Media

CLIFFORD WALLACE THORNTON Jr on Radio New Zealand, 'Nine to Noon' programme, interviewed by Linda Clark, Feb 2004

[Clifford is the USA's foremost Afro-American drug law reform advocate, and visited New Zealand during the summer of 2003-2004]

Missed the first few seconds of Linda's intro:
LINDA: …he says it is actually a war on the poor and it is failing. What he advocates is the legalisation of marijuana and the medicalisation of other drugs - so that doctors could prescribe cocaine and heroin, for instance - to addicts and supervise their drug taking. For the past two months he has been in New Zealand giving public lectures and meeting politicians. As you know, there is a small but vocal lobby of Members of Parliament who support the decriminalisation of marijuana, and the debate on that is very much alive here.

I caught up with Clifford Wallace Thornton Jr late last week, just before he flew back to the United States, and I began by asking him to respond to the fact that many, many people simply find his ideas unthinkable.

CLIFFORD: That is correct - they think it is unthinkable because they don't have the facts. When they start to look at programmes that the Swiss have conducted they will see that the medicalisation of heroin not only ringfences the problem, but it also cripples the black market.

LINDA: So tell me how it would work.

CLIFFORD: Well the thing is that there would be amnesty given to all heroin addicts. They would go into a clinic and they would sit down with the doctor, and the doctor would administer their dosage - per metabolic rate and heart rate - that way not causing an overdose. Over a period of time these people, instead of shooting up 3-4 times a day, will only shoot up one time a day. By regulating their dosage what happens is the individual is able to function just like you or I. That means they are able to get a job, find housing, and treat themselves like regular human beings. Let me just say this before we go on any further. I am not here promoting drug use. I am here promoting a sound, logical, reasonable approach to this problem. The other thing that I am here promoting - Decriminalisation, Medicalisation, Legalisation of all illegal drugs - is a highly conservative policy in that it seeks to limit access to these illegal drugs for our children. At present these drugs have unlimited access, and I don't care what anybody says, you can't blame anything on Legalisation, Medicalisation, Decriminalisation, because it has not happened. Everything that has ensued under the Drug War is under the watch of the authorities that are presently in office.

LINDA: But you know that what concerns people in all of this is the message that this sends to our children. And what it says - if you can go to your local doctor and be shot up with heroin - that says on one level that this is okay, that this is normal behaviour.

CLIFFORD: Well you've got to dissect that message, that 'this sends the wrong message to our children'. The wrong message has been sent to our children already. When you tell these children not to use drugs and they can walk out of the house and go right around the corner and purchase them, something is wrong with the system. And furthermore, when they look "around the world" and see big people being busted for drugs and then getting off, and the lower socio-economic people going to jail for the exact same thing - then they start to question the whole system.

So when people talk about sending the wrong message to our children you have to first of all realise that the wrong message has been sent.

The message that we are now saying that we want to send is that "we understand what you are saying but we are trying to correct the problem." And I'll tell you this. I spoke at this Rotary up in Auckland yesterday, and the young people in the audience - the 18 to 27 year olds - said that finally someone is talking about this problem the way in which it should be talked about.

What I am advocating is a highly conservative policy. And what you have in place right now is a policy that is very extreme, that has unlimited access, not only for our children but everybody else.

LINDA: So this question of unlimited access - you've said that a couple of times already - in your view we need to face up to the fact that if our kids in high school want to get hold of marijuana - or methamphetamine or cocaine even - they can, and relatively easily?

CLIFFORD: Not just the kids in high school, but your kids. And I'm not quite sure if I'm saying this correctly, but the kids lets say from 12 years on, they have unlimited access to it.

Consider this - especially when you look at things in my country - if a 12 year old gets out of bed at 3am in the morning they're going to find it very, very, very difficult to get cigarettes or alcohol. But they have no problem getting cannabis and by getting cannabis they have access to all the other illegal drugs. The drug dealer is not going to have to ask for proof or identification, all he wants is the green. Or in your case its multi-coloured.

LINDA: But the point is you have called the 'War on Drugs' - and the enormous amount of American dollars that are spent on the 'War on Drugs' - you have called it a 'War on the Poor.' How is it a war on the poor?

CLIFFORD: When you start to look at America - and look at your system too, because your system in many respects is the mirror image of the American system - there are over 6.5 million people in America in our criminal justice system. Almost two thirds of them are young, black or latino males. Almost 70% of those people in the criminal justice system who are either on probation, parole, half-way houses, jail,or prison, are there for drug related charges - 10% of the American population is in the criminal justice system - and overwhelmingly they are from the same socio-economic class. That's the 'War on Poor' people.

Just take my state for instance. Conneticut has a population of 3.3 million people. Latino males and black males make up less than 6 % of that population, but still they account for almost 68% of the prison population - with almost 70% of them being there for drug related charges.

Now we have to ask the question: Is race and class a factor in the enforcement of our drug laws and, if not, how do we prove that to sceptics? Now what I say about that is this; if one does not understand racism, white privilege, classism, terrorism, and the war on drugs - what these concepts mean and how these terms work -then everything else you do understand will only confuse you.

LINDA: So, in other words, the high proportion of black Americans jailed for drug offences cannot only be explained in your mind by the fact that drug use in the black population is very high.

CLIFFORD: No. When you look at all of the studies done by the (US) Federal government as to who uses illegal drugs, illegal drug use is pretty even across the board. But when you look at incarceration and arrest for illegal drugs, the proportion of black and brown people in America goes up, and I might note here it's the same process here in New Zealand when you look at the Maori. When you look at the Maori that are in prison - and we're talking about Maori and the Pacific Islanders - those percentages go up to almost 70%. Now when we look at every Maori vs every Pakeha in NZ we see that for every Maori imprisoned for - lets say cannabis use - there are 5 to 6 pakeha who do the same type of drugs, sell the same type of drugs. But the closest they ever get to a prison cell is watching a prison programme on a flat screen TV.

LINDA: So they get a better lawyer, they get a better defence, they get off?

CLIFFORD: Well they get a better lawyer, they get a better defence. But even better than that is that thing that you look at - that white colour on your skin.. That boils down to white privilege.

You've got to understand that white privilege is different in racism - in that most pakeha don't realise that they have it. Go into a department store - and have I haven't done it here but I've done it in America many times - where I will walk in with one of my white colleagues and unequivocally they (store detectives) will follow me around the store. So this is just one example of white privilege. And there are many more articles I can forward to you, but the time allotted here, I don't think I can go into real great depth with it.

However, when I spoke at the Rotary in Auckland just yesterday - which is most fresh in my mind - I talked a lot about race, but they didn't seem to want to talk about race. But race, above the drug war, is much more important than the drug war.

LINDA: So they didn't want to acknowledge that there was a race component here?

CLIFFORD: That's right. And see, the driver behind the drug war is money, of course. The way in which it keeps going on is that throughout the world - and I was at the Race Relations World Conference yesterday and they were echoing my thoughts - black and brown people are the ones that go to jail for illegal drug use. Not only in America, not only in New Zealand, not only in England, but throughout the world. That is the way in which this thing called the 'War on Drugs' is kept going.

If we in fact arrested whites for illegal drug use we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Because there would literally be armed insurrection in the streets.

LINDA: Although more recently, in New Zealand at least, we have seen more European New Zealanders - more Pakeha - arrested because this thing called P has got everybody in the grip of a fear and it seems to have a higher spread in European - or Pakeha - communities.

CLIFFORD: You have to make sure that you check that out thoroughly. Now before I got here, two months ago the UN issued a statement saying that New Zealand was no. 2 in world P consumption. And I knew for a fact before I got here the papers were all going to be proliferated with all kinds of P stories because this thing works like this all over the world. You get a scare, you instil the fear in people about this particular drug, whether its P - or crack in my country during the 80s - to make the people feel that there is a real danger. And I'm not saying that there is not a danger in it, but the thing that I have to say is you have to check out what the authorities are saying and is this truthful?

LINDA: So what are you saying? That what has happened in other places is you get a kind of moral panic orchestrated by the authorities who want the money to run the drug wars?

CLIFFORD: That is correct. And what I am saying here is going to be backed up in April, the 4th through the 14th , where we're going to bring in a group called LEAP from the US and really all over the world. And they're going to tell you the same things I'm telling you about the way which these programmes are conducted, and it just substantiates exactly what I'm saying.

If you understand anything, understand this: the war on drugs has absolutely nothing to do with drugs. Its about power, its about control, its about coercion, its about money. That's all it is about, and all these messages that they are sending, saying we're sending the wrong messages to our children, is absolutely incorrect.

LINDA: Well, except that at the moment the New Zealand Police want more resources to crack down more on the P labs, because that's what they're targeting. And in a sense isn't that right? Because if they could track down the amptetamine labs then wouldn't that dent the trade - wouldn't that dent the supply?

CLIFFORD: Lets understand whats happening here. In my country, and probably in yours, we have had almost 9 decades of drug prohibition. We are going into our 4th decade of the 'War on Drugs.' My country has spent almost a trillion dollars on interdiction alone, and yet there are more drugs at cheaper prices on our streets than ever before.

The thing that we have to understand is that the economics behind this are tremendous. Through the strategy of prohibition and the war on drugs we have made these drugs worth more than gold. For instance, the above ground economy can not compete with the underground economy. When you look at what it costs to produce a pound of cocaine, a pound of heroin - and we don't have the full statistics on P yet as it exists in this country - but when you look at heroin, for instance, it only costs about $100 to produce a pound of heroin. It costs $1300 to produce a pound of cocaine. And all the while, going through all the channels of distribution of these illegal drugs,- people are making money. For instance, if I sell it for $1300 I want $2200 in return. And by the time it hits the streets of America its worth $80,000 upwards.

You can't compete with that. Its impossible to compete with because that is tremendously above the gold standard. And secondly, the other important thing is we're not asking the right questions - after all of this time - the question that we have to ask is "are people going to stop using these illegal drugs?" The overwhelming response is 'no'.

LINDA: Yes but why is that? Because isn't the fundamental question "Why do so many people get out of it?"

CLIFFORD: People use drugs for two reasons, and two reasons only. First of all to increase the pleasure and all of those variables within the pleasure dome. Or to decrease the pain and all of those variables within the pain dome. People don't use drugs for any other reason. They use them in those two domes.

You've got to understand - we talked about the economics -why we can't win this particular war. And the other is basic human nature; people are going to use drugs.

So the thing we have to do is ringfence the problem so it only affects those people that are using these illegal drugs at present. The only way you are going to do that is to first-of-all bankrupt the world economy of illegal drugs. By legalising cannabis outright, by medicalising methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy, and decriminalising all of the rest for future debate and true and honest medicinal study. Again, I'm asking for a logical and reasonable approach to this problem.

LINDA: So under the approach you said at the outset - if you were a heroin addict now, and medicalisation of heroin, for instance, became the norm - then the heroin addict goes to the doctor and shoots up under supervision, and their intake of the drug is monitored and kind of normalised I suppose?

CLIFFORD: That is correct.

LINDA: But then what happens to the would-be heroin addict? Not that anyone wants to be an addict, I mean the person who wants to take heroin in a months time? Can they go and get the heroin?

CLIFFORD: This is the thing. They're going to go into the doctor and the doctor is going to sit down and explain to them exactly, honestly, and truthfully what this drug is capable of doing. And if in fact they feel as though they still want to do it then by all means do it.

But the thing you have to understand here is that once you have ringfenced the problem the black market is going to go away. Therefore over a period of a year or so the thought of putting a needle in your arm is going to be so bad. Its bad now, but its going to be even worse.

Let me just say this now: If it was medicalised tomorrow I still don't think most people would want to go in to try it. When you remove the 'forbidden fruit syndrome' you get a lot of people away from it. And I say this because talking to a bunch of college students, a bunch of them have told me that if they legalise lets say, cannabis, then you take away the intrigue that we have to go through to get it. Its going to be more or less like alcohol, which in many cases is very boring.

LINDA: But if its human nature to experiment, to try drugs, the 'forbidden fruit,' if you legalise and medicalise these substances, don't you just open up the possibility that someone somewhere is going to come up with something new?

CLIFFORD: When you talk about opening up something new, its going to be invented more in an illegal market as opposed to a legal market.

Now lets just look at alcohol. When you look at alcohol prohibition you get all of those signs. During alcohol prohibition there were all types of concoctions made up that literally killed people. But once it came under or inside of the law those concoctions dissipated. The thing we have to understand is that now most people that drink throughout the world drink wines or lesser things like beer, as opposed to the harder alcohol.

LINDA: The alcohol analogy or comparison is an interesting one, because yes there was the prohibition, then the legalisation. Certainly following the legalisation of alcohol and the generations that have passed since, more people drink alcohol now than did before. And in a country like New Zealand - where a lot of health commentators will tell you our attitudes to alcohol are not particularly mature - alcohol consumption is a major health issue in this country. It is killing people, not because they are drinking some kind of hokey they've bought in the mountains, that they've bought on the black market, but simply because they cannot moderate their intake of this legal substance.

CLIFFORD: When you look at alcohol, first of all there are not throughout the world more people drinking the harder alcohol. They are drinking the beer and the wines. And secondly you are correct, you are going to have those problems. But when you look at alcohol and cigarettes, they are worse than all of the illegal drugs that we are talking about.

So we have legalised two substances that in all actuality are worse than all of the illegal drugs combined. Because when you look at the statistical analyses, we see time and time again that more people are dying from alcohol alone than all of the people who are dying from these illegal drugs. And secondly, when you start to look at and compare these things, we're not thinking about making alcohol illegal. Because if we do we're going to have the same type of problems that we do with the illegal drugs, so that's backtracking.

Are we going to have problems with alcohol? Yes. Are we going to have problems with illegal drugs if they are legalised, medicalised, and decriminalised? Yes. But we are not going to have the types of problems which we have today. We can always go in and tweak it and make it work.

And again, understand that these illegal drugs are far less nefarious than the legal ones, even under the present system, which is an insane system. The insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And that's what we're doing with the drug war.

LINDA: Tell me how you got so passionate about this?

CLIFFORD: Well it was two weeks before I was to graduate high school when a gentleman came to my door. And after my grandmother spoke to him my grandmother instructed me to accompany the gentleman. He took me to a field of abandoned cars, where under one of those abandoned cars was the body of a naked woman. She was my mother, who had died from an apparent heroin overdose.

Now at that particular time I thought that all illegal drugs should be eradicated from the face of the earth. But as I watched, decade after decade, my native Hartford, Conneticut go downhill, I began to challenge what they were doing.

And it was an incident that happened just by chance. I was in the company of two top-flight medical surgeons and I started to tell them the story about my mother. And they sat me down and they said "Clifford let me explain to you what this drug war, and heroin in particular, are about." They were saying that they were using heroin to steady their nerves for the surgery. And that if, in fact, my mother was under medical supervision she would still be living today.

You've got to understand that pure heroin is the perfect pain reliever, in that it does not destroy body tissue. Conceivably an individual can be on pure heroin and never show the ill effects, maybe a little constipation or diahorrea. And those doctors look very prominent to me. And also they said that when you get ready to kick heroin within your mind we just start decreasing the dosage and slowly but surely wean you off of it. And that made a lot of sense to me, and it changed my life forever.

LINDA: Did you know at the time you had to identify your mother's body that she was a heroin user?

CLIFFORD: I know she was doing things that I was totally unaware of. You have to understand this was back in 1963 - where the mountains of data we have today - we didn't have them during that particular time. And no, I didn't, but as I think back now, all of the signs were prevalent. But I couldn't recognise them because I didn't understand the problem. Like, for instance, staying out late at night, sleeping all day, never having time for me and my brothers, and always in and out of prison for one thing or another. It was kept from me as to exactly what she was doing at that particular time.

And see, this is how life works. You don't really know how your life is going to shape, but all the way through it you are being pushed in a direction. My wife and I - when the children were all out of the house- we started doing a public affairs show and we did a public affairs show over the radio, from abortion, race relations, to domestic violence, to even interviewing prominent politicians that were running for office at that particular time. And everything we picked up somehow, someway led back to the drug problem. We decided we had something there, so we put together one generic show on 'Drugs in America' and that got a tremendous amount of interest.

So we put together three one-hour shows on illegal drugs. The first dealt with the history of illegal drugs in America. The second dealt with the crime and violence associated with illegal drugs in America. The third dealt purely with the economics - the money that we were spending to fight the 'War on Drugs.' Well, telephone lines in the radio stations went down. People were calling asking for lectures, workshops, speak to this group and that group. So we decided we had to learn more about it.

We started travelling all over the world to see just what was in place and what was working, versus what didn't work. I didn't arrive at what I advocate now lightly. It took me 40 years, but again, I'll tell you, the information available now was not available some 40 years ago.

LINDA: The politicians though, and ultimately its in politicians hands, find this too hot to handle.

CLIFFORD: Well this is the story: We all know politicians are cowards, and many of them are incompetent. First of all, many of them don't understand the issue very well. And secondly, they have three things they have to worry about: Getting elected, getting elected, and getting elected. That's all they are concerned with.

And the way in which the public goes is the way in which they will go. The interesting thing is that once the public is thoroughly educated - honestly- about what transpires, then you will see things start to change. The young people, not only in this country but in America, understand and know that this war is an abject failure and its ruining millions of lives. They are coming on board and are supportive of us. And again, I'm not talking about or promoting drug use. They're looking at a sound logical approach to the problem also. They understand that what we are doing hasn't worked, and it never will work. Politicians in many respects are the scum of the earth.

LINDA: Yes, but its one of those debates where fear plays such a major role. Its almost like a character in the debate. Not just politicians, I think parents are frightened. I mean I think that fundamentally there is an agreement that whatever is happening now is - kind of - it isn't working. We do know drugs are available and we wish they weren't, but it's the fear of your kind of suggestions you are making, its fear of the unknown. Meaning what we've got now is not great, but what if what you are suggesting turns out to be worse?

CLIFFORD: Well, how can it be worse when what we have now has been an abject failure? I'm talking about putting the failure where it should have been at the outset - I'm talking about in the health arena - where it should be, as opposed to law enforcement. Would you ever think about sending in the law to stamp out a virus? This is the thing we have to understand about law enforcement: The law is very good at protecting you against me and me against you. However, when you look at the drug problem, the law enforcement is trying to protect me against myself. Its not going to happen. You would have to have a cop in every house 24/7 to monitor what people are doing. And that's not going to happen. We have to understand that these drugs are here to stay, and we have to ringfence the problem and confine it to those persons who choose to use.

LINDA: That was Clifford Wallace Thornton Jr, he's a leading African American activist. He was in the country over the last couple of months and I think he flew out Friday. We talked to him just before he left New Zealand.