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The Great Debate (Part 2)
The event: The Debate of the 21st Century on "The Future of American Drug Policy" (held in New York City in October).
The participants: Republican Activist William Bennett and Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel vs. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke.
Part 2: Each debater was given 2 minutes to rebut the first round comments.
What to watch for:
 William Bennett: Trying desperately to dump his debating partner, and clinging to his one-statistic argument.
Gary Johnson: Bats around Bennett's statistic, and gives a human interest story on mandatory sentencing.
Charlie Rangel: Still thinks he's debating education policy, and then, apparently to his view, sarcastically suggests growing drugs in America.
Kurt Schmoke: Continues to push harm reduction and uses tobacco to show how ridiculous prohibition is.
Here's the transcript (all that's left out is the moderator announcing the next speaker):
Bill Bennett
Two minutes. Allright. Well, I want to rebut some of what Charlie Rangel said, but I better not. We'll save that for the next great Debate of the 21st Century, coming up next Fall. Ok, anyway.
Just a few observations: "Vietnam" is what Mayor Schmoke calls it; "Miserable Failure" is what Governor Johnson calls it. 50% reduction, from 1979-1994. 24.8 million people were using an illicit drug - current use, once a month - in 1979. 13 million were in 1994. 4.4 million people were using cocaine once a month in 1979, 1.4 million were using it in 1994. 79 to 94.
That to me is progress. If the standard is an entirely drug free society, you're never going to have it - the country's too free and it's too rich. And, you know, people, you're going to have a certain amount of drug abuse. There's a question about how much we're prepared to tolerate
The thing that I think perhaps has not occurred to the folks on the other side is: Could things get worse? If drugs were more readily available. If there were not prohibition. If there were not penalties. If there were not sanctions. Is it possible more people would use drugs?
I've talked to a lot of cocaine users, who smoke cigarettes and drink, drunk, drank alcohol, and they say cocaine's better. They say crack's better. Well, are we prepared to open it up? Once you open it up it's going to be very hard to go back as a number of countries in Europe will tell you.
But most importantly what the other side is giving you is a false choice - or what we said in philosophy, insufficient options: "Don't prosecute, use medicine, use education" I think I started my remarks by saying "Use education." If we got education right, we can avoid a lot of it. Give me better families, better churches, better schools, I'll give you back 90% of the drug problem and 90% of most pathology in American life.
But you need all of them. You need the criminal justice system; you need a treatment sytem; you need an educational system. The reason you need a criminal justice system is treatment works the longer people are in it. For a lot of people to stay in it, they need to be coerced to stay in it. You don't coerce them to stay in it unless you say "If you're not in, you're going to jail." Unless there's another way. I mean, we could try lollipops, but it hasn't worked in the past.
This is a very tough business. When people get addicted to drugs it's a very hard thing to break. The criminal justice system should not be our first intervention but we have to have it to make the other pieces work.
Gary Johnson
You've heard it. "Drug use has been cut in half to 12 million users." Just do the math here for a second. We're arresting 1.6 million people a year, and we've done that now for how many years? We've arrested every single drug user in the country if you want to base it on the fact that there are 12 million users.
I grant that it was a scientific study that was done in 1979 as it was today, but I just think that in 1979 when they asked you if you smoked pot, I think you said "Well, sure! Everybody does!" I think when asked that same question today, I think people have re-thought their answer to that.
I think it's also very very hypocritical that - how is it that sellers are more guilty than users? If we're going to get serious about this, what about the 95 million people who have used marijuana? Why are they any less guilty than those that would sell them marijuana?
In New Mexico, Mary Ann Gomez Velasquez, somebody that I pardoned. Mary Ann is now a 40 year old. At age 15, she became addicted to Tylenol 3 with codeine. Over the course of her life, she wrote herself 400 prescriptions for Tylenol 3 with codeine and was caught three times. Now this was her only - she was addicted to it - she paid for her prescriptions - she was addicted to Tylenol 3 with codeine - she never got treatment. But because she had been caught three times, in 1995 she was sentenced to 25 years in jail because of mandatory sentencing. That happens to be more than rape, burglary, second-degree murder, and drinking, driving and killing someone in the State of New Mexico.
This is not right, and this is what has come of the current war on drugs and our efforts to make America drug free.
Charlie Rangel
Well I'll tell you one thing. Nobody's going to outsell me on the need to have a decent education system in our country. And if we want to maintain the superiority we have in productivity and trade, we'd better invest more in our young kids.
And don't tell me that I have to legalize drugs in order to get the federal and local and state governments to give us a decent education.
But out of this frustration, I expect when people get frustrated we get these Schwarzeneggers, we get people just prepared to do anything, but there has to come a...
Bennett, interrupting: "[unintelligible] on my side?"
Charlie Rangel
I'm. Listen. You do what you have to do when you don't have any answers and God knows Gray Davis didn't give an answer. But I don't think you have to go to that extreme. I mean you really don't have to say legalize drugs in order to get a better approach to how we deal with those people who are sick.
But if you're really going to just jump into the water and talk about legalization - first let me way this: I'm glad to see the Dean of Harvard Law School adjusted his views as it relates to legalization and now we're talking about needles and marijuana because there was a time we debated and talked about crack cocaine and heroin. But, having said that, if we're going to legalize it, we have to find out 1. where the distribution is going to come from - and it's really clear that this administration - if you're going to federalize it - wants the private sector to do it, but - where is, where, where are we going to talk about the growers?
You know, some people forget that we have international agreements, in the United Nations, in the World Trade Organizations saying that you shouldn't grow this, and so I really think what they're talking about is "Buy American." I mean, we can grow coca leaves better than they can in South America. I mean, who gives them the right to grow poppies just there. And if our farmers are undersold by these developing countries, because of low wages, then we just have to subsidize them to make certain it's competitive, right?
And we have to make certain that we have the supply. Now the pharmaceuticals, they don't really like this even playing field thing, but that's another problem that we'll take to Congress.
Bennett interrupting: "Mr. Chairman, I want two minutes to repond to them and I want two minutes to repond to HIM."
Kurt Schmoke
Their team seems to be a bit disfunctional over there.
I'm also pleased that my good friend Charlie Rangel has changed or modified his views somewhat of me, having once referred to me as one of the most dangerous men in America. But I - let me just say that - as I tried to present in my opening statement that nobody views this as a simplistic problem, and we're not here to argue tonight that improving our situation with respect to substance abuse in America is solely going to be cured by lurching from something that is 100% illegal to something that's 100% legal.
But there are also important issues with respect to the war on drugs that have not been addressed. I talked to you about the needle exchange program and you did not hear any response to that, because in fact, it is true that even though we have a technique to help reduce the spread of AIDS, that the scientists say is appropriate, the federal government will not fund because of politics and not because of policy.
And there are many other areas. Allowing individual physicians, or nurses, or other public health professionals to be treatment providers rather than having clinics, and fighting zoning battles and things like that. Those also are ways in which we could address this problem, and treat it more as a health problem, but the current laws won't allow us to do that.
Consider, ladies and gentlemen, the issue of tobacco. Suppose we tried to become a tobacco free America, by making possession of cigarettes illegal. Using criminal law and prohibition to try to achieve a worthwhile goal of making this a tobacco free America. You know what would happen in terms of black market, in terms of crime, in terms of all kinds of other social problems, and that is exactly what's happening in the area of so-called illegal drugs now.
It's time for a change.
Next: The Question and Answer Sesssion
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