4.6 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 April 2017
⏱️ 51 minutes
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0:00.0 | From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Bob Garfield. |
0:07.5 | We have too much of a tolerance for drug use, psychologically, politically, morally. We need to say, |
0:15.7 | as Nancy Reagan said, just say no, don't do it. That was Attorney General Jeff Sessions earlier this year, |
0:23.3 | voicing his long-held hardline view on drugs and drug users. In May, he signaled his eagerness |
0:29.9 | to rejoin the nation's old-style war on drugs with a memo that orders federal prosecutors |
0:35.7 | to pursue the harshest possible punishment |
0:38.0 | against drug offenders, including mandatory minimum sentences. |
0:42.6 | We are returning to the enforcement of the laws as passed by Congress, plain and simple. |
0:48.1 | If you are a drug trafficker, we will not look the other way. |
0:52.1 | On the premise that big prison populations keep our nation safer, |
0:57.1 | Sessions memo cancels an Obama-era policy that reduced sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. |
1:03.5 | This initiative flies in the face of data that suggests that the criminal justice system |
1:07.9 | disproportionately penalizes black and Latino drug offenders and utterly |
1:12.9 | rejects the idea that the nation has lost its one trillion dollar war on drugs. This, |
1:19.8 | despite the fact that there is an ongoing opioid catastrophe in America. It would be hard to |
1:27.4 | overestimate the magnitude of this problem. |
1:30.4 | Debbie Dowell is a senior medical advisor at the Centers for Disease Control. We saw drug |
1:36.0 | overdose in the United States more than double and opioid-related overdose more than triple. |
1:42.3 | On average, 91 Americans overdose on heroin or prescription |
1:46.6 | painkillers like Percocet and OxyContin every day. That is clear. What is not clear |
1:52.6 | amid conflicting narratives, ideologies, medical protocols, and laws is the very nature of the |
1:59.4 | abuse or even of drug addiction itself. |
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