can make $300 an night? I
mean, it's almost un-American to say, 'I can make this much money, but I'm
not going to do it.'

JAMES GRAY It's economics 1-A. The drug money is corrupting our children.
It is corrupting ow law enforcement officers.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Corrupt cops, that's the second unintended consequence of
drug prohibition. Cops like these are seduced by drug money. They have been
for years.

3RD OFFSCREEN VOICE While you were in uniform and on duty, did you commit
thefts?

7TH MAN Yeah.

3RD OFFSCREEN VOICE What would you steal?

7TH MAN Money and drugs. JOHN STOSSEL (VO) "Money and drugs." The
temptation is so huge.

DRUG DEALER (From hidden camera) One hundred, 200, three, four, five, six...

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Here, the man on the right, a San Antonio cop, waits to
be paid after delivering what he was told was 20 pounds of cocaine. His
take is $3,000.

DRUG DEALER (From hidden camera) Three thousand.

14TH POLICE OFFICER (From hidden camera) Goddamn.

DRUG DEALER (From hidden camera) All right, man. That's yours.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) He eagerly scoops up the money.

JERRY OLIVER With all of the money, with all of the cash, it's easy, then,
to purchase police officers, to purchase prosecutors, to purchase judges.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) This drug dealer used to make $20,000 a weekend with the
help of the police. (OC) So the cops know and just...

8TH MAN Of course. How else can you exist? It's not like it's a big covert
operation. It's out in the open. The cops are just another gang.

JOHN STOSSEL Most of the time when you dealt you had some cops on your payroll?

8TH MAN Of course.

JOHN STOSSEL The third and probably worst unintended consequence is the
drug crime. Films like "Reefer Madness" have told us people take drugs,
just go crazy (sic). (Clip shown from "Reefer Madness")

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) But think about it. In reality, do people go crazy, get
violent because they're high on drugs? Rarely.

JOSEPH KANE First of all, violence comes from the fact that it's illegal.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) The violence happens because dealers arm themselves and
have shoot-outs over turf.

REPORTER (From unidentified news program) An innocent bystander is hit
during a shoot-out.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And the violence happens because addicts steal to pay the
high prices for drugs. Nicotine is about as addictive as cocaine or heroin.
But no one's knocking over 7-11s to get Marlboros or Budweiser.

JOSEPH KANE Most people are not afraid of the legal "pushers." They're not
afraid of the supermarkets selling alcohol. I don't see them shooting each
other. But if you make the substance illegal, they will use violence
because there's no other way of handling the problem.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) That's what happened in the 1920s when government made
alcohol illegal.

FILM ANNOUNCER (From unidentified film) For 13 years the idiocy continued.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) It was alcohol prohibition that gave rise to criminals
like Al Capone.

FILM ANNOUNCER (From unidentified film) Gangsterism was the national
sequel, and battles for exclusive territories erupted with a violence
unparalleled in the history of law enforcement.

JOSEPH KANE The people who were against alcohol were sincere, I suspect.
But they didn't see the implications. We know the implications in the year
2002. We know that prohibition doesn't work for alcohol. Why would it work
for anything else?

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) The profits from today's drug prohibition now funds
terrorism. The State Department says that's how bin Laden got some of his
problems.

JAMES GRAY It's the money that's really causing the problems here. The
drugs are dangerous, without question. But the drug money is turn a disease
into a plague.

ANNOUNCER Next, America's ferocious effort to cut the drug connection at
its source.

JOHN STOSSEL How much do you stop?

ASA HUTCHINSON What we're doing is increasing the risk to the traffickers.

JOHN STOSSEL Is this a way of saying that we don't stop much?

ANNOUNCER When John Stossel continues. (Commercial break)

ANNOUNCER War On Drugs, A War On Ourselves, continues. Once again, John
Stossel.

JOHN STOSSEL The drug war, say critics, is not just a war on our own
people, it's a war on other people, mostly poor people who live in
countries that produce our drugs. (VO) The United States spends billions
trying to keep drugs out of America. But no matter how much we spend or how
many special police units are trained and equipped, or how many drug
shipments police disrupt or intercept. It's had little impact on the amount
of drugs found on America's streets. They keep coming. This videotape was
made by an American drug buyer as he received a home delivery.

4TH OFFSCREEN VOICE (From video) Taking it on home to Grandma. It was a
perfect drop. Put it right in the middle of the strip.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) So where do most of these drugs come from? (OC) Here in
Colombia, South America. This is a coca plant. It grows everywhere here.
It's like a weed. The opium poppies are growing over there. (VO) Colombia
produces most of America's heroin and most of its cocaine. The coca plants
are are cultivated by farmers like these men who carve out fields in the
remote jungle. Every four months or so, they strip the plants of their
leaves and use a weed whacker to shred them. Then they squeeze the juice
out of the leaves which this farmer refined into coca powder. It took him
about a third of a year to produce a pound of it. What will he get for that?

9TH MAN (Through translator) It's worth approximately $2,200.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) They don't know exactly how much they'll get until they
go by horseback or walk--sometimes for days in the jungle--until they get
to remote marketplaces like this one. Growing coca and selling cocaine is
illegal in Colombia, but here drug traffickers openly bid for the farmers'
products. Rebel soldiers who control this area keep watch as the bartering
begins. Weight and purity are checked. This bag of powder, once made into
cocaine, will be worth about a quarter of a million dollars on the streets
of America. Now, these people know that some Americans may abuse their
product. They know it's against the law. (OC) So why are you still growing
coca?

10TH MAN (Through translator) For me and any other peasant in the region,
it's impossible to substitute what we make growing coca.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) America spent millions trying to persuade these farmers
to grow anything else, but because of drug prohibition coca and poppies are
so profitable, they've kept growing them. (OC) But the Clinton
administration had a plan. It was called Plan Colombia. They'd persuade
coca farmers to stop growing coca, to grow bananas and sugar cane instead.
How? Well, they'd use a carrot and a stick. The carrot would be that they'd
pay them something, give them some farm instruments. The stick would be, if
they didn't stop growing coca, we'd spray their fields. (VO) And we are,
spraying them with herbicide that kills the coca and many other plants,
too. The peasants have come to hate the planes.

11TH MAN (Through translator) First of all, it was the helicopters. Then it
was the airplanes. Everything around us was wet. Two days after that, the
leaves started to fall off the plants.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) That convinced them to begin ripping up their coca
plants, and hope the planes won't spray again.

KAREN HARBRED (ph) They know that--that--that--that the stick is there and
we are the carrot.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) US Aid official Karen Harbred says the carrot's all the
money America gives Colombia in hopes farmers will grow something besides coca.

KAREN HARBRED We can certainly try to help them return to a legal activity.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) But will they? Whenever a farmer does this, it just makes
coca more valuable to those who do grow it.

SANHO TREE, INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES It's the problem of--of
prohibition economics. When you try to constrict supply, then that drives
up the prices and the profits. And that lures more poor farmers into this
economy.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Sanho Tree works for a Washington group that opposes the
drug war.

SANHO TREE So we're talking about farmers who really have nothing left to
lose. This is not a moral failing on their part. They're--they're really up
against the wall. And growing coca means the difference between being poor
or starvation. And they're not going to watch their children starve.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Even if they did obey the Americans and grew bananas or
pineapples, how would they sell them? The road we took into the coca fields
was one of the jungle's best. Most of the area is accessible only by mule
or foot. The farmers can carry coca paste this way, but it's not practical
to carry the bananas and pineapples we want them to grow.

12TH MAN (Through translator) Coca is the only thing that provides what we
need to support our families.

RAND BEERS So we will spray them again until they understand.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Rand Beers, undersecretary of state, says America is not
going to sit back and let farmers grow coca, no matter how poor they are.

RAND BEERS An illegal activity is an illegal activity. And one doesn't get
a special pass for being poor. They have to recognize that every effort to
grow coca will be challenged by the government. Every work effort, every
dollar, every pound of sweat that goes in to growing that coca may be lost.

JOHN STOSSEL Even if the spraying isn't killing all the coca, it at least
reduces the amount that flows to America.

SANHO TREE Actually...

JOHN STOSSEL Isn't that good?

SANHO TREE Actually, it doesn't. It--the more money we have put into this
program, the more we spray, the more coca there is. What we've been doing
with our drug war is--is like squeezing a balloon. If you squeeze end, it
pops out the other.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And the Bush administration now admits that after the
spraying the amount of coca under cultivation increased--increased by 25
percent last year says the CIA.

SANHO TREE Then these people just go further into the Amazon, they cut down
more rain forest and they plant more coca. And meanwhile, we're chasing
them with our spray planes.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) In addition, America pays for helicopters, guns and and
military advisors, and encourages Colombia to wage war on those little
jungle factories where people convert coca plants into coca paste. The
police destroy the paste and the chemicals, and then they they poor
gasoline on everything...

COLOMBIAN POLICE OFFICER (Foreign language spoken)

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) ...and toss a grenade in to burn the shack down. They
shoot their guns to scare off any traffickers who may be watching. Then
they make a hasty retreat in case the traffickers shoot back. Did this make
a difference? Not really. Because for every factory destroyed, there are
many more in the jungle.

ASA HUTCHINSON We have not had the measure of success in the eradication
program in Colombia that we need or that we want to have.

JOHN STOSSEL How much do you stop?

ASA HUTCHINSON Well, I know what we're doing is increasing the risk to the
traffickers.

JOHN STOSSEL Is this a way of saying that we don't stop much?

ASA HUTCHINSON No, I think we--I think we stop a substantial amount.

JOHN STOSSEL Ten percent?

ASA HUTCHINSON I mean, whether you look at it as 10 percent, 20 percent or
30 percent, there is some teen-ager out there that will not be able to
afford the drug, and it results in saving somebody's life on the streets of
the United States.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And the spraying, the dumping of herbicide on acres of
Colombia? Since he admits this hasn't worked, why keep doing it. (OC)
You're squeezing the balloon. You say you've succeeded in Bolivia, but that
just moved it to Colombia. Now you're spraying Colombia, it'll move back to
Bolivia.

ASA HUTCHINSON And the answer to that is we have to put pressure everywhere
if we're going to have success. We've got to fight this battle everywhere.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) And we will continue to hunt down traffickers.

ANNOUNCER (From "World News Tonight") This is "World News Tonight" with
Peter Jennings.

PETER JENNINGS, ABC NEWS (From "World News Tonight") Good evening. The king
is dead. Pablo Escobar, the Colombian drug king.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Authorities were excited when Pablo Escobar was killed.

PETER JENNINGS (From "World News Tonight") ...gunned down today by
Colombian police.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) People said it would stop the supply of drugs. But it
didn't, because the Cali cartel stepped in. Then they were arrested.

2ND REPORTER (From unidentified news program) The arrests are a mortal blow
to the drug cartels.

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) But they weren't a mortal blow because others immediately
took their place.

ASA HUTCHINSON Yes, others came in, more independent operators, to take the
place because there are substantial profits in the cocaine business.

JOHN STOSSEL In addition, the vast profits created by drug prohibition are
beginning to tear this country apart. Law is breaking down. You think we
have drug crime in America? Here there are 10 murders a day. And now, of
all the countries in the world, the one where you're most likely to be
kidnapped is Colombia. (VO) Political leaders are especially at risk. (Clip
shown of shooting at political gathering)

JOHN STOSSEL (VO) Here, a presidential candidate is gunned down by drug
traffickers at political rally. And there have already been 15 attempts on
the life of Colombia's next president--here surrounded by his bodyguards.
He decided to leave the country. He's staying in Europe until his
inauguration next month. Colombia today is besieged by warring
factions--heavily-armed warring factions. This group, the FARCs, the
biggest. They've been fighting the government for years, and now they
videotape their battles. That's what this is. And now the fight, which was
once about politics, is mostly about drugs because the money's so huge. The
United States has declared the FARC a narco terrorist group. But our
spraying, our war on drugs, is winning the FARC new friends.

SANHO TREE We're providing optimal conditions for these armed groups to--to
recruit. Once their farms get destroyed, they have nowhere else to turn. So
they're associating the United States with death and destruction. And this
is not a way to win hearts and minds.

JOHN STOSSEL We'll come back to America in a moment.

ANNOUNCER Next...

5TH WOMAN I'm an attorney. I pay my taxes. I live a good, clean life, and
if I feel like smoking a joint when I feel like it, that's by my business.

ANNOUNCER When we come back. (Commercial break)

[Continued in Part 2 http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02.n1436.a02.html ]
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