Eugene Jarecki

Excellent video interview at The Guardian: ‘The House I Live In’ director Eugene Jarecki on the war on drugs: ‘Everybody is a Victim’

Among other things, he discusses the notion (that we’ve discussed here) that perhaps the drug war is a success, depending on what you are measuring.

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13 Responses to Eugene Jarecki

  1. Peter says:

    Don’t watch this video if you don’t want to be seriously angry for the rest of the afternoon. There’s Biden doing what it takes to get re-elected, threatening more punishment… Bush 1 announcing more jails (which he and Barbara then invested in) and the ultimate, Bill Clinton introducing 3 Strikes: we’ll put them away for “for good” while a simpering Hilary looks on, smirking with pride… I feel sick. These old clips of politicians amping up the drug war are completely without irony. Thank god people like Jarecki are now, at long last, challenging the drug war monolith with reason and truth.

  2. claygooding says:

    I still believe Biden was loaded on Obama the same way Johnson was loaded on Kennedy,,and for the very same reasons,,the corporations had their back up man in place.

    • Windy says:

      “the corporations had their back up man in place”
      Which can also be truthfully said about the GOP nominee for president, too; it didn’t matter which of them won the election, the corporate interests would have been served.

      • kaptinemo says:

        More truth to that than you may think.

        Google the following:

        Clinton Obama June 6 2008 Chantilly Virginia

        then google

        Romney June 6 2012 Chantilly Virginia

        A little peek behind the corp-rat curtain that enshrouds our politics. Seeing that most of them are banksters, who got filthy rich off of the drug trade by laundering money, I would bet that they are VERY worried about the turn of events in WA and CO, the ramifications are still reverberating. The phone lines between the Fed Reserve and the White House must be white hot by now…

  3. Opiophiliac says:

    The comment about the war on drugs being a success (just not at its stated objectives) was made by Dr. Gabor Mate, head physician at Vancouver’s safe injection site, Insite.

    Jarecki is wrong about everyone being a victim. Sure the majority of people are victims, certainly the users who suffer the worst “excesses” of the Wo(s)D, the judges forced to impose unjust sentences, the taxpayer footing the bills, ect. But there are indisputable winners too, the heads of the for-profit prison companies, the bankers that launder the drug money and the cartels to name a few.

    But perhaps the worst are the politicians who demagogued drugs to gain power. The same politicians who in private acknowledge the futility of the Wo(s)D, who denounce it AFTER they leave office and have an power to change things. They knew it was the wrong policy, wrong for reasons of liberty, human rights, promoting health, racism, ect, but pursued it for reasons of political expediency. Obama is the perfect example of this, he has said the Wo(s)D is an abject failure, but since gaining the WH has been completely silent.

  4. Nunavut Tripper says:

    The Hearst , Dupont , Anslinger campaign in the thirties was also one of the greatest successes of the drug war from their perspective. With the movie ” Reefer Madness” and copious amounts of yellow journalism the fear of marijuana is still alive and well in small segments of our population to this day.
    As an exercise in media manipulation it is almost unrivaled.

  5. Landis says:

    I can read….but it seems as if I can not write. To all (mostly you Allen) I offer my humble sorrow. I was way out in the wrong and just making very rude / stupid statements.

    • allan says:

      cliche responses…

      no worries…

      it’s all good…

      But seriously… the couch is what it is. All are welcome. Civil discourse has a requirement of common courtesy and mutual respect. Without those… the haters win. Many here smoke herb and respect is part of that. In fact w/o that repect, those of us that used Linda Taylor for years could never have maintained any of those discussions. We (mostly… *cough*) let her rudeness be the perfect shill for our facts and common sense.

      Besides, civil is the way Pete likes his couch.

      And does all our occasional chit-chat and ot ramblings bother some readers here? Prolly… but hey, who can please everyone?

      Your reply is here is appreciated Landis. And the fact you were a lifer will not be held against you… heh…

  6. claygooding says:

    This is our facebook,,we don’t want to talk to millions unless they are reading an article we are commenting on,,here we brag about our hits and mourn our fouls,,borrow more bats from each other and go back and try again.

    • allan says:

      when Pete was hosted on Salon (their loss!) he put up a bulletin board and inside that were for-invited-couch-‘taters only, where we plotted and connived and discussed privately what we so openly discuss in comments now. We thrive – and Linda Raylor wallows in Stanco Insider obscurity. We get some things right.

      Speaking to the topic… I caught Jarecki on Tavis Smiley (PBS) and it was one of the best interviews on the WOD I’d seen on TV. Jarecki plainly sees what we see and have been prolifically sharing for years.

  7. allan says:

    I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power that can move the world.

    – Mahatma Gandhi

  8. YogiBangum says:

    “Getting the regulation of marijuana right requires some experimentation, as we’ve already seen with state medical marijuana initiatives. which is another reason the feds should let states go their own way. There is precedence as well for federal deference in these situations: Massachusetts repealed its laws against alcohol three years before Prohibition was repealed at the federal level. Like other states that lead the way in undoing that historic mistake, Massachusetts was spared years of lawlessness and violence.

    There may come a time when the federal government can play a constructive role in moving the nation toward smart alternatives to the failed war on drugs. Until then, it should stay out of the way.”

    Editorial-Respect-voters-decisions-on-marijuana-reform

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