06Feb
Walter Cronkite
I was a bit surprised yesterday to see a message in my email IN box from Walter Cronkite. For a split second, I thought he'd seen "Saving Carrick," discovered the website, and was offering some thoughts — good or bad. Not quite. But perhaps even more interesting was that he was writing on behalf of Ethan Nadelmann's Drug Policy Alliance.
Here's part of what he had to say about the War on Drugs in a pitch for donations to the DPA:
It surely hasn’t made our streets safer. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of people...disproportionately people of color...who have caused little or no harm to others - wasting resources that could be used for counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime, or catching white-collar criminals.
With police wielding unprecedented powers to invade privacy, tap phones and conduct searches seemingly at random, our civil liberties are in a very precarious condition.
Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort - with no one held accountable for its failure.
Amid the clichés of the drug war, our country has lost sight of the scientific facts. Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we’ve become blind to reality: The war on drugs, as it is currently fought, is too expensive, and too inhumane.
But nothing will change until someone has the courage to stand up and say what so many politicians privately know: The war on drugs has failed.
Strangely enough, I can't find a copy of the letter on the DPA website. If you want to read the whole pitch, click here.
Just a Businessman
I flew in from California on a redeye yesterday morning, and called for the van to take me to the long-term parking lot. I was alone with the driver. After some small talk about the rough flight, and the rain and wind at the airport, he asked me what I did. I told him I was a writer.
"You write for newspapers or magazines?"
"Right now I'm working on a book."
"What kind of book?"
"I'm helping someone with a memoir."
"Your own?"
"No. His."
"You're ghostwriting?"
"Yes."
"I've got a friend, I keep telling him he should write his story. I don't know how good he can write but he sure has good stories to tell."
"What's his story?"
I didn't pay too much attention to the details of the friend's lineage, but it involved his Colombian father dealing drugs and getting killed at a young age and, I think, a stepfather who was in the same business. Now the friend was, too.
"Man, he's got so many stories. He's only 20, younger than me, and he's got $5 million stashed away."
"That's a lot of money."
"He's smart. He doesn't use drugs himself. He's a businessman. He didn't make the people addicts. He just sells to them. If he didn't, someone else would."
"It's a dangerous business."
"He's smart about it, though. He's not going to get caught."
"He probably has to worry more about other dealers than law enforcement."
"Nah. People respect him, respect his family. Let's just say he has the right blood. His uncle, he was shot down in the middle of Junction Blvd. His family, it's respected. It's paid it's dues. "
"That's my point."
"Well, I keep telling his he ought to write about it. I'd be a character, a main character. But not as an autobiography or nothing. Nobody cares about a kid from Junction. He should write it as a story.
We'd arrived at the lot, and were backing up to the trailer where the office was located. The driver looked at me.
"We'll, I hope maybe I gave you a story to work with."
I looked back at him.
"I've heard it before," I said.
"Yeah," he agreed. "I guess there's a lot of stories like this."