Addicted to Stigma - COUNT THE COSTS OF THE GLOBAL DRUG WAR SERIES (Sub: Eng, Hun)

One of the worst negative consequences of the global war on drugs is stigma - join our campaign and count the costs with us!
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They're drug addicts, and they end up selling sex

and the way he got them to come with him ...

He had cash and drugs with him.

There was a serial killer operating

The police wouldn't say that these women were missing,

and they didn't want to ever investigate them as unsolved murders.

It took them from 1997 to 2001 to actually arrest him.

What's coming out in the trial now is that the police knew

his name, they had witnesses saying that they had seen women go there,

and they wouldn't act on it, they wouldn't put a warning out to the

women and they wouldn't go and arrest him or get a search warrant.

The police never solved the crime, it was solved by this girl's stepmother.

She was going to the farm and climbing the fence

and looking for her daughter's body, or any of the ...

cuz they knew waht had happened,

and the police still wouldn't go and arrest the guy.

One woman escaped in 1997.

She was naked with a handcuff on one hand, she ran to the highway,

and someone stopped their car and drove her to emergency.

And he was taken to emergency as well, because he was injured.

And they were in rooms next to each other,

and they took the handcuff key out of his pocket, and took the handcuff off her wrist.

They charged him, and they let him go.

They stayed the charges and did not follow through with the charge,

because she's a drug user.

She's (an) unreliable witness.

And he said, to an undercover police officer,

that he had killed 49 women.

People feel that it's important to maintain

a stigma around drug use, as a means of discouraging drug use.

And there may be some truth to that.

On the other hand, for all those who end up using drugs,

they end up being far worse off

because of the stigma that comes with the drug war

with the demonization of drug users.

Most drug use is non-problematical

and recreational.

Most drug users are not patients, they're just ordinary citizens.

We're talking about 20% of the European population,

talking about lifetime prevalence, that's one in five people!

There are studies that show how the average citizen forms their opinion

about drug problems and addiction, and what they think should be done about drug addiction.

is from the Public Service Announcments that come from governments,

which are really intended to create a lot of stigma towards drug users.

And that's what allows governments to get elected,

you know, promising these tough love approaches to deal with drugs,

despite the fact that at the end of the day, it just wastes taxpayer's dollars and leads to more suffering.

There are far more people that use drugs

that look very different than what is depicted on TV.

"I did meth for the first time, now all I do is meth!"

All I do is meth ...

-You did it.
-Oh, this is yours.

We're gonna be shooting up together,

steal together, sleeping together ....

(Screams) ... Don't do it ...

Don't do it!

The stigma is when someone judges

another person, based not on his personality,

or not on relations with this person,

but based on some label that is attached to this person.

It's an inability to see us in our complexity,

in our diversity,

because there's a desire to think that we are all the same,

and that we can all be cured or changed,

or managed or rescued through simple solutions.

The reality is that drug use is very complicated.

It has many different routes,

has very many different pathways and experiences,

and we are a diverse and rich community.

Drug based stigma justifies ...

The shooting that was down in the streets, by the police,

It shows up as fear.

It shows up as isolation.

It shows up as shame.

You know, and silence. And neglect.

And as a result, people are not coming out

with what they need because they're hiding.

If you go into a hospital, and if I'm not a drug user,

They go, "Ok, we'll take an xray,"

"We'll give you a cast, da-da-da-da (etc),"

But if I'm a drug user and they know I'm a drug user,

then they go, "Oh, you're probably just drug-seeking."

So you're not going to get care for another two hours.

And I've seen people wait in hospital rooms hours-and-hours-and-hours,

and literally their arm is broken, you can see the bone.

In the US, the first drug prohibition laws,

with opium were about Chinese,

with concaine were about blacks,

with marijuana were about Mexican-Americans.

If you look in China, Australia, Canada,

anti-Chinese sentiment.

So these fears have always played a roll.

The impact of the war on drugs tends to be

felt most keenly

amongst already marginalized and vulnerable groups,

because they tend to be the ones who are on the receiving end

of enforcement efforts.

For police, they're rewarded

for the number of arrests they make,

So, they go to the places where it's easier to make an arrest,

where drug consumption is more likely to occur in a public setting,

and where you can find drug users a little bit easier.

And so they target minority communities.

We now have more than 2 million people in prison,

more than 5 million people under criminal justice supervision

on any given day in our country.

And about a quarter of them are there for non-violent drug offenses.

And the overwhelming majority of them are poeple of color.

Almost 1% of the African-American male population

is put into prison every single year for drug use.

And this is despite the fact that

African-Americans use drugs at about the same rate

as other populations in the US.

To find more racist laws than the implementation

of the war on drugs, you would literally have to go back to slavery, in my country.

You have African-American men who are incarcerated,

who can't vote, just like their fathers who could not vote

during the Jim Crow era,

and just like their grandfathers who could not vote during slavery.

It's turned into as clear a measure of social control

than we've seen for any other problem

in our history, I think in our country.

We have felonized individuals for drug crimes,

and the felony conviction stay with them once they leave prison.

What it means then, is that when they leave prison,

many of them are not allowed to vote.

So they lose political impact.

They are not eligible for public housing.

They lose eligibility for many health benefits.

They're also ineligible for things like student loans.

And so you take away all these resources from individuals,

even after you've put them in prison,

and they come back to their communities, and they have no way of contributing to society.

They have no way of becoming members of society.

There is now, of course, a change.

One sees it with the leaders of the international AIDS field

calling for the decriminalization of drugs

and the de-stigmatization of drug use.

You should be able to basically live your life as you deem

necessary for yourself.

I mean, we have to have respect and consideration for each other as human beings.

We have to show humility and humanity.

We have to live on the planet together.

And I think it's horrible, and I think it's a waste of energy

for people to actually sit down, put themselves in a position,

to decide how another person should live.

Transcribed and Subtitled by Hunter Holliman