The Uncertain Hour Season 3: Inside America’s Drug War

The Uncertain Hour

Marketplace

Government, News

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2019

⏱️ 2 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Thirty years ago, President George H.W. Bush held up a baggie of crack on live TV, and said it had been seized right in front of the White House. The Uncertain Hour’s third season looks at how the policies launched that day continue to reverberate – even as the crack epidemic has faded into history. New episodes start March 21.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you happen to be watching TV on the evening of September 5, 1989, you might have come
0:06.3	across this.
0:07.3	Live from the Oval Office, President George Bush addresses the nation.
0:11.7	And then...
0:12.7	This... this is crack cocaine.
0:17.2	Seize the few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from
0:23.5	the White House.
0:24.5	George H.W. Bush holding up a baggy of actual crack in the Oval Office of the White House.
0:31.5	And while that story probably sounds pretty crazy, the reality of how he came to hold up
0:36.3	that baggy of crack is much wilder than you could even imagine.
0:40.8	You know, nothing is impossible when it comes to drugs.
0:43.5	But when you break it down, you really think about it.
0:45.6	Nobody sells crack in front of the White House.
0:47.7	How did that crack come to be there?
0:52.1	I wanted to know a lot more than the President was telling us that night.
0:57.9	And this baggy of crack, it wasn't just a dramatic prop for a speech.
1:02.1	It was part of this seminal moment in the escalation of the war on drugs.
1:07.7	Tough on drug criminals.
1:09.0	Much tougher than we are now.
1:10.4	Tough for federal laws.
1:11.4	Tough for penalties.
1:12.4	Bef up law enforcement.
	...

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