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Transcript: Distant Drummer: Flowers of Darkness

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00:00:00 #1 The basis of comfort throughout the world, however the earth offers few pleasures for most of its inhabitants.

00:00:19 #2 For his 10,000 years of grumbling a living off the planet, man has found life for the most part to be cruel.

00:00:26 #3 Disenchantment of bounds, fatigue, hunger and cold.

00:00:30 #4 However, nature, almost as an afterthought, softened her terms.

00:00:34 #5 She sprinkled the harsh earth with a variety of plants, each offering momentary escape, a passport from reality.

00:00:41 #6 Their protective effects have been known since the time of the ancients.

00:00:47 #7 In virtually any of the hot countries of the world, where the soil is fertile,

00:01:12 #8 and farmers still employ the oldest methods of cultivation,

00:01:16 #9 flourish as a plant scientifically known as Popover somniferum,

00:01:20 #10 more commonly known as the opium poppy.

00:01:23 #11 Its pods contain a milky fluid that for centuries provided the raw material

00:01:27 #12 for one of the most demoralizing and dissipating vices in the world.

00:01:31 #13 known as far back as 4000 BC, use of opium historically centered on the Mediterranean.

00:01:40 #14 Eventually, Arab and Persian traders introduced the mystic wonders of the poppy to all the communities with whom they bartered.

00:01:47 #15 By the 16th century, India was cultivating it.

00:01:51 #16 In the 17th century, China discovered the euphoric delights that came from smoking it.

00:01:57 #17 Opium dens set back in sinister alleys flourished throughout the Far East.

00:02:02 #18 Even though millions of Chinese were thrust into moral and physical degradation,

00:02:07 #19 the use of opium was actually romanticized in literature by Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas DeQuincy,

00:02:13 #20 and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, all brilliant writers, and each an opium taker.

00:02:18 #21 Its use had become such a problem in China that the emperor issued edict after edict,

00:02:25 #22 Edict after Edict forbidding its import.

00:02:29 #23 In spite of this, in the 1800s, British and American sea captains bought shiploads of

00:02:34 #24 opium at the Great Auctions in Calcutta and traded them illicitly at Chinese seaports.

00:02:42 #25 Then the emperor cracked down.

00:02:44 #26 In 1838, in one haul, he confiscated $6 million worth of opium from the British ships at

00:02:49 #27 Cantal.

00:02:50 #28 England retaliated with the naval squadron, and the notorious opium wars were on.

00:02:59 #29 Although she would be censured in the eyes of the world, the war enabled Britain to force

00:03:03 #30 a treaty, giving her the greatest port in the Far East, Hong Kong.

00:03:15 #31 As well as unrestricted opium trade for her enterprising sea captains.

00:03:20 #32 Then in the 19th century, the German refinement.

00:03:24 #33 Through a relatively simple chemical process, raw opium was transformed into morphine base.

00:03:31 #34 In 1898, another refinement from Germany.

00:03:34 #35 The morphine base came the derivative, heroin.

00:03:39 #36 It took at least 60 centuries to bring Poppy's euphoric effects from the cradle of civilization

00:03:44 #37 all the way to the opium pipes in Canton.

00:03:49 #38 But within only a few decades, modern science was able to funnel the Poppy's impact straight

00:03:55 #39 into the central nervous system in one cool blast.

00:04:01 #40 Today, thousands of prisons and hospitals all over the world are crowded with patients

00:04:06 #41 who have experimented with the poppy's final derivative,

00:04:10 #42 and who have become addicted to it.

00:04:16 #43 It's astronomical profits on the street corners

00:04:19 #44 of the Ginza in Tokyo, the Piccadilly Circus in London,

00:04:24 #45 and the Great White Way in New York

00:04:26 #46 have made it the world's number one illicit commodity.

00:04:30 #47 A deck of heroin sold on a metropolitan sidewalk

00:04:33 #48 is the final transaction in a long series of closely

00:04:37 #49 guarded clandestine operations.

00:04:41 #50 Charles Serragusa, former Deputy Commissioner of Narcotics,

00:04:45 #51 has first-hand knowledge of all of them.

00:04:47 #52 The illicit narcotic traffic, the route of it,

00:04:51 #53 is not quite as complex as it would appear.

00:04:54 #54 Turkey still remains as the principal source

00:04:57 #55 of the raw material, which is opium.

00:05:00 #56 The opium is in process at the morphine base,

00:05:03 #57 sometimes in Turkey, other times in Syria,

00:05:06 #58 and Beirut and Lebanon.

00:05:09 #59 The French now have control of the Lebanese market.

00:05:12 #60 They've been associated with them in the old sorts

00:05:15 #61 of illicit international records for many years.

00:05:19 #62 The Lebanese, the southern morphing base of the French.

00:05:23 #63 And these French Corsicans who have had the traditional ties

00:05:26 #64 with them for many, many years, arranged

00:05:28 #65 for the smuggling of the morphing base into France.

00:05:32 #66 The Marseille is the capital of the Corsican

00:05:35 #67 underworld for all of France.

00:05:39 #68 Once in Marseille, chemists take over, converting morphine base into heroin.

00:05:44 #69 This is the most difficult phase of the entire industry.

00:05:48 #70 Skilled chemists are not easy to find.

00:05:51 #71 The Turkish farmer sells 10 kilos of raw opium for about 22 pounds for $350 on the black market.

00:06:00 #72 Through conversion, it is reduced to one kilo of heroin, now worth $3,500.

00:06:06 #73 Now they've got to sell the heroin, the ones with the customers in the United States, the

00:06:13 #74 mafia hoods, mostly in New York City, Chicago, the West Coast.

00:06:20 #75 Heroin, in its relatively pure form, enters the United States in a variety of ways.

00:06:25 #76 The Port of New York is by far the most common route and is the main target for a narcotic

00:06:31 #77 Bureau investigators working hand in hand with customs inspectors.

00:06:36 #78 An estimated two tons of pure heroin is annually smuggled into the states.

00:06:42 #79 And it's considered a good year when the inspectors manage to intercept 100

00:06:46 #80 pounds of it.

00:06:48 #81 Smuggling is a fine art and the Corsicans are considered to be the finest

00:06:52 #82 practitioners in the world.

00:06:54 #83 Today the automobile is a favorite hiding place and there is hardly a part of

00:06:59 #84 chassis or body that is not at one time or another offered concealment for big

00:07:03 #85 heroin shipments. The second major port of entry in the United States is the

00:07:11 #86 Mexican border. This is the main entrance for illicit marijuana shipments but a

00:07:16 #87 good supply of heroin slips through as well. We are in our vault in which all

00:07:23 #88 the marijuana and heroin which is seized is stored until the criminal case

00:07:30 #89 against the defendants is terminated by federal court action. This contraband is

00:07:37 #90 concealed in most ingenious ways in vehicles, non-persons. In fact you can

00:07:43 #91 name a place that you feel contraband could be concealed and I can cite you

00:07:48 #92 an instance where we have found it there. Some months ago we encountered a

00:07:53 #93 young fellow in the United States from Mexico eating an ice cream cone. A search

00:08:00 #94 revealed that he had an ounce of heroin concealed in the ice cream cone. In this

00:08:05 #95 area we also have a number of yachts, some 5,000 private yachts based in this area,

00:08:12 #96 all of which have the facility or capability of going to Mexican waters.

00:08:17 #97 This poses quite a threat as do the increasing number of private aircraft

00:08:22 #98 crossing the international boundaries. Once the heroin reaches its American

00:08:35 #99 distributors, it is blended with milk sugar and is cut at least one more time

00:08:40 #100 out of peddler himself. Heroin strength is now only 5% normal for the retail

00:08:56 #101 market. Each packet or deck will sell for five dollars. Thus the original 22

00:09:04 #102 pounds of raw opium sold by a Turkish farmer for $350 is eventually worth

00:09:10 #103 on the sidewalks of Manhattan over $410,000,

00:09:15 #104 and in a panic, half a million.

00:09:28 #105 This is the focal point of hard drug addiction

00:09:31 #106 in the United States.

00:09:33 #107 The urban ghettos house nearly three-fourths

00:09:36 #108 of the hardcore addicts,

00:09:37 #109 with New York's teeming slums far out in front.

00:09:41 #110 The traffic starts in Manhattan.

00:09:44 #111 More readily obtainable in Manhattan,

00:09:47 #112 especially in the Harlem area,

00:09:49 #113 up around Lexington Avenue from about 97 to around 135th Street,

00:09:56 #114 116th Street, running east to west completely,

00:10:00 #115 125th Street, and so many other spots probably take me all day to name them all.

00:10:07 #116 America's known heroin population of over 60,000

00:10:12 #117 collectively shoots nearly two tons of opiates a year.

00:10:16 #118 More than half lived within the tenement shadows of Harlem and the Bronx.

00:10:21 #119 When I first came to East Harlem in 1948, it was primarily a large Italian and Puerto

00:10:30 #120 Rican community. For our part, as far as the young, the kids or the adolescents were concerned,

00:10:37 #121 it was constant warfare. There were many, many gangs and it might be said that

00:10:44 #122 But gangs were the main problem in each problem then.

00:10:51 #123 There was much bloodshed and the ironic thing is that the only thing that united Italians

00:11:01 #124 and Puerto Ricans together was the use of drugs.

00:11:07 #125 For the ghetto-dweller, heroin is a desperate bid for freedom and escape from the despair

00:11:15 #126 of the tenement prison.

00:11:17 #127 After getting married, sort of couldn't

00:11:22 #128 meet up with the responsibilities that I had taken on.

00:11:26 #129 And so I felt the need to escape from these.

00:11:29 #130 My first marriage, I've been married twice,

00:11:32 #131 has only lasted about four years,

00:11:35 #132 would continuously using drugs.

00:11:38 #133 I had two children.

00:11:41 #134 Right after my first marriage broke up,

00:11:44 #135 I was immediately married again.

00:11:47 #136 In fact, my first marriage broke up through meeting this other woman.

00:11:53 #137 I went along for about eight months not using drugs.

00:11:56 #138 And finally I come back to getting the feelings of, you know, trying to escape again.

00:12:06 #139 And I started using drugs eight months after my second marriage.

00:12:11 #140 I feel that the main problem in the city at the time is environment.

00:12:17 #141 I would say that the good majority of the people that go on to heroin go on as a result of their environment.

00:12:23 #142 The people they know, their friends, the ready availability to obtain it and so far.

00:12:30 #143 I started to use it. I started to sniff it just to be part of a group.

00:12:35 #144 I started to use it while I was in school. I was addicted.

00:12:42 #145 I woke up and I was very sick and I didn't know what was bringing it about

00:12:47 #146 But I did find out that as soon as I took some heroin through my nose I

00:12:52 #147 Got well. I felt normal and

00:12:55 #148 Once the followers and heroin it may be years

00:12:59 #149 Before he realized or so once would make to himself that he is indeed a junkie and that he is in need of help

00:13:07 #150 products I would say

00:13:12 #151 at any age really of course and within a matter of six months starting out at

00:13:20 #152 about four or six dollars a day he can work his way up to a hundred dollars a

00:13:24 #153 day habit. I was using about over a hundred dollars a day everything I would

00:13:30 #154 get was to go through my arms. The Harrison Act of 1914 strengthened by a

00:13:36 #155 series of Treasury Department regulations is the basic law restricting

00:13:41 #156 production and distribution of narcotics. Although the law does not refer to the

00:13:45 #157 addict himself, the implicit premise is that addiction is willful indulgence,

00:13:50 #158 meriting punishment. I feel that the people living in a metropolitan area are

00:13:59 #159 arrested more frequently and exposed to arrest and the possibility of being jailed

00:14:07 #160 much more than the people in suburban areas. Well the simple reason that a good majority of them,

00:14:14 #161 the majority of them come from poverty homes. In most cases, money for proper legal aid,

00:14:23 #162 although the city will provide them with some. Possession alone is sufficient evidence for

00:14:33 #163 conviction. Users anticipating raids frequently conceal their day supply in a toy balloon,

00:14:40 #164 keeping it in their mouth if apprehended they swallow the evidence knowing that they can retrieve it later

00:14:51 #165 following world war two hard drug use particularly among young people was on the upswing

00:14:58 #166 public reaction surged resulting in more stringent controls stiffer penalties

00:15:03 #167 the 1956 narcotic control act spelled out the most severe and inflexible set of laws

00:15:09 #168 ever put on the federal books.

00:15:14 #169 Penalties for possession were only slightly less

00:15:17 #170 than those for selling.

00:15:19 #171 Probation was possible only on a first offense

00:15:21 #172 possession charge.

00:15:23 #173 The sentence was two to 10 years.

00:15:26 #174 Second and third offenses and selling in any quantity,

00:15:30 #175 even soft drugs such as marijuana,

00:15:32 #176 brought terms up to 40 years with no chance

00:15:35 #177 for probation or parole.

00:15:38 #178 Selling heroin to a minor could bring a possible death

00:15:41 #179 penalty. At the same time the law was taking a harsher look at the addict, popular opinion

00:15:47 #180 began to swing back in his favor, recognizing that he was not just a criminal, but a sick

00:15:53 #181 person, a pathetic tortured human being in need of help. The Narcotic Attic Rehabilitation

00:16:03 #182 Act of 1966 set forth a new national policy for treatment of addicts. At the core of

00:16:10 #183 the policy is the premise that addiction is an illness that should be treated, not a criminal

00:16:15 #184 act in itself.

00:16:18 #185 For the first time, federal law permitted addicts to apply for treatment instead of being prosecuted.

00:16:25 #186 At the Federal Narcotics Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, bars that had restrained addicts

00:16:30 #187 for 33 years were removed, dramatic proof of society's new attitude toward the wretched

00:16:35 #188 victims of the opium poppy.

00:16:39 #189 became a major drug abuse research center administered by the National Institute of Mental Health.

00:16:47 #190 One of the distinctive contributions of the Narcotic Attic Rehabilitation Act of 1966 is

00:16:56 #191 the fact that it authorizes us to provide up to as much as three years of aftercare supervised

00:17:04 #192 by professionals in the community in which the major emphasis is put on helping the addict

00:17:12 #193 to correct whatever inadequacies may have contributed to his addiction in the first place in order

00:17:19 #194 to maximize the likelihood of his adjustment when he returns home.

00:17:26 #195 Throughout the 1960s, many new treatment programs have been launched, in and out of government.

00:17:33 #196 the most publicized is Synanon, a private organization founded and managed by ex-addicts.

00:17:40 #197 The best thing for people is people and Synanon provides the environment to bring together

00:17:46 #198 people from all walks of life. We now have a thousand people in residence, well four

00:17:50 #199 thousand people belong to our Synanon clubs and they don't live here. People from all

00:17:54 #200 walks of life, newsmen, housewives, bricklayers, doctors, lawyers, and all the people get

00:18:01 #201 together within the sit-on environment and talk, communicate to one another.

00:18:13 #202 Some programs take their philosophy right to the center of the action in the ghettos where

00:18:18 #203 drug abuse is rampant.

00:18:21 #204 Exodus House.

00:18:22 #205 Here, ex addicts who have begun to remake their lives work closely with narcotic patients,

00:18:30 #206 right in the community where the drugs are pushed and used.

00:18:36 #207 Bay Top Village is typical of the halfway house concept, where the attic is slowly eased back

00:18:41 #208 into society, one step at a time.

00:18:46 #209 In community extension projects like SPAN, the attic meets with citizens on the outside.

00:18:53 #210 He holds frank discussions with them on a group basis.

00:18:56 #211 When he returns to his community, he is more than just a law-abiding taxpayer.

00:19:01 #212 He is a civic leader, a doer, an activist.

00:19:06 #213 The drug problem in all its complex facets is a challenge to everyone.

00:19:11 #214 We are all potential drug takers, if not heroin, then tranquilizers, stimulants, sleeping pills,

00:19:18 #215 and alcohol.

00:19:23 #216 Even if we live in the country's finest communities, our children at this moment may be experimenting

00:19:30 #217 with marijuana, hallucinogenics, amphetamines.

00:19:37 #218 Tight laws and stiff penalties are not the answer.

00:19:40 #219 A former narcotics commissioner admitted that the mass flow

00:19:44 #220 of hard drugs into the United States could not be stopped

00:19:47 #221 even by the collective enforcement of the customs

00:19:49 #222 inspectors, all the treasury agents, the FBI,

00:19:53 #223 and the combined strength of all the armed forces.

00:19:59 #224 There are essentially two ways to reduce the problem.

00:20:02 #225 First, by attacking it on the user's end.

00:20:05 #226 Continued research and public enlightenment

00:20:07 #227 will increase our understanding of the addict

00:20:10 #228 and his compulsion to escape through drugs.

00:20:15 #229 Secondly, beyond attacking the problem on the user's end,

00:20:18 #230 we must, in a concert of nations,

00:20:20 #231 attack it on the other end, the source.

00:20:23 #232 The plant itself, whether a poppy, Indian hemp,

00:20:27 #233 or the cocoa leaf, is grown out of economic necessity

00:20:30 #234 by farmers who are native to a land that offers little.

00:20:34 #235 The ever-existent black market price tempts the registered growers to overproduce, to conceal

00:20:40 #236 a part of their legitimate harvest and place it on the worldwide illicit markets.

00:20:46 #237 Studies sponsored by the United Nations have shown that in each country there is a practical

00:20:50 #238 and profitable alternative to the narcotic harvest.

00:21:00 #239 In the region of Balbec, Lebanon, where 90 percent of the land was once planted with

00:21:05 #240 of cannabis or marijuana, now grow commercial crops that benefit rather than destroy.

00:21:12 #241 Nature's strange gifts, which Thomas DeQuincey called the abyss of divine enjoyment,

00:21:18 #242 have been with us for 60 centuries, but only in the last 60 years have we released the truly lethal derivatives.