All language subtitles for the.house.i.live.in.2012.dvdrip.xvid-wide

Announcer: This program
is made possible by

the corporation
for public broadcasting,

the national endowment
for the arts,

and by contributions to your pbs
station from viewers like you.

Thank you.

Man: My family came to America
fleeing persecution in Europe.

For my mom's parents,
it was the pogroms of Russia

in which thousands of Jews died.

For my dad, it was Hitler,
the creation of ghettos

and the final solution
that killed millions.

As children,
my brothers and I were taught

that we were the lucky ones
who made it out.

But with that luck
came a responsibility.

"Never again" didn't just mean
that people like us

shouldn't suffer;

It meant others
shouldn't suffer either.

Going to join me here.

Won't you be seated, please,
ladies and gentlemen.

Come, on, doctor,
try to fit in.

Mr. [indistinct]
Mr. [indistinct]

Fine. All right.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would
like to summarize for you

the meeting that I have just had
with bipartisan leaders.

America's public enemy number 1
in the United States

is drug abuse.

Uh, gold teeth,
big, in his 30s,

and he wears, like,
a turban on his head.

Louis and the crew.

[Car alarm]

[Indistinct radio transmission]

Keep in mind that school is
going to let these students out

in 15 minutes.

Man: The discrepancy measures
the distance by and which

we have not yet attained
democracy

in these United States.

Sure, we've got problems
over this nation.

But never forget, there's
nothing wrong with America today

that a good election won't cure.

[Cheering]

You go right up
Charles street, right?

Go past the light.

Ronald Reagan:
That's why I believe

the tide of battle has turned

and we're beginning to win the
crusade for a drug free America.

Man: What shame that
we American people

could so act and be
so nonunderstanding.

[Indistinct radio transmission]

Man: Ok, be alert, kid.

Man: If he doesn't put you
in jail, wonderful.

Nobody with any sense
likes to go to jail,

but if he puts you in jail,
you go in that jail

and transform it from a dungeon
of shame

to a haven of freedom
and human dignity.

[Cheering]

Man: All of us must overcome
the crippling legacy

of bigotry and injustice.

Obama: Let all those who have
wondered if America's beacon

still burns as bright,
tonight we've proved once more

that the true spirit
of our nation

comes from the enduring power
of our ideals...

democracy, liberty, opportunity,
and unyielding hope.

Woman: My name is nannie jeter.

I was born in crewe, Virginia,
a very small town.

Coming north,
I feel that I would prove

that I was gonna
conquer everything

that needed to be conquered.

Narrator: Nannie jeter was like
a second mother to me.

Though she started out
working for my family,

she was never a nannie.

Nannie is actually her name.

Man: � ...Left in church
on Sunday morning �

nannie: They just have
some of everything.

[Man singing indistinctly]

Tonight is a celebration night.

Narrator:
Our families were close,

and her children
and grandchildren

were my playmates growing up.

Hi, my precious! You hungry?

But was we got older,
I saw many of them struggling

with poverty, joblessness,
crime, and worse.

Newscaster: President Obama
has an advantage,

but it's still very, very early
in this night.

Oh...

Narrator: When I asked nannie
what she thought

might have gone wrong,

her answer was
surprisingly simple.

Nannie: I think drugs.

Drugs is the monster.

The killing, the stealing,

there's people being destroyed.

It's devastating.

What happened to my son
with drugs,

I would love to change that.

Man: Drugs in America.

Pollsters have identified that

as the number 1 issue
in this country.

Woman: Taking drugs
in growing numbers.

Man: Doctors find out he has
taken an overdose of crack.

Woman: The battle to control
the drug market is deadly.

Man: Most of the victims
are young blacks who live...

Narrator: To understand
what drugs had done

to nannie jeter's family
and others like it,

I wanted to get out on the road
to talk to people.

Woman: I know firsthand
the devastation

we as a family have had to
endure because of the drugs.

Been here before my kids,
been here before my mom,

my sister, my dad.

I had 2 kids, and I lost them
to the streets

because of my own problems.

Narrator: Time and again,
I learned

how one person's struggle
had grown into a crisis

for their family
and the community.

By a show of hands,
how many people here

had any kind of drug involvement
on why they're in here?

I'm in here for selling drugs.

I have a life
and 30-year sentence.

I killed a guy back in 1984.

Narrator: How'd that happen?

I just... dope
and out of my head,

and I wound up shooting a guy
in the mouth and killed him.

Narrator: But as I began
to look around,

the very real problems
associated with drug abuse

began to seem just 1 part
of an even larger problem

facing the country.

Man: It's absolutely true

that drugs have destroyed lives,

that heroin and cocaine,
for example,

do nothing to engender
individual dignity.

But while covering the drug war
as a journalist

for more than a decade,
I came to understand

that what drugs
hadn't destroyed,

the war against them has.

Freeze!

Man: The war against drugs
is heating up.

Simon: Somebody down the road
said we're gonna fight war

against illicit drugs
because drugs are bad.

Ok, there's no argument there.

But think about where we are
30 years later.

You know, if you look at all the
money spent on drug enforcement,

on prisons,
on probation officers,

judges, narcotics agents,
on interdiction,

and everything else that is
expanded due to war on drugs,

it gratifies us.

It makes us feel like
we're tough on crime.

Put 'em away.
Put 'em away where they belong.

Simon: But to what end?

We are the jailingest country
on the planet

beyond Saudi Arabia, China,
or Russia.

Nobody jails their population
at the rate that we do,

and yet drugs are purer
than before,

they're more available.

There are younger
and younger kids

willing to sell them.

It would be one thing if it was
draconian and it worked,

but it's draconian
and it doesn't work.

It just leads to more.

[Siren]

Weed?

[Indistinct chatter]

Making it work for the old men.

I'm gonna really...
They gave all of that.

Shanequa: I'm not
a big, super drug dealer,

yeah. Yeah, I got some weed,
so...

I do what I have to do.

I know how to survive.

You know, this and that
if I have to.

It's not hard to tell that these
are the junkies, right?

Man: Hey, get out
of here with that!

I think the economy thrives
with the drug money.

We got judges that's getting
high, too.

We've got cops
that's sniffing coke.

We got people with good,
white, college eyes

that can afford to have it,
and that's the only difference.

Yeah, the boys is behind us.
The boys is behind us.

When I think about people living
in inner-city neighborhoods,

they live off the principle
of equality of life chances.

You should not be able to enter
a hospital ward

in an inner-city hospital
of newborn babies

and predict with near certainty

on the basis of their class,
background, and race

where these kids, where
these healthy newborn babies

are gonna end up in life.

Shanequa: The dope block.
That's what this is.

77 romwell towers.

I got it on my arm.

This is where I'm from.
For now.

Simon: Every war starts
with propaganda.

But with the drug war,

our definition of what a drug
user or drug seller is...

Woman: What did your mommy
tell you about drugs?

Come on, try it.

Simon: It became almost

a wartime cartoon of the enemy.

Weed, coke, crack...
your choice.

Some folks will tell you
that I'm dealing in poison,

but hey, do I look like
the kind of guy

that would do that to a kid
like you?

Simon: But the truth is
the drugs aren't yours.

You're just a Minion.

You're somebody without
any real authority

selling somebody else's dope.

It's like fearing a guy
who's at the drive-out window

at the burger king.

Shanequa: Basically
it's just about survival.

I feel like sometimes,
like, cops,

they view you as,
"oh, you live over here."

But they don't view you
as, like,

was it your choice?

Man: � I was born in a dump

� my mama died,
and my daddy got drunk �

� he left me here
to die or grow �

man: I wouldn't want to work
anywhere else.

I feel the need to be here
as a minority supervisor.

It's predominantly
a minority neighborhood.

Police station for what?
[indistinct]

What we deal with here

is a lot of lower-level
narcotic activity.

Well, what we do to drugs,

we do mostly drugs
and prostitution.

[Radio beeps]

Go ahead, papi.

Man: We're good to go.

I'm gonna go in and hit the...

Copy of the warrant,

get all of the gear, so...

All right, I'll start
making my way up there.

There are sometimes I think you
can trace any crime you want

to drugs.

Speaking of drug users
or abusers...

Magic man!

What's up, dawg?

Please, can I get the...

You still ain't
drinking, right?

Dude, you still ain't
drinking, right?

No.

How long has it been?

Sober. I've been shopping, man.

How long has it been?

Probably been 2 months now.

Good for you. All right, bro.

You have a good one, brothers.

The magic man for 90.

He's been around forever.

Man: We like to look
at the war on drugs

as black hats and white hats
and good guys and bad guys

and victims and offenders,

and on the ground, it's a lot
more mixed up than that.

Go ahead, Chet.

The guy on Charles
street just re-upped.

With powder and weed.

Man: Well, the drugs are
never gonna be gone.

That's... forget that.

To say you're gonna be
drug free completely,

ha ha!

In drug work, you never
really get that...

Satisfaction, I suppose.

'Cause you don't get rid
of drugs.

I mean, along the way you have
small victories here and there,

but if you look at
the big picture,

are we getting anywhere?

And you could certainly
be frustrated.

Man: Go get 'em.
I'll come around.

Don't let 'em run.

Get out. Police. Don't move.

[Indistinct chatter]

I'm gonna get you
the search warrant.

Sit tight.

Woo! Wow!
You can smell it in here!

You want a haircut?

No.

You sure? Positive.

I can practice.

No.

Chip, he's got cocaine residue

on his scales, too.

[Telephone rings]

Hello. Yeah, baby.

I'm in the middle of
doing something, honey.

Why? Bye, hon.

Fabio: Just doing
my job, buddy.

I hear you. I'm not mad.

I made the mistake to do this.

I did it, and I'll deal
with the consequences.

Kennedy: If you talk to people
in law enforcement,

they believe that the community
is completely corrupt.

Want to buy some weed?

Nah, I'm straight.

How about coke? You
want to buy some coke?

Kennedy: They believe everybody
is living off drug money,

that there is no moral center.

They see communities that blame
everybody but themselves

for what's going on,

and then you talk
to those communities,

and they genuinely believe
that law enforcement

is using drug laws
to destroy the community.

Over time, I have discovered
that everybody involved

hates what's going on.

Man: It's interesting
this war on drugs,

how little
the American people know.

Never thought about it before.

How people feel about drugs
and everything like that?

That's what you mean
a war on drugs?

Narrator: As I started
to ask around,

I found that if people knew
anything about the war on drugs,

they thought I was talking about
something in a foreign country.

Man: 6,500 people died in Mexico

in drug-related violence
last year.

Narrator: Yet surprisingly
very few seemed to have any idea

of the war going on
in their own country.

I haven't heard the term
"war on drugs" since the '80s.

Bowden: The biggest
drug industry in the world

isn't in Mexico,
it's not in Colombia,

it's not in Afghanistan,

it's in the United States.

Man: We in the United States,
perhaps our dirty little secret

is that between $10 and $16
billion are spent by Americans

to pay for these illegal drugs,

creating a demand.

Man: The thing with
the war on drugs is

it tries to deal with
a health problem

as if it was a legal problem.

Addiction is an effect
of human unhappiness

and human suffering.

When people are distressed, they
want to soothe their distress.

When people are in pain,
they want to soothe their pain.

So the real question is
not why the addiction,

but why the pain?

Bowden: One of the realities is
most people getting arrested

in this country for drugs

are selling drugs to support
their own habit.

And if you stand
in a federal court,

you're watching poor,
uneducated people

be fed into a machine like meat
to make sausage.

It's just bang,
bang, bang, next.

Man: My mother used to tell me

I was gonna die
before I turned 18.

I think I believed that...

From when I was like
14 years old.

That's when I really
started gang banging.

I started getting in fights
and stuff like that.

Now, I'm 28 years old,

being sentenced for 50 grams
of crack cocaine.

Man: I am mark Bennett,

United States
district court judge

for the northern district
of Iowa.

And in my 15 years,

I've sent over 2,600 people
to federal prison.

Man: I grew up around
gang members and drug dealers.

Them was my role models.

Coming in here today,

Maurice haltiwanger's
best chance, best chance,

is a sentence of 20 years.

Narrator: Drug laws,
it turns out,

often carry what are called
mandatory minimum sentences,

below which a judge cannot
sentence the defendant

no matter what
the circumstance is.

Mcgough: You've got a guy like
Maurice haltiwanger

who grows up
in a bad family situation

with heartbreaking details of
how he got where he is today.

But even if judge Bennett
wanted to give him a sentence

below 20 years, he can't.

Haltiwanger: My mother
was addicted to drugs.

I don't remember my father
at all.

Man: Why?

He got killed when I was,
like, 3 years old.

There was a lot of death
around me.

I seen a lot of people die.

I got a lot of friends
that's dead.

But... Huh.

It could have been worse.

[Gavel pounds]

Woman: All rise.

Man: We're here
in the Bible belt,

you know,
law and order Oklahoma,

the prison is the largest
employer in the county.

The employees live
all around here,

and if you take out a prison,
the town would just dry up.

Man: I don't know that there's
a job I could do better

in the whole world.

I guess they should have wrote
"prison guard" on my forehead

when I was born
because it just fits me.

The job was built for me.

Franklin: You know,
we incarcerate women

at the highest per capita rate
in the nation.

Males have been incarcerated, I
believe, the third highest rate.

How you doing?

We have 1,500 inmates.

The majority are drug
or drug-related crimes.

Man: I'm here on a 12-year
drug trafficking sentence,

trafficking crack cocaine.

I'm 34 years old.
I've been here since I was 23.

I'm doing a life sentence
for second-degree murder.

I killed a guy buying a bad drug
deal in Oklahoma city.

Never been high on a piece
of dope in my entire life,

but I've sold tons of it
unfortunately.

Carpenter: We have
a nice secure facility.

I can keep anybody
you want to keep

and I can keep 'em for as long
as you want to keep 'em.

The facility itself is
as secure as it can get.

Lift your genitals up.

Turn around and
spread your butt.

Spread it with your hands.

Narrator: As it turns out,

drug laws have become so harsh

that even the nonviolent can
now be locked up for sentences

once reserved
for violent crimes.

Franklin: I think a lot of times
we lock up everybody

just because we're mad at them.

We need to lock up the people
that we're afraid of.

They need to be locked up,

but not the people
that we're mad at.

Carpenter:
I mean, I'm a law and order guy.

I'm a firm believer,
no free rides.

Here, you recognize that your
chances to manipulate the system

are done.

That door slams behind you,

and you have absolutely
no ability to control

what goes on on the other side
of that door.

And you can't open the door.

This is where most people,
if they're a newcomer,

a first-time offender,
where they really figure out

that this is prison,

and this is what the next 5, 10,
15, 20, 30 years of your life

looks like, this is it.

[Door slams shut]

Narrator: While following
the steps

that so many Americans take

through the world
of the drug war,

I couldn't help but notice
that at every stage,

black Americans were
disproportionately represented.

Woman: You know, in any war,
you've got to have an enemy,

and when you think about
the impact particularly

on poor people of color,

there are more African Americans
under correctional control today

in prison or jail,
on probation or parole

than were enslaved in 1850,

a decade before
the civil war began.

And that's something
we haven't been willing

to look in the mirror
and ask ourselves,

"what's really going on?"

Narrator: As it turns out,

nearly everyone I talked to
knew all about

the impact of the drug war
on black America.

Man: There's no question
that the criminal laws impact

disproportionately
on poor and minorities.

Correia: Certainly
a disproportionate number

of black people are prosecuted.

Narrator: Yet while people
could tell me all about

their first-hand experience
with this,

very few had any idea
where it came from.

Newscaster: Here's America as
you can I like to think of it,

the land of the free
and the home of the brave.

But from every part of the
nation come newspaper headlines

telling us of an enemy,

America's secret enemy
number 1.

Woman: � summertime

� and the living is easy

Simon: The drug war began as
a war on dangerous narcotics,

at least on its face.

You know, you can trace
modern drug enforcement

back to the early '50s

when you started to see the rise

of the sort of
urban narcotics squads,

the narc.

Newscaster: Government agencies
charged with the enforcement

of narcotics laws have been able
until recently

to decrease steadily the number
of addicts in the United States.

Simon: It was at least plausible
as a policy

because the use of
dangerous narcotics

was truly a counterculture.

It was the jazz man's license,
it was in the back alleys.

It was furtive.

There was no mass marketing.

There were no
drive-up drug corners.

It was a very small percentage
of the American population

that was engaged in the use
of heroin or cocaine.

That's him.

Narrator: In the 1950s
as drug use was growing

among Americans
of all background,

law enforcement became
increasingly focused

on 1 group in particular.

Why did you turn the dogs
loose on the policemen?

Man: Are you telling me
that this happened

or are you asking me?

I'm asking you.

No!

Were there narcotics in there?

Man: � well, I have a family,
born free �

� I guess that's the way
it's supposed to be �

there's no question that there
was a passion with which

the early narcotics
enforcement culture

pursued black America,

even though the addict
population was always

distinctly biracial.

Narrator: In the 1960s, drug use
grew widespread in America,

but for black communities,
increasing poverty

pushed the sale and use of drugs
most often onto the street,

making them an even greater
target for law enforcement.

Simon: By the late '60s,

most urban areas had
a mass market for drugs.

By the '80s,
you're really looking at

the drive-thru window, you were
looking at McDonald's.

At that point, you can't claim
that you're trying to isolate

a countercultural phenomenon.

You're fighting a war against
a whole community.

Woman: � amazing grace

� how sweet the sound

narrator: In October 2009,

I joined nannie jeter at
the funeral of a family member

I'd known growing up.

Over the years, drugs had
deeply affected her life,

and the event brought back
difficult memories for nannie.

Nannie: My son James,
he died in '89 or '87.

I can't quite remember.

Before he died, he said,
"mommy, I'm just tired of it.

"I cannot live this life.

"It doesn't matter what I do.

I just want to die."

All I know,
my son used the needle.

Narrator: Though I'd known about
James' death

at the time it happened,

I didn't know the extent
of his addiction

nor how widely drugs
and the drug war

had affected nannie's family.

It wasn't until
I started catching up

with childhood friends...

You're kidding me.

That I began to realize
the full extent of it.

Man: Any bastard of our family.

I didn't realize my father
was into... was a heroin addict.

Yeah. I got the news
in channels. Ha ha.

How come you didn't tell me?

Drugs.

The war on drugs has been going
on for so long, man,

it's tough.

That one there, man,
I just got to say

God got to intervene on this.

Narrator: Again and again,
I heard how drug laws

had done more to punish
individuals and their loves ones

than to mount a serious effort
to prevent drug abuse.

But if this is what the drug was
was doing to nannie's family,

what was it doing
to other families?

There's a structural problem
in the country

that we keep ignoring.

We have 2 million people
in our jails and prisons,

and a million of them
are African American,

most of them are males,

many of them for
nonviolent drug offenses.

That is a pattern
that has overwhelmed

the African American community

because we're getting
a whole generation of kids

who now have the assumption
that they're destined

to be in the criminal justice
system.

What people need to see today

is that the next generation of
children right now

with the barriers they face
aren't going to be like I was

or like my parents were
or like my grandparents were,

a generation better than
those who preceded them.

Man: At the precinct,
they told me my charge

was a conspiracy charge,

conspiracy of 50 grams or more.

Shh...

I messed up.

That's all I'm thinking about
is I messed up.

A reputed member of
a notorious drug gang

was caught in a drug bust
in st,. Albans today.

Man: 24-year-old Anthony Johnson
of New York was arrested

along with 2 other people
during a drug raid.

Investigators said Johnson
had been bringing crack

from New York to sell
in Vermont.

Man: Right now you've
pled guilty to a charge

which requires
a 5-year-mandatory minimum.

You know what that means?

I can't get less than 5 years.

That seems harsh when
you think about the fact

that he is not violent at all.

So it's critical
to present Anthony

as far more than a drug dealer.

Woman: John pacht is one of the
best criminal defense lawyers

in Vermont, and he came
to me and says,

"Susan, I really need your help
with this kid."

I really believe that he was,
you know,

in the wrong place,
didn't have a lot of options.

Narrator: Though Anthony Johnson
was arrested in rural Vermont,

he is originally from the very
same New York housing project

where he first met
shanequa benitez.

So you know Anthony? Yeah.

Anthony Johnson,
he's 24 years old,

and he's looking at 5-40 years
of jail.

You know,
by the time he gets out,

he won't have a life.

Narrator: Following
Anthony's legal team

as they investigated the steps
leading to his arrest,

I started to learn more about
where he came from.

More clearly than before, I
could see how the vicious cycle

of the drug wars
spans generations.

Anthony: I wish my father
was way different, you know?

I remember one day
I was outside

in front of the building,

you know, I noticed him

doing a little hand-to-hand.

And ever since then,

I figured he was a drug dealer.

Then after that,
I kind of seen him

a couple times doing it.

Did you ever ask him about it?

No. Never asked him.

Why?

'Cause I don't ask
those questions.

I knew,

so I ain't really want
to hear his answers.

So that's why I ain't
really asked.

All right, now.

When I heard of it,
he's selling drugs,

to be honest with you,
to be totally honest with you,

it didn't surprise me.

From where we was at,
where we came out of,

where we lived.

The drug dealers are looked at

as really the leaders
of the community.

If your moms can't pay rent,

they help out on the rent.

If you needed a little bit
of food sometimes,

they will give money
to your household for food.

It's like back in the day,
magic had the converse out.

Everybody wanted
the new converses,

and he would get them for you.

The drug dealer would come
right up the block from us,

5 or 6 of us.

"You pick out a pair,
you pick out a pair,

you pick out a pair."

We come back on the block,
we all carrying sneaker boxes.

He in front of us.

And oh, everybody want to know
what's up.

"Where you get the magics?
You got the magics.

You got the magics."

And then we tell them
who we got them from.

The next step is every time
he comes on the block,

you're always under him.

He wants his water
from the store.

He'll give you a $5.00 bill.
"Go get me a water."

You know, the change is yours.

Half these waters
he didn't drink.

Ice cream truck came,
always bought us ice cream.

And he didn't even have to pay.

He'd tell the ice cream man,
"hey, yo, get 'em."

And the ice cream man
would give us all ice cream.

Honestly, I loved him.

I loved him because when they
came around, it was Christmas.

As you get older, they say
you get your own money.

Sell drugs, sell drugs.

"I don't know how
to sell no drugs."

He said, "you don't have to know
how to sell 'em."

"Just stand there.
I'll send them over to you."

He gave me the drugs.
I stood there.

And he would point,
and they would come to me.

And then I had
my own sneaker money,

I had my own movie money.

And then I had my own power.

Our role models
wasn't nobody famous.

You know?

I mean, where I come from
in the neighborhood,

there was hood famous,
you know.

My big brother, Dennis Johnson,

he came from doing
the same thing.

But it was mostly 1 person,
my man te.

He was everything
I wanted to be.

He had the girls, the clothes,
you know,

the jewelry, the cars,
the money.

That's what I wanted, you know?

But I wanted to be te.

I wanted to be little te.

Te schooled me to the game.

You know, he'd show me
how to get money,

but I worked it.

[Baby fussing]

Woman: Hey, John, I somehow
just missed your call.

I just wanted to
double check with you

and give you a chance
to talk to Alicia

about where we're at
and what Anthony's looking at.

They're trying to go for 5.

But if not, anything under 10.

They're not trying to make him

go beyond that.

Yeah.

Like the 5-40
was scaring me. Ha!

I was always proud of him,

but I just always figured
that he was ok,

that he was good, you know?

Anthony: I know I screwed up,

because you know you need
that father figure in your life.

Oh...

I know my daughter,
she need me,

and I don't want me and her
to have the same relationship

me and my father had,

looking at me in pictures,

and got to say that's my dad,
you know, come to visiting.

You know, I got to tell her
daddy's at school

when I speak to her on the
phone or something, you know?

'Cause I don't want to tell her
that I'm in jail.

Narrator:
Watching Anthony's child sleep

hundreds of Miles from
the father she's never met,

I could see the painful cycle
gripping his family,

but I also had to honestly
wonder what compelled him

to make the choices he did.

Ogletree:
You know, it's very interesting,

people ask the question, what
about personal responsibility?

The only thing you don't do
is blame criminals

for the crime
that they committed.

You blame everybody else
and everything else...

Ogletree: You know, I wish
the answer were that simple,

but let's just take
a little step back.

There are structural
impediments.

What you see over and over again
in urban America

are kids who live
in a crowded home,

who are hungry
when they go to school,

who lack attention because
they've heard noise and gunshots

and other things
where they live.

Man: I don't think people
fully understand.

In the inner city,

these kids are making
rational choices.

I profiled a girl
who was like this,

a 10-year-old girl.

The minute she steps out
her front doorway,

there are drug dealers
out there,

no economic opportunity.

The school is warehousing her.

She doesn't see any prospects.

How is she supposed to get out?

At the end of the day

when there's not a lot
of resources out here

and your teachers aren't
stressing you to come to class

or not even caring, you know,
you're not gonna go to school.

You're gonna sell drugs.

You're gonna do
what you have to do.

Simon: To go down to
a drug corner in the inner city

is the rational act
of somebody going to work

for the only company that exists
in a company town,

when that is the only economy
that's functioning

in certain places
in this country.

What do we expect?

Narrator: Beyond the structural
barriers that promote drug crime

on the street, those arrested
soon find themselves

in the self-perpetuating cycle

from which few
ever really escape.

Ogletree: People don't realize,
for example,

that when you arrest a young
black man and he goes to jail,

the first thing
when he gets out of the prison,

he can't get a job in most
places because of his record.

Woman:
If you have a family charge,

you need to be working,

you need to be trying
to move yourself forward.

Ogletree: If he wants to go back
to school to go to college,

he's ineligible by law
for certain grants.

Woman: Medical issues.
If you have anything...

Ogletree: He can't get certain
healthcare benefits.

He can't live
in certain neighborhoods.

His family that was
the centerpiece of his life,

if they're living in public
housing, they can't take him in.

Bill Clinton: The only people
who deserve to live

in public housing are those
who live responsibly there.

He can't vote.

Alexander: Release from prison
offers this idea

that you're gonna return
to some kind of freedom,

but in reality,
for the rest of your life,

you've got to check that box
on employment applications

asking that dreaded question,

"have you ever been convicted
of a felony?"

It becomes a vicious circle
in which people cycle out of

their ghetto communities
into prison and back.

As a physician, I'm concerned
with the casualties

of the war on drugs,

which is the front line users
and the petty dealers.

But rather than seeing
a drug problem in isolation,

you have to see it
in the social context.

These are not problems,
none of them,

that are just intrinsic
to individuals.

They all represent

multi-generational
family history,

culture, social conditions,
and human failure.

You know, like, you say
all the things that you knew

that when you was
coming up that was wrong.

Now I'm starting to do them,
but I can't control it

because I've got
these problems.

I'm using drugs.
I'm halfway selling drugs.

I'm using drugs.

And now I've got these
2 little boys, pretty boys...

And I don't know how to...

Really relate to that.

I know I'm supposed to.
I know I ain't have one.

And I know I'm supposed to.

Ah...

I didn't know how to stop doing
what I was doing.

Excuse me.

To be like that.

Narrator: Seeing the pain
Anthony's father carries

over both his own choices and
the impact of outside pressures,

I wondered how a matter
of public health

didn't just inspire
early drug laws,

but became the full-blown target
of a war.

Nixon: America's
public enemy number 1

in the United States
is drug abuse.

In order to fight and defeat
this enemy,

it is necessary to wage
a new all-out offensive.

Man: Target's ready.
Male negro, 5' 7".

[Gunshot]

Bowden: The U.S. war on drugs

was initiated officially
under president Richard Nixon

to get his polls up.

Narrator: For most people
I talked to,

the drug war as we know it today

was born in the late '60s
and early '70s

under Richard Nixon.

Nixon: I have no sympathy for
the pushers and the peddlers

and the others in this country.

[Cheering]

We are going to restore freedom
from fear in America again!

Man: When Nixon ran
for president in 1968,

he talked about the problem
of crime in the street.

Nixon: The wave of crime
is not going to be

the wave of the future
in the United States of America.

Mauer: And this was really
the first time

in a major way that
the issue of drug crime

became a national
political issue.

Give 'em a...

Alexander: Richard Nixon
is credited as the first

to coin the term
"a war on drugs,"

but what most people
don't realize

is that under Richard Nixon,

2/3 of the drug war budget
was devoted to treatment

rather than law enforcement.

Because a program
of law enforcement alone

is not enough.

Simon: Well, Nixon actually had
some forward thinking

in the war on drugs.

He understood the need
to address addiction.

Nixon: This means that
on the treatment of addicts,

we must go parallel...

Simon: And he actually did some
things that were progressive,

certainly by standards
of what came after him.

Nixon: You don't turn
to the drugs

unless you can't find
satisfaction another way

in your own life.

Narrator:
The more I learned about Nixon,

the more confusing he became.

Privately, he knew that he'd be
far more successful

with drug treatment
than with law enforcement,

but publicly
at the '72 election approached,

Nixon returned to the simple
crime-fighting rhetoric

that had worked for him before.

Nixon: We must wage what
I have called total war

against public enemy number 1
in the United States,

the problem with
dangerous drugs.

Newscaster:
Nixon wins re-election

in a landslide victory...

Narrator: As Nixon's tough talk
proved a recipe

for electoral success,

states across the country
began passing tough new laws.

Half the crime is caused
by narcotic addicts.

With New York's
rockefeller drug laws

setting an example
for harsh penalties,

he would soon be followed
by other states.

Man: You guys better get ready
in a few minutes.

At 7:58 you are just almost
out of time.

Yes, sir.

You guys be careful.

Ok. Bye, dad. Love you.

Love you, too.

Carpenter: I am very much
a law and order kind of guy.

I would rather have
10 police cars

than 1 soup kitchen
if you give me the choice,

but sometimes I think
that we need to be smarter

about what those police officers
are actually out there doing.

Narrator: Maybe because
he's seen the epitome

of the hardened prison official,

Mike carpenter's perspective
on the severity of drug laws

caught me off guard.

Carpenter: I think
a long time ago

we made drugs
into this huge thing

and we've made it so illegal

and we've made it
such a national issue

with that tough on crime stance,

I mean, you can't get elected

if you don't profess to be
tough on crime.

First we have to join together

and ensure the drug dealers
are punished

swiftly, surely, and severely.

Carpenter: You can't stay
elected if you don't do things

to be tough on crime.

Bush: Is to toughen sentences,

beef up law enforcement,

and build new prison space
for 24,000 inmates.

Carpenter: You know, nobody
can afford to be the first guy

to say wait a minute, we
can't afford what we're doing.

Let's do something different

because if you even made a noise

like you were gonna be
soft on crime in any way,

you would be out of a job.

You will be put away
and put away for good,

3 strikes and you are out.

[Applause]

Carpenter: You get in front
of the camera,

and you talk loudly about
we need to lock up criminals,

we need to make
our streets safe,

and so we become victims
of the sound bite.

Reagan: The American people want
their government to get tough

and to go on the offensive,

and that's exactly
what we intend.

Carpenter: I think sometimes
we have people doing

a whole lot of time
for not very much crime.

It's almost like
they're paying for our fear

instead of paying
for their crime.

Narrator: For many working
in corrections,

I heard the same frustration,

that political rhetoric not
only floods their facilities,

but robs them of the resources
they need to do their jobs.

Franklin:
People want to lock people up

and keep them locked away.

And then when their sentence
is over,

they expect this person to be
reformed or a different person,

then if you haven't given them
any skills or trained them,

how can they be?

Man: I'm the cabinet maker
director here

at Lexington vo-tech.

When these guys get out of
prison, we find them a job

and help them get a job.

Keeps 'em working,

make some taxpayers
in the state of Oklahoma.

Franklin: He's already got
1 strike against him

that he's a convicted felon,

but at least he can say, hey,
I'm a licensed electrician

or a licensed carpenter.

Carpenter:
For a lot of these guys,

they've never had self-respect,
I guess.

I mean, it's been
false self-respect

because they were tough
or because they stole a lot

or because they sold
a lot of drugs,

and this gives them the chance
to anchor themselves

to something good,
these rehabilitation programs.

Man:
Prison is not a nice place,

but I'm glad I came here.

It's made me a better person.

This program's probably the best
thing that's happened to me

in my life.

All: We are seeking change,

accepting how
we cannot change our past

but we can change our future.

Carpenter: The problem is, when
you get into lean budget times,

the public, the citizens
of Oklahoma,

say, if we have to spend money
on something,

let's spend money on fences,
handcuffs, cell doors,

that kind of stuff.

The rehabilitation programs

are often the first thing
that get cut.

Franklin: If we don't have
the resources available,

that equates to not being able
to give an offender

a trade or a skill

and they end up going right back
to the same deviant behavior

on the outside.

[Woman humming]

Woman: � if I didn't care
more than words can say �

� if I didn't care...

Man: I'm Larry cearley.

I'm the marshal here
in magdalena.

Magdalena is a small spot
in the world.

We're about 250 Miles
from the Mexican border.

We have U.S. highway 60.

That's a main corridor
for drugs.

I need your driver's license,
please, and your insurance.

Cearley: For the last 29 years
in working in law enforcement,

the major thing that's changed
is the drug trafficking.

What are you looking
for, those drug guys?

Anything, everything.

[Baa]

Narrator: At first glance,

marshal cearley seemed form
a bygone era of law enforcement.

Cearley: I guess
I'm gonna portray myself

as that kind of person,

a man with a white hat
riding old silver.

Narrator:
But as enforcing drug laws

has become the primary focus
for police across the country,

the nature of his work
as a small town marshal

has changed as well.

Cearley: You got that?

2 hispanic males in a car,
dark, tinted windows,

we want it on that side
of the road.

Yeah. Ok.

What are you gonna tell her?

She knows you're going to jail.

Go ahead and put him
in the car.

Ok if I check in there
a little bit more?

Got some marijuana here.

Ed, you arrest both these people
and tow his car.

That's what we're gonna do.

We're fishing.

We're fishing,
but we're there again.

I mean, you look at trucks
like this truck here,

that's an Arizona truck,

somebody that's not gonna stop
and get a motel room,

somebody that's been driving
for 24 hours.

Because they don't want
to get caught.

This is telling me
that this person right here

could be a drug trafficker.

What's he doing
that's giving you

that impression?

The truck and fast food.

It's supposed to be
illegal to profile,

but you kind of,
after working so long,

you kind of know
who's doing something.

So is it sort of phony

when people say
they don't profile?

Oh, it's all phony.
It's all phony.

If you don't profile vehicles,

you're not in law enforcement.

That's the way it is, man,
you know, you know?

Come on.

Ok, now what about
profiling people?

Profiling people, same thing.

That's what we have.

Simon: We like to believe
that the drug war

has given law enforcement
all of these tools,

all of this authority
in which to pursue

criminality and gangsterism,

but actually what it did was

it basically destroyed
the police deterrent

in a very subtle
and unintended way.

Going up to 15th street
and Dixie.

He's gonna have some crack
for him

and some oxycodone pills.

Man: Joe and I are both
sergeants in Miami narcotics,

and we don't do
street level drug deals.

We do larger quantity cases.

We're looking for the dealers
and the suppliers.

Ok, deal is good, guys. Go in.

Narrator: A world away
from magdalena

in the streets of Miami,

I began to see the real impact
of the drug war

on law enforcement.

Start thinking about
why you're in handcuffs

and maybe you can
help yourself out, ok?

So what happened is
the second guy,

he's now running on foot.

Yeah, that's where... we believe
he might have gone in there.

I guess we're gonna
have to write this up

as a separate case.

Totally unrelated to
the original drug deal we did,

but we stumbled upon a house

where a couple of big stacks
of money,

a good amount of marijuana,

that's sometimes
how things happen.

You know,
they're not even planned.

Simon: Nobody respects good
police work more than me.

I spent more than a decade
covering it,

and there are a lot of
detectives who I admire

for their professionalism,
for their craft.

Hey, what's up, can I help you?

No, officer.

Simon: The drug war
created an environment

in which none of that
was rewarded.

Come on over here for a second.

Let's get his I.D.

He's just cutting
through the yard.

A drug arrest
does not require anything

other than getting out
of your radio car

and jacking people up against
the side of a liquor store.

Probable cause?
Are you kidding?

I don't want to say
a majority of the people,

but there's a good number
of people probably in this area

that are also involved
in drug dealing.

The problem is there's
a real tendency

on the part of law enforcement
to think geographically.

To go throw resources
at an area.

It's fish in a barrel
for law enforcement.

Anytime you need to make
an arrest,

you troll through there.

Everybody committing crimes
in that area gets arrested,

people who are in the area
who aren't committing crimes

get stopped.

It makes everybody angry.

Narrator: Watching arrest
after arrest,

I began to see
for the first time

the destructive impact
of drug laws

no only on those they target,

but on those who enforce them
as well.

Simon:
The problem is that that cop

that made that
cheap drug arrest,

he's gonna get paid.

He's gonna get
the hours of overtime

for taking the drugs down
e.C.U.

He's gonna get paid for
processing the prisoner

down in central booking.

He's gonna get paid for
sitting back at his desk

and writing the paperwork
for a couple hours,

and he's gonna do that 40, 50,
60 times a month,

so that his base pay
might end up being

only half of what he's paid
as a police officer.

The most important thing,
right here.

We're paying a guy for stats.

You can leave them here

and then we can go back out
and do this other deal.

Simon: Compare that guy
to the 1 guy doing police work

solving a murder, a rape,
a robbery, a burglary,

if he gets lucky, he makes
1 arrest for the month.

He gets 1 slip signed.

And at the end of the month
when they look and they see

officer a, he made 60 arrests.

Officer b made 1 arrest.

Who do you think they make
the sergeant?

Ok, let's move in,
guys, move in.

In a city like, say, Baltimore,
where I'm from,

our percentage of arrest for
murder, for rape and robbery

are half of what they once were.

Our drug arrest stats are
twice of what they once were.

So what does that do?

It makes the city unlivable.

It makes a police department
where nobody can solve a crime.

Narrator: Beyond the incentives
that exist

for individual officers,

it turns out
that whole departments

have a monetary interest
in increased drug arrests.

Alexander:
Most people don't realize

that the financial incentives
built into the system

virtually guarantee that
the overwhelming majority

of drug arrests
in the United States

will be for nonviolent,
low-level drug offenses.

Cuneen: A couple months ago
we did a 2-day operation.

We arrested over 200 people,

the majority of them
for selling drugs.

A lot of the money
comes out of seizures

from the drug profits

that the bigger players
are making off of this.

So I guess that money
being put to good use.

Man: So we get all their money?

That money is ours now.
That's my money now.

If I leave this room

and I go out there
and get in my old truck,

and I drive down the highway
with $5,000 cash

in pocket that I earned,

and if I'm pulled over
by a state trooper who says,

oh, you have a defective
taillight or something,

they can take that 5 grand,
never charge me with a crime,

take my old truck to boot,

keep 'em forever.

It's called recoup.
Civil asset seizure.

It goes on every day in counties
all over this country.

Hey, can we get...

somebody get a tow slip for this
fine piece of machinery?

Cearley: Yeah. See,
like, there's $118,000.

I pulled over right here,
and we arrested the guy.

There's the 25,000 I got
out of that seizure.

That's what we bought
this car for.

Ok, so the police department

operates on the money
it seizes?

Uh... Sometimes.

This is legal within
the state of new Mexico.

Man: It's allegedly legal.

No. It is legal.

If you're no getting
the point, I understand.

No, I am getting
the point! Probable cause.

Simon: What happens is

with every successive encounter,

between one of our drug warriors

and a citizen that goes awry...

Man: The people around here
mind their own business!

Respect for cops and the laws
they're trying to enforce

is lost.

Cearley: The guy was upset
because he was saying

we were stopping him illegally,

it was unconstitutional.

He feels like
he's been violated.

Is that fair? Maybe not.
But I have a job to do.

Narrator: Despite their
commitment to their work,

officers I spoke to
across the country

expressed growing concern not
only about the effectiveness

of drug laws, but about
their larger impact

on the relationship
between police and the public.

It's one of the biggest hurdles,
you know,

how much time the community
has spent

feeling like they
couldn't trust the police.

Narrator: In Providence,
officers who 20 years ago

appeared on TV as the picture
of tough-on-crime cops...

7-1. It's got tinted windows...

Today seem conflicted over
how things got where they are

and what a better approach
might look like.

If you gonna go out there
and go and cause chaos,

then why don't we put you
in a structured program?

And the military's
a structured program,

send 'em to boot camp, see how
they make out in boot camp.

National service.

National service?

Zuena: I mean, we're doing
our part out here,

and it's frustrating
a lot for us

because it just seems like
because they're addicts,

they find themselves
committing the same crime

that just put them in the jail,
say, you know,

a week or so Friday.

Hold on a second.

All right, whoa.

What's going on?
Let me see you I.D., please.

Let me see your I.D.

My I.D.?

Zuena: Come on,
some responsibilities

go back to the parents.

Listen, straighten
your kid out.

Well, that's easier
said than done

when you have absentee parents.

What? You want...

relax, man, relax.

Some of these households
the father is nonexistent,

the mother is trying
to raise a family.

Those kids, the percentage of
kids that break out of that

is really low.

Please. It's not me.

Zuena: I'll tell you
what else bothers me.

If you keep having kids,
and you can't afford them,

you know what?

You got to have a certain
responsibility.

I'm not saying to
frigging control or spay 'em,

but Christ,
[indistinct] You know?

But come on.

It's... Jesus. Ha ha.

What they should do,

I'd pay 'em, like,
$5,000 or $10,000

to get like a vasectomy
or something.

Ha ha!

Cheaper in the long run.

Ha ha!

Why are you laughing?

Man: Everybody's here
but the police,

and they'll be here any minute.

Narrator: Watching
seasoned drug warriors

struggle for answers to what
they see as an unwinnable war...

Cuneen: We're actually
doing them a favor,

getting them in
out of the cold,

narrator: I wondered what it was
about drugs

that made them such a perceived
danger in the first place.

Bowden: You have to understand
the war on drugs

has never been about drugs.

Newscaster: U.S. customs
officers and police

are having another drive
to round up dope smugglers.

There's millions of dollars
worth of deadly heroin,

enough they say to kill
6 million people.

Narrator: Looking to find out
more about the longer history

of drugs in America,
I found an unlikely source

in Lincoln historian
Richard Miller.

His research put drugs laws in a
fascinating historical context.

Man: Historically anti-drug laws

have always been associated
with race.

In the 1800s, certain kinds of
drugs that are illicit today

were common in this country.

Cocaine was widely used,
heroin.

People using drugs,
it was something that was just

ordinarily accepted.

Opium, for example, was used by
middle-aged successful whites

often housewives in the South.

If people were addicted
or abusing drugs,

they were viewed sympathetically
as people who had to be helped.

It was seen as a public health
issue rather than a crime issue.

But one of the first changes
was on the west coast,

when smoking opium was made
a criminal offense.

Now, why would opium smoking
be illegal in California

but not in Mississippi?

What was going on in California

that was concerned about
smoking opium?

Well, as it turns out, it had
nothing to do with opium itself.

The concern was with the people
associated with smoking opium,

and that was the Chinese,
who had come to this country,

and many of whom were
in California working hard,

working for very little pay,

and becoming part of
the American success story.

But their success was taking
jobs away from white workers.

So politicians got together
and decided,

"we got to find something
about the Chinese

"for which they can be
criminalized

to get them out of the way."

Now, of course you can't
throw people in jail

simply because they're Chinese,

but you can throw 'em in jail
because they smoke opium.

In the same way we saw things
going on with cocaine.

Again, it was middle-aged
successful people

in this country,
business executives,

physicians, housewives,
all perfectly legal,

but then around
the turn of the century,

cocaine began being associated
with blacks.

They could withstand police
bullets, it was thought.

They can work hard all day,
all night long and all day long,

again threatening the jobs
of white workers,

and so laws began to be passed
against cocaine.

You're not arresting
these people officially

because they're black;

You're arresting them
because they've committed

some sort of drug violation.

Next of course we see a change
in reputation of hemp

in this ad,

hemp was a legitimate crop
from colonial times forward,

a widely appreciated
commercial product,

but then in the 1930s,
it changed into something

vicious and fearful
called marijuana.

Because at that time marijuana
smoking was being associated

with Mexicans working hard,
working cheap,

and once again what was being
outlawed was not being Mexican,

but just some habit
associated with Mexicans.

These laws set up
a very dangerous precedent

or racial control.

Narrator: It seemed
that time and again,

drug laws targeted any
immigrant group seen as a threat

to the established
economic order.

But how then
did black Americans,

who came to this country
over 200 years ago,

become the primary target of
drug laws in the modern era?

Simon: Well, the way to think
about African American history

in the 20th century is
as an immigrant story.

I mean, the transition
from the rural to the urban,

it's one of the great
mass migrations

in the history of the world.

Wilson:
When blacks came out of slavery,

they were heavily concentrated
in the South

in farming-type jobs.

As industries were expanding
in the north,

blacks were recruited
to come to work in factories.

This gave rise to
the great migration

of blacks flowing into
urban areas.

Narrator: Before she came
to work for my family,

nannie jeter had joined
the wave of black Americans

who had moved north
during the great migration.

She took me down
to her childhood home

in Southern Virginia.

Nannie: We grew up
running through the woods.

What a beautiful outside life.

The old victrola would play,

and somebody would square dance,

and it was a completely
different world.

I loved life in the South.

Now, in that environment

that seemed so
wonderful in the South,

why did you ever decide
you wanted to leave the South?

I'd left the South
because I had to.

Jim crow during that time,
you couldn't...

black people,
if they was raped,

they couldn't say
they was raped.

So you never hear the rape.

Only the white lady got raped.

But the black woman...

I was innocent, but people
didn't think I was innocent.

No one knew I was leaving.

I wanted to bring my children
up different.

North was the way out.

I thought it would make
a big difference.

Narrator: Nannie had never
spoken so openly about her past

and what it was that
had compelled her north.

But as I learned more
about her life,

I began to see the deeper roots
of the drug war

for black American families
like nannie's.

Sadly, what many of these
families came to find

is that they had not really
escaped Jim crow at all.

But found themselves in
a new system of racial control,

a new Jim crow.

Racially discriminatory laws
across America

ensured that poor people of
color migrating from the South

would be confined to
certain parts of the city

that we now think of as ghettos.

Simon:
Very few people know this,

but if you go back and you look

at how African American housing
patterns were established

in the '30s and '40s,

even as a result
of the new deal,

the fha, which was a Democratic
new deal program

to inspire home ownership
in the midst of the depression

did more to create ghettoes
than any other federal program

before or since.

Why? Because
when they were creating

the culture of home ownership
in America,

they were exclusionary
to black people.

They put them in the areas
that were maybe a little bit

economically depressed and
subject to heavy rentership,

and then the redlined
those areas,

and they would not write
fha mortgages

in those neighborhoods.

Once those areas were redlined,

that was basically a design
for a ghetto.

In 1950, people in these
neighborhoods were poor

but they had jobs.

By 1960, we're talking about
the jobless poor.

Because industries had moved out
of the inner city

leaving behind concentrated
populations of poor people,

vulnerable to drug trafficking
and all the other problems

associated with joblessness.

Simon: And what happens
when groups are denied access

to the core economic engines
in a society?

They create their own
out of prohibited economies.

That was true of the Italians
and the Irish

and the Jews and everybody else
who came to the cities

a generation before
African Americans arrived.

Nannie: In 1969, during that
time, I couldn't get a job.

It was like all the doors
were shut.

When I came to work
for your parents,

I was happy
just to have this job.

Narrator: Do you remember
this first time you saw me?

Mm-hmm. Yes.

You was about 3 days old

when your mom brought you home
from the hospital.

That was the first time
I seen you.

You were a beautiful baby
that I fell in love with.

And you became my baby.

I loved your family.

I guess I never dreamt that you
guys would ever leave new haven.

Narrator: I've always known
that when I was very young,

my family's circumstances
improved,

and we moved from Connecticut,
where my dad had been a doctor,

to a comfortable suburb
of New York City,

where he'd started
a successful business.

What I didn't know

was how this had impacted nannie
and her family.

Nannie: Your mom, she said,

"my husband's gonna double your
pay if you can go with us."

I felt more money would make
a better life for my family.

That was the wrong thing to do.

I was always working
in New York

whilst my kids
were in new haven.

My youngest son, James, he
started smoking marijuana at 14,

and at 20 he started to really
go into drugs.

It is so amazing how
you spend your life providing,

loving your kids that you don't
see the mental part

that's going on in their life.

In turn, then you
look at white kids,

they have their parent
and they have a housekeeper

that loves them,

but yet still your kids
are most of the time alone.

Narrator: Then what
happened with James?

He got... Um...

He died with aids...

From used, you know, needles.

Narrator: As nannie and I
returned to new haven together,

I suddenly saw my birthplace
with new eyes.

Processing so much
I hadn't understood

about the intersection
of James' life and my own.

But what else had I missed?

Growing up in the wake of
the civil rights movement,

I guess like many people

I imagined things were gonna
get better for black America,

but as it turned out,
in many ways,

the worst was yet to come.

Man: Growing up in Florida,

I remember thinking that I never
wanted to leave Florida.

I used to tell my friends,

like before we'd go out
and do some illegal activity,

I used to give them
a pep talk and say,

"you know, God is on our side
because he knows that we're poor

"and God wouldn't have us
be poor,

so he understands
what we're doing."

And you know,
I actually believed that.

Narrator: Carl hart was part
of a generation of black men

who experienced first hand
the most dramatic escalation

of the drug war
in American history.

Today a Professor of psychology

at New York's
Columbia university,

his past experience
remains a driving force

in his work.

Hart: Growing up
in the 1970s and '80s,

man of my friends
and family members

got caught up in drug use.

So I was always interested
in drugs of abuse.

What I do today is that
I actually give people drugs

in the laboratory to study
the effects

of drugs like methamphetamine,
cocaine, marijuana.

Narrator: Though Carl's
academic research

is on the science
behind addiction,

his own experience has shown him
how often drug laws are shaped

less by scientific concern
than by political ones.

Hart: In the 1980s, like many
people in the black community,

I was concerned about the havoc
that drugs were wreaking

in our community

or the havoc that I thought
drugs were wreaking

in our community.

That brings us to the major
and sweeping effort

that I'm announcing
this morning.

Narrator: In the long history
of the drug war,

no single chapter would turn out
to impact black America

more deeply than the 8 years
of the Reagan presidency.

What do you do when someone
offers you drugs?

All: Just say no!

Narrator: While Nancy Reagan's
popular slogan "just say no"

took what would seem a motherly
approach to drug prevention,

her husband took
a far tougher approach.

Ronald Reagan: We will utilize
the FBI, the DEA, the IRS,

the atf, immigration
and naturalization service,

United States marshal services,
amd the coast guard.

We intend to do
what is necessary

to end the drug menace

and to eliminate this dark,
evil enemy within.

[Child yelling in spanish]

Alexander: When Reagan announced
that he was planning

to rev up the drug war
more than ever,

it was political opportunity

because at the time drug crime
was actually on the decline,

not on the rise.

Less than 2%
of the American population

even identifies drugs as
the nation's top priority.

But then of course
they got lucky.

Crack cocaine.

Crack, the super addictive
and deadly cocaine concentrate.

Crack hit the streets, and
suddenly there was just hysteria

about this brand-new
demon-like form of cocaine.

Reagan: Today, there's a new
epidemic... smokeable cocaine...

otherwise known as crack.

It is an uncontrolled fire.

Go, go, go, go!

Police!

Reagan: The American people want
their government to get tough

and to go on the offensive.

And that's exactly
what we intend

with more ferocity
than ever before.

Freeze!

Police! Freeze!

There's your crack.

Newscaster: If smaller cities
don't have a crack crisis now,

they will soon.

Woman: They're just carrying on
like it's their living room,

like this is their home,
like they belong here.

They don't belong here.

Hart: What we saw were images
of black urbanites on TV

smoking crack cocaine
over and over and over.

And then these incredible
stories were associated with

crack cocaine
and they were taken as fact.

Newscaster:
The drug so powerful,

it will empty the money
from your pockets,

make you sell the watch
off your wrist,

the clothes off your back.

Or kill your mother.

Yeah. That's what we're seeing.

Hart: But if you go back
to the 1920s and the '30s,

this is what people were saying
about marijuana.

Man: As elvin takes that
frying pan from the stove

and kills his mother with it.

Not a very nice thing
to look at,

but this is marijuana.

Hart: If you say that now
in our society,

people will look at you
like you're crazy,

but whenever you have a new drug
introduced into society,

you can say incredible things
about that drug

and people will believe you.

Tip o'Neil:
Our society is now infested

with drug abusers.

Man: There was a tremendous fear
of this epidemic

that was gonna overcome
all of us,

not only with drug addiction,

but the violence in turn that
was gonna come out of this

and tremendous fear
led to this view

that the criminal laws
would save us.

Mauer: Democrats as well
as Republicans got on board

to pass a whole new generation
of mandatory sentencing laws.

These laws raced through
congress in record time.

There were virtually
no hearings held,

no consultation with experts who
knew something about drug abuse.

Man: The yeas are 97,
the nays are 2.

This is something
that had to be dealt with,

and of course, you know,
election year fever

did take hold of some people.

Narrator:
With overwhelming support,

Ronald Reagan signed into law
an unprecedented array

of mandatory minimum sentences
for drug crimes.

But no drug would receive
harsher penalties than crack.

The penalties were outrageous.

That is, the penalty
for crack cocaine

was made 100 times more punitive
than for powder cocaine.

Newscaster: The acceptance
of coke is widespread,

commonplace among professionals.

Ogletree: Whites were using
powder cocaine

in boardrooms,
in suburban America;

Blacks were using crack cocaine
in public housing

and on the street,

and what's the response?

Just wiped me out, straight off
the map for nothing.

57 years for this small rock,
you know.

You know what I'm saying?

I want to know why I'm being
like I murdered somebody,

you know.

Narrator: Over time
as the number of blacks

in America's prisons for
drug crimes skyrocketed

for outpacing
the number of whites,

many people,
including many judges,

began to question
the disparity in sentencing

between crack and powder.

Bennett:
Well, that's the major reason

why we agreed to be interviewed.

In my view, it is not fair
to have a 100:1 disparity

in the difference between powder
cocaine and crack cocaine,

and let me explain
what that means.

A crack defendant with 5 grams
of crack cocaine

is treated the same
as a powder cocaine defendant

with 100 times more weight.

In other words,
500 grams of powder cocaine.

And I don't think most people
realize this.

What is the difference
between powder cocaine

and crack cocaine? Do you know?

All crack cocaine
comes from powder cocaine.

The difference is you add
baking soda, water,

and heat from an oven.

That's the only difference.

Woman: I run a group called

families against
mandatory minimums.

I started it in 1991.

I think what I didn't know was
how incredibly hard it would be

to change the laws.

Narrator: Julie Stewart first
learned about the severity

of mandatory minimums when
a family member was picked up

on marijuana charges.

After my brother was arrested

and sentenced to
5 years in prison,

I started meeting other families

whose kids were in
for so much longer.

And I realized my brother was
lucky he only got 5 years.

Crack penalties are
ridiculously disproportionate

to all other drugs.

Narrator: In her fight against
mandatory minimums,

Julie took her cause to
the U.S. sentencing commission,

where she found a powerful
and unlikely ally.

I'm Billy Wilkins,

and I was the first
federal judge in the nation

selected by
president Ronald Reagan

to serve as the first chair of

the United States
sentencing commission.

Stewart: In 1995,
the sentencing commission

actually voted to make crack and
powder cocaine exactly the same.

Now, is crack a dangerous drug?
Yes, it is.

Is it highly addictive?
Yes, it is.

But the commission looked
at this on many occasions

and found that sentencing
crack cocaine 100:1 was unjust.

There can be no doubt
that the higher penalties

for crack offenders
falls disproportionately

on minority defendants.

51% of the crack is used
by the white population.

In Los Angeles, California,

there has not been 1
white conviction, not 1.

Narrator: Yet despite
the evidence

presented by judges and experts,

congress was unyielding,

insistent on maintaining
the crack/powder disparity.

I must just tell you
in my view at least

the findings are
very vulnerable.

These people are
killing our kids.

These people are
disrupting society.

These people are wrecking
our society.

[Gavel raps]

Woman: All rise.

United States district court
is now in session.

The honorable mark w. Bennett
presiding.

I don't think people understand
really how crucial this is,

how serious this is,
what's really going on.

Bennett:
Looking at Maurice's case today,

he's facing a double
mandatory minimum

from 10 years to 20 years.

Does he deserve
a 20-year sentence?

I don't think so.

Narrator: In 2005, after years
of concern from the bench

about unfair sentencing,

the supreme court ruled that
judges should be given back

a certain degree of discretion

to determine what
a fair sentence should be.

In response, judge Bennett
did something historic.

Yes, I'm the first United States
district court judge...

To do a 1:1 sentencing ratio

between crack
and powder cocaine.

Haltiwanger: Judge Bennett
gave me a 1:1 ratio

instead of 100:1.

So he took my guideline from,
like, 30 years

to, like, I think I was under
10 years or right at 10 years,

but it didn't help.

Bennett:
In Maurice's case today,

the justice was trumped
by the mandatory minimum.

Narrator: Judge Bennett's
decision to use a 1:1 ratio

turns out to have been
largely symbolic

since congress' complex system
of mandatory minimums

has the final say.

Haltiwanger: The minimum
of conspiracy is 10 years,

and then with me having
a prior drug felony,

the minimum is 20 years, so I
got a 20-year sentence today.

Narrator: This has backfired.

I mean, if I go
around the country

and I see all
the people in jail

for unbelievable sentences,
how did this go wrong?

Well, I don't know
that it went wrong,

it just I guess
the system worked,

the system worked the way
congress planned for it to work.

They're not gonna come home
and campaign

on the fact that I'm
for more lenient sentences

for drug dealers.

Taking on the drug cartel
and winning the drug war!

Bennett: Just the opposite.

I'm gonna come home and campaign

that I want tough sentences
for drug dealers.

I just think we need
tougher sentencing.

Bennett: But whether congress
started out with race in mind

or not, it turns out in fact
and in practice

that minorities are targeted
by these mandatory minimums,

100:1 ratio,
more than others are,

and that's not good.

Stewart:
And it's very interesting,

because African Americans
do not use crack cocaine

any more than whites.

In fact, whites use it more.

African Americans make up 13%
of the population in the U.S.,

and they are about 13%
of the crack users.

In other words, the rest of
the users are white and brown,

which is kind of amazing

because 90% of the crack cocaine
defendants in the federal system

are African American.

Hart: I came back to South
Florida for multiple reasons.

To attend a scientific meeting.

And to attend
some court proceedings.

And of course I'm here to see my
family 'cause they're all here.

Narrator:
Like so many people I met

in the world of the drug war,

Carl hart's story turned out
to be far more complex

that I'd originally understood.

After overcoming great odds
to break out of his past,

Carl suddenly
found himself drawn back

into the world
he had left behind.

Man: And on the other charge,

the possession of cocaine charge

you'll be pleading no contest?

Yes, sir.

Hart: So Tobias is my son
who I found out was my son

about 8 or 9 years ago.

He was 16 when I found out,
and Tobias is now 26.

9 years later I'm still
struggling with it

because I am responsible
for this person being here,

but yet I had no influence
on how this person was shaped.

Right now,
he has 2 open charges.

He has a cocaine charge.

It's not encouraging.

So your situation,

how are you doing
business-wise?

Surviving?

I ain't too good.

Christmas around
the corner gonna look ugly.

Yeah?

You should also
make sure you get

a little, small legitimate gig.

I don't care what it pays

because... all right.

Well, hang on, hang on,
just hear me out.

The thing is, I'm just afraid

that you go before a judge

and then they're gonna say,

"how are you getting
your loot?"

All them kids,
I ain't gonna be able

to take care of any kid
with no $8.00, $7.00 an hour.

You know, you can do
whatever you want in life,

but if you got all this stuff

hanging over your head,

you're gonna be
shackled by the system.

Please, man, just do
those little, small things

that I ask you to do, you know?

All right, so I'm out, man.

All right, bro.

See you later.

All right.

Hart: And it's just difficult
because I know his fate.

I mean, it's the same
we grew up with,

so it's these cycles.

You know, particularly in light
of what I'm trying to do

with my life, it's just sad.

Ok, so about
35 million Americans

report using some illicit drug

in the past year, but there's
this sort of general belief

that black people
are using drugs

disproportionate to their
numbers in the population.

I like to see empirical evidence
be used

in our shaping of public policy.

Now, all of this was completely
missed in the hysteria

in the mid-'80s and '90s
about crack cocaine.

Narrator: After spending so much
of his career studying drugs

and drug laws in
the black community,

Carl's focus has turned to
a new drug

and a new target
for law enforcement.

There is a new drug epidemic
in the United States.

Methamphetamines, or meth.
Like crack in the 1980s,

meth is cheap, potent, and leads
addicts to serious crimes.

Woman: All across America,
we've got people

who are trying to lure children
into using meth.

Hart: By the 1990s, we were
seeing a similar phenomenon

with methamphetamine as
we saw with crack cocaine.

The said meth would help me
get through my exams.

Hart: But the people who
are primarily associated

with methamphetamine use
are poor white folks

in trailer parks.

Newscaster: A fully operational
methamphetamine lab.

Hart: And also gay folks,
2 sort of despised groups.

We don't like that at all.

We can't stand
people like that.

When we think about
the country's response

to methamphetamine,

methamphetamine users
have been vilified.

And the reason we have
to recognize it

is so we can be careful
or more critical

than we were with crack cocaine.

Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri,

this is the heartland of
the methamphetamine problem.

How many of you are here
on meth sentences then?

Wow.

Now, how many of you
did I personally sentence?

[Snickering]

Man: For along time,

crack cocaine was the drug that
was populating the prisons.

Methamphetamine, though,
has rapidly caught up with it

and probably overtaken it.

Bennett: Today, the average
person I sentence in a drug case

is a nonviolent
blue collar worker

who lost their job

and then turned to
manufactured methamphetamine

to support their habit.

And we treat them
like they're kingpins.

[Guitar playing]

Narrator: With their rates
of incarceration rising,

white inmates have
started to received

the kind of harsh sentences that
blacks have faced all along.

Hey, what's going, man?

� If I leave here tomorrow

� would you still remember me?

Man: My name's Kevin knott.

My number's 203093.

I'm in here for trafficking
methamphetamine.

I start my 14th year
in just a couple months,

and I will be here until I die.

Yeah. I have life without parole
for 3 ounces of methamphetamine.

� 'Cause I'm as free
as a bird now �

[humming]

Ha ha!

I can't remember it, man.
It's been too long.

Yep, I've... Up, but I don't
think I should die for it.

I have life without parole,
which means I'll stay in prison

until I die.

That's a death sentence
in my opinion...

A slow death sentence...

That I have to wait
until I die.

The reason I started with meth
is 'cause I got laid off.

Somebody said, "here,
try to sell some of this"

and get you
a little extra money."

And then I started using it,

and then I had to sell it
to pay for it.

Narrator: How much is
3 ounces of methamphetamine?

It will fit in
a small envelope.

If you've been busted
for 2 prior drug charges,

smoking pot or having pot
or methamphet,

whatever it is, and then you get
a trafficking charge,

they give you life
without parole.

It's mandatory,
life without parole.

Kevin has always been
a good son.

That's Kevin. Ha ha!

You got to see this.

That same sweet little boy.

Kevin's father was drafted
and was sent to Vietnam.

He looks very much like a boy,
he was a boy.

He went to Vietnam and came home
a very damaged boy.

He saw people that were maimed,
injured, shot and killed,

and I think he became
addicted to heroin

to help ease his personal pain.

After losing Kevin's dad,
Kevin kind of stepped up

and felt like he was
the man of the household.

Kevin: When I first came in,
there was only a few of us,

5 or 6 at the most.

A couple years ago, I heard
that there were 92 people

in the state of Oklahoma

that had life without parole
for drugs.

And it just keeps growing.

Hey. Yeah?

You got a visitor.

All right.

I fought it, and it's over with.

It's been over with
probably 9 years.

I took it all the way
to the supreme court,

and they wouldn't hear it.

So... Here I am waiting
for the law to change

or something, commutation
from the governor,

I don't know.

The time I've been locked up,

my mother has lost
2 of her brothers,

1 of her brother's daughters
directly related to drugs.

Hi, mom. Hi, honey.

And then my sister,
my youngest sister,

8 years younger than me was
coming to visit me in prison

at granite and died
in a car wreck.

It's been pretty bad
for my mom.

She's pretty strong.

Ogletree: Today
people have to understand

that the drug war is actually
a war on all Americans,

and I think people keep saying,
"well, that's about them."

Well, no, it's about you.

No one ever imagined when they
saw so many African Americans

getting locked up,
getting long sentences

that is would apply
beyond the black community.

But it does.

Newscaster: Unemployment at 9%,

America is struggling through
the worst recession since...

Different newscaster: No
prospects of an immediate end

to the recession.

Different newscaster:
Thousands of people,

jobless and hopeless
look for a way out

and find trouble instead.

Before I got hooked on drugs,
I looked down on drug addicts,

and then I became one.

Oftentimes we hate what we fear,

like this guy here,
he was a drug dealer,

so I would look down
upon him, too.

And I turned into a drug addict,
a drug dealer.

Simon: You know,
a funny thing happened

on the way to the 21st century,

which is that we shrugged off so
much of our manufacturing base,

so much of our need
for organized labor,

for a legitimate union wage,
for union benefits,

for the types of jobs on which
you could raise a family

and be a meaningful citizen.

We got rid of so much
of that that, oops,

we marginalized
a lot of white people.

Newscaster: 1 in every 8
Americans has had to visit

a food bank over the last year.

Simon: And lo and behold,

white people,
when they're marginalized,

when they are denied meaning or
they are denied meaningful work,

they become drug addicts, too.

And they become involved
in the methamphetamine trade,

and they start
turning themselves over

to the underground economies

that are the only ones there
to accept them.

Capitalism is fairly colorblind
in the end.

Our economic engine,
when it doesn't need somebody,

it doesn't need somebody

and it doesn't give a damn
who you are.

White people found out a little
bit later than black folk,

but they found it out.

Narrator: After hearing so much

about the failure
of the drug war

and the enormous harm it does,

I wanted to better understand
what drives it.

Far from the frontlines
of the war,

I discovered a vast and less
visible world of people

who I their own ways
play a part.

This chair in comparison

to other types
of restraint chairs

is the most humane.

The person in the chair
can breathe very easily

and it's not restrictive.

[Indistinct yelling]

There it is.

Ha ha!

The war on drugs has to be
a war at every level.

It has to be a war
on the streets of the cities.

It has to be a war
at the state level.

And it has to be a war
at the federal level.

It's just like fighting
the war on terrorism.

Man: Before in the prisons,

I guess the only choice was you
could get a torah or a Bible.

Things have changed now.

Anybody want their free copy?

All sorts of people start to get
a vested interest,

a financial interest in keeping
the system going.

Woman:
Well, we're in the business

of supplying corrections
with products.

It's a growing market, prisons.

There's a lot of prisoners
in the United States.

That's what I mean by...

now you've got me feeling
awkward because of the camera.

Put it down.

Man: This company, cca,

we are the leader
and the largest in the world

as far as private prisons
and jails.

We are profitable.

We're highly rated
in the stock market.

It hones our ability
to it less expensively

because we have to earn
a profit.

There's a whole range
of corporations,

the taser gun manufacturers,

private healthcare providers,

phone companies,
whole communities

that now depend on prisons
as their primary employer,

now, deeply invested
in the drug war

and the system of
mass incarceration.

Miller: And all these people

are not trying to do
anything wrong.

They're trying to make
society better.

But their actions
combined together

become part of the thrust

that makes the bad parts
of the drug war

more feasible
and more practical.

The thing with
the war on drugs is

and the question
we have to ask is,

not why is it a failure,

but why, given that it seems
to be a failure,

why is it persistent?

And I'm beginning to think,
maybe it's a success.

What if it's a success
by keeping police forces busy?

What if it's a success by
keeping private jails thriving?

What if it's a success keeping
a legal establishment

justified in its
self-generated activity?

Maybe it's a success
on different terms,

than the publicly stated ones.

Narrator:
Perhaps not surprisingly

it was people on the inside
who turned out to be most aware

of the dangerous pressures
that outside forces

exert on the system.

Carpenter: My job is
to keep the people inside

who are supposed to be inside,
and I'm gonna do my job.

But as I've come along
in corrections

over the last 20 years,

I've just kind of watched
it grow into this thing.

I mean, it's almost
a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You build a bed,
they fill the bed.

They start sucking in money
at an astronomical rate,

and it just grows and grows
and grows of its own accord.

You almost can't stop it.

You can't afford to stop it.

And so now
you start talking about,

well, you know, we can cut
some corners and we can reduce.

What about if we reduce
by closing that facility?

Newscaster: Employees are hoping
the governor will reconsider

his plan to close the prison.

Carpenter: Well, wait a minute.
You can't do that.

My community will dry up
and blow away.

The private prisons, they
actually go to a town and say,

if you'll use your tax money

to buy the land
and build the facility,

we'll rent it from you,
and you'll get rich,

and we'll get rich,
and we'll all be rich together.

Well, that only works if
there's prisoners in the beds.

So now you're starting to find
people that fit the criteria,

now you actually can pay people
to go out and look for people

that fit the criteria,
and now it's gonna grow faster.

You can't let that town fail,

so you can't change the way you
think about locking people up.

Narrator: So you
need a new enemy.

It's the same enemy,
you just need more of 'em.

Narrator: Though my journey had
begun with a simple question

about 1 person's life,

it was forcing me to confront
unsettling realities

facing the country.

And yet the full weight
of the situation

had still not been revealed
to me

in its darkest historical terms.

Simon: Say it this way
'cause it's more honest.

Instead of saying let's get rid
of all these drug addicts

and drug dealers,

and once we throw away
the key on them,

we'll solve this problem.

Why don't you try saying it
to yourself this way.

All these Americans
that we don't need anymore,

the factories are closed,
we don't need them,

you know,
the textile mills are gone,

gm is closing plants,
we don't need these people.

You're extra Americans.
We don't need 'em.

Let's just get rid of
the bottom 15% of the country.

Let's lock 'em up.

In fact, let's see if we can
make money off locking them up

in the short term
even though it's gonna be

an incredible burden
for our society,

even though it's gonna
destroy these families,

you know, where these people
are probably integral

to the lives of other Americans,
let's just get rid of them,

you know?

And at that point, why don't you
just say kill the poor?

If we kill the poor,
we're gonna be a lot better off,

because that's what the drug war
has become.

Miller: My father was
a war crimes investigator

in Europe after world war ii.

And we often talked about
his experiences.

I was reading the work
of Raul hilberg,

who wrote about the destruction
of European Jews

and the holocaust.

We've long known that
the process of destruction

was an undertaking step by step.

Miller: I realized that there
was a chain of destruction,

that what he was talking about
could be expressed

by links in a chain
around the world

in more than 1 society.

People do the same things
again and again,

decade after decade,
century after century.

Now, this chain of destruction
begins with the phase

we can call identification,

in which a group of people
is identified as a cause

for problems of society.

People start to perceive
their fellow citizens

as bad or evil.

They used to be
worthwhile people,

but now all of a sudden
for some reason,

their lives are worthless.

The second link in the chain
of destruction is ostracism,

by which we learn
how to hate these people,

how to take their jobs away,

how to make it harder
for them to survive.

People lose their place to live.

Often they're forced
into ghettoes,

where they're
physically isolated,

separate from the rest
of society.

The third link is confiscation.

People lose their rights,
civil liberties.

The laws themselves change
so it's made easier

for people to be
stopped on the street,

patted down, searched,

and for their property
to be confiscated.

Now, once you start taking
people's property away,

you can start taking the people
themselves away.

And the fourth link
is concentration.

Concentrate them into facilities
such as prisons, camps.

People lose their rights.

They can't vote anymore,
have children anymore.

Often their labor is exploited
in a very systematic form.

And the final link
in the chain of destruction

is annihilation.

Now, this might be indirect

by, say,
withholding medical care,

withholding food,
preventing further births.

Or it might be direct
where death is inflicted,

where people are
deliberately killed.

These steps tend to happen
of their own momentum,

without anybody forcing
them to happen.

I think a lot of people would be
disturbed and outraged

by the thought that
any part of this process

could be going on in America.

But it wasn't until I began
studying the drug war

that I realized that some of
these same steps were happening.

For instance, identification.

All of us agree that
the greatest domestic threat

facing our nation today
is drugs.

Bowden:
The way to take a problem

and make it a huge problem

is first you ask
the wrong question,

and then you feed us
the wrong answer.

Bush: Who's responsible?

Let me tell you straight out...

everyone who uses drugs,
everyone who sells drugs,

and everyone
who looks the other way.

Bien: You identify people,
their characteristics,

you make them other
using fear mongering,

as if they're the cause
of our problems.

These people are
killing our kids.

These people are
disrupting society.

These people are wrecking
our society.

Miller: Secondly, ostracism.

Society learns to hate
drug users.

If you are a casual drug user,
you are an accomplice to murder.

[Applause]

You apply special laws to them
that don't apply to others.

Miller: Now all of a sudden
these people

who have previously just been
identified as drug users

become criminals.

Bill Clinton:
If you break the law,

you no longer have a home
in public housing.

Kaufman: The ultimate effect
is isolation,

being cut off from
mainstream society.

Carpenter: We start it out,
we identify them,

we figure out who they are,
then we start making laws

to prevent them from
being around our children.

You push them out of the places
where they may be successful,

and so where do they go?

Simon:
The area of the last opposition,

the modern American ghetto.

We manage to isolate the poor
economically.

Carpenter: You force them
out of the place

where they could live and work
and possibly be successful,

and now you make them...
you make them criminals.

Simon: So once the economics
has done its business,

then you can add
different levels of policing.

You can change the rules.

You're under arrest.

For what?

You've got a bench warrant.

Probably for drugs.

Woman: Hey, guys,
you know the program.

Get your hands up, turn around.

Miller: Confiscation.
Any property they find on you

can be subjected to
civil forfeiture.

That money's ours now.
That's my money now.

Newscaster:
Federal and local police

seized these vehicles
after their occupants

allegedly purchased cocaine
and other drugs.

Miller: If we're seizing
their property,

it's really a simple next step
to seizing their persons.

Newscaster: Holloway
was arrested on charges

of resisting arrest

and wandering with the intent
to buy drugs.

Alexander: In the drug war,

there's more that's
being confiscated.

What's being taken from them
is all hope in a future.

Woman:
What y'all getting him for?

Don't worry. We caught
him with narcotics.

With the drug war, we've gone as
far as the concentration phase.

Bowden: My government says
we're fighting a heroic war

against drugs and a war against
people who use drugs.

And frankly a lot of them

are just going to have
to be locked up.

Bien: Extraordinary numbers
of people are in prison

because of drugs,

yet it is not a place
to get drug treatment.

They come out,
and then we're surprised

that we have the highest
recidivism rates,

and that results in this cycle
of incarceration

and overcrowding.

Kaufman: This concentration
of people,

whether it's
in inner city ghettos

or in prisons, creates
a culture of hopelessness

that is incredibly corrosive.

When they don't have
any prospects,

people turn to drugs.

And then we'll pursue them
and we'll be able to hire

a bunch of prison guards
and parole officers

and narcotics detectives
and drug treatment people.

In the short term,
some people have jobs.

Miller: Annihilation.

That's not happening with
the drug war in this country.

But there are subtle
but real ways

that don't involve
indiscriminant mass killings,

such as preventing births.

Man: $200 cash payments
to women addicted to crack

to be sterilized.

Violence in prisons.

Newscaster: Severe overcrowding
sparked jailhouse riots.

Different newscaster:
27 inmates died yesterday.

Miller: People swept up
in drug war violence.

Newscaster: 140 drug killings
this year.

Different newscaster: An Iraqi
war veteran was killed

after SWAT team officers stormed
his Tucson, Arizona, home

in a drug raid
that turned up no drugs.

Miller: Now it's important
to remember or to realize

it isn't that the war
on drug users is the same

as what happened
in other societies,

but that both are wars
on ordinary people,

people who are just like us.

Carpenter: You've got to have
an enemy for everything.

The way that Germany in the '30s
rebuilt their infrastructure,

rebuilt their industries
and rebuilt their pride,

their nationalism was by saying
that these people,

this group of people is
the cause of all of our woe,

and if we hate them,
we'll be better off.

Narrator: Or not
doing it at all.

I don't think
it's to that extreme,

but we do say those people
are bad for us,

and if we hate them,
our lives will be better.

So everybody's got to have
an enemy.

The drug war is a holocaust
in slow motion.

And it's not somebody arguing
racial superiority

or arguing for the destruction
of a given race or religion.

That doesn't exist.

Let's be honest about what
was unique to the holocaust.

But... There is an incredible
destruction of human life

that is class-fixed,
not race-fixed, but class-fixed

that is going on and is going on
under the guise

of a war against
illegal narcotics.

[Radio playing indistinctly]

The first time
seeing her, right?

They don't even know who...

Johnson: I mean, I know they
want people to learn a lesson,

but to be honest,
all of this time

is not really helping anybody,

especially my daughter.

All it's doing is making her
grow up like me,

like the cycle is just
continuing, you know?

That was a letter that
was written by your aunt.

She wrote it to the judge.

I ain't never read it, man.

"Dear judge Bennett,
I just wanted you to know

"a little bit about Maurice.

"When he was 6 months old,
his father was murdered.

"That was a sad day.

"My sister then began
using drugs,

and soon after
our young kid's lives..."

Correia: All the years
I spent in narcotics,

I didn't go out there
every day and say,

"hell, let's inflict some harm
on the community."

I think, you know, an unintended
consequence was that,

yeah, we probably did, you know,
we probably did inflict harm.

Man:
2 young kids with the mother.

Chism: Kevin has been locked up
13 years.

So now we write letters
and we call and we email

and just with the prayer
that somebody will hear us

because our day will come,
and I believe it will come.

I don't think my son
is gonna die in prison.

Walking away and leaving him is
the hardest thing that I do.

Carpenter: I don't know
what the solution is.

But I know that the solution
can't be more

of what's got us to this spot.

It can't be more of the same.

Mate: America's drug problem,

a result of hundreds of years
of history,

economic policy, social policy,
and misunderstanding.

So let's not make the most
visible manifestation of it,

that is to say people being out
there in the street and using

the problem.

It's not the problem.

It's simply a manifestation
of our problem.

It's simply a symptom.

It's sort of like saying that
the problem with pneumonia

is that you cough.

Let's suppress the cough
and that's ok.

Well, you can suppress
the cough.

That lung will
still be inflamed.

And that lung tissue
is still being damaged.

You got to deal with
the whole picture.

Narrator: After 40 years
of incalculable

human and economic cost,

it's hard to imagine how
something so deeply rooted

in American life
can possibly be changed.

Man: Mr. chair, we find
ourselves as a nation

in the midst of a profound,
deeply corrosive crisis

that we have largely
been ignoring at our peril.

Narrator: But at many levels
across the country,

there are people
trying to change things.

Man: After 30 years,

all of my colleagues who
are afraid for the politics,

we have to go a different way.

Ogletree: You have never had so
many people on the same side

of this issue because
we fought a war.

We've been unsuccessful.

Man: Let's return to the focus

on prevention of crime.

How do we prevent people
from becoming drug addicts?

How do we prevent people
from being incarcerated?

Too many people in jail
that don't need to be there.

There's a lot that
is not working.

Narrator: In recent months,
under increasing public pressure

the first signs have emerged
that the drug war,

after decades of failure
and unsustainable cost

may indeed be changing.

Newscaster:
Congress took action today

to fix what many have called

a very unfair gap
in federal sentencing rules

for crack cocaine as opposed to
powder cocaine.

President Obama signed a new law
at the white house today

cutting the ratio to 18:1.

Mauer:
We view that as a compromise.

We view that as not providing
full justice,

and we won't rest
after that's adopted.

Narrator: Yet despite a few
first steps toward reform,

those experienced
with criminal justice

know it will take more
than experts, activists,

and a handful of
courageous lawmakers

to undo the damage that decades
of drug laws have caused.

Simon: Understand that
the political infrastructure

is so wedded to the status quo,

that they're so consumed
with the next election

that there will never emerge
a shred of leadership

that will change the situation.

It's up to us.

Man: When do we want it?
All: Right now!

Man: When do we want it?
All: Now!

No longer can drug laws serve
as a stimulus package

for prison communities
on the back of poor people.

Stewart: My takeaway
from the past 15 years

isn't that we need to wait
until we get consensus.

It's that we need to do
what's right.

If there are people
like this body

who are the sentencing experts

that are supposed
to tell congress

and tell the public what
the right thing to do is,

I just urge you to do it.

Man: I believe it is in
the interest of every American

that we thoroughly examine our
entire criminal justice system,

bien: You need to care about
that person down the block

because the same rights
that they have, you have.

And if you let their rights
be compromised,

your rights are compromised.

At some point, you have to
stand up and say it's not ok.

Haltiwanger: You know,
if anything's

ever is gonna be done about
this, if this is gonna change,

it's gonna have to come
from the people out there,

they're gonna have to help,
you know.

We can't do it from in here.

Bennett: Do you know what
it's like to go home at night

knowing that you did
a personal injustice.

I did an injustice to Maurice.

Man: I'll amend
the charge on her

to a violation of unlawful
possession of marijuana,

22105.

Narrator: Back in 2008,
when I began filming,

despite the excitement

surrounding the election
of Barack Obama,

the thoughts nannie jeter
shared that night

would stay with me
more than any other.

Nannie: I feel I cheated myself

out of what I could
have accomplished,

like I never knew that I wanted
to be in politics,

to be a voice for someone,
to say what was wrong,

will it be changed or not,

but to make known
that it's wrong.

I've learned so much and I try
to tell it to other people,

but it's like people
would rather go down

the same road that you went down
before they learn.

You make mistakes through life.

It's like mistakes
is always there.

You make a lot of mistakes
with your life.

But when you somehow
blow your kid's life,

you always think about it.

Obama: But above all,

I will never forget who
this victory truly belongs to.

It belongs to you.

[Cheering]

Nannie: I don't understand
the war on drugs.

All I know is...

I miss my son.

Announcer:
"Independent lens" continues

with a short film "as I am"
by Alan spearman.

Man: Imagine your dreams.

See what you've been through.

Think about yourself...

Where you're going...

Where you're from.

Think about
the dreams you've had...

The nightmares you've had.

I used to have nightmares

that I would be stuck
in a storm drain.

People would walk
past me for days

and leave me down there,

and I would see
and hear everything.

I would see people
selling and buying drugs,

folks fighting,
hookers, hustlers.

Street life.

My hands and arms would
just be sticking out,

and nobody would help me.

I can't pull myself
out on my own.

People just keep
walking past me

like I didn't exist.

What if I was never born?

I shouldn't be here.

I died when I was two.

Tell you the truth...

[Heartbeat]

The doctors gave up on me.

God brought me back.

I always think I got to
be here for a reason.

My dad got murdered,
shot more than 20 times

on the same streets
that I walk today.

You got to know the cuts.

Sometimes, the lines
in our hands intersect

like the cuts in the hood.

You just got to feel
your way through.

We take shortcuts
to stay out of sight,

but they just keep us
out of mind.

Where I'm from,
ain't no rose bushes.

They just sticky bushes.

I've had the same exact dream

over a thousand times.

I keep throwing money
out of a helicopter

to the homeless people.

It's a day-to-day struggle

and an everyday hustle.

You do what you have to.

No matter what it is,

you do what you got to do.

We don't know
what they been through.

We don't know their story.

People just looking for a hand.

They say there's a better life,

but when you go out there
looking for that better life,

you don't get no help when
you try to do the right thing.

The streets taught
me to be hard.

It's hard.

Most times, it's too hard.

I shouldn't be here

in a blank state,
in a city with no fight,

in an area code with no hope,

in a house with no lights,

in a body with no soul,

in a mind with no goals.

I shouldn't be here.

This state shouldn't
be my life.

Am I lucky to be unfortunate?

When we dream,
we enter an empty space

that's filled with hope.

Stuff happens every day,

stuff you shouldn't
get used to,

but you do.

Most stuff just make you
want to give up.

They know deep down inside
that they'll never

have a mansion
or smell the ocean,

but they'll never admit it

because their minds
don't work like that.

You can only try so hard
to pull yourself out,

and if you can't,

you gonna pull somebody
down with you.

Friends turn to foe.

Family turn into people
you just don't know.

The streets are cold

even in the summer.

Two blocks from the hood,
it's a whole new world,

but why?

Is there a new world
two blocks from the hood?

More importantly,
why is the hood two blocks

from the new world?

How far can a flip go?

I don't know anyone
who can say they walked

in my shoes and made it
out of the hood.

What I do know is
we're meant to connect,

to find each other.

Eyes to see,

hands to feel,

hearts to love.

Online at pbs.Org.

You can also follow us
on Facebook and Twitter,

watch videos, and explore
interactive features.

There's always more to
every program on our web site.

Announcer: This program
is made possible by

the corporation
for public broadcasting,

the national endowment
for the arts,

and by contributions to your pbs
station from viewers like you.

Thank you.