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c-span.org, or listen with the --e c-span radio app area app. >> joining us from north it -- new york is cassandra frederick. she is limiting director with the drug policy alliance. thanks for being with us this morning. startingd our program about the -- talk about the war on drugs and its legacy. we began this morning with a speech that happened 30 years ago from president george w. bush. here is part of that speech. >> this is the first time since taking the oath of office i felt an issue was so important, threatening, that it warranted talking directly with you. all of us agree that the gravest of mastic threat facing our nation's drugs. it has strained our 30 -- faith and system of justice, our courts, prisons, legal system

our break -- are at the breaking point. the social cost of drugs is mounting. drugs are sapping our strength as a nation. turn on the evening news or pick up the morning paper and you will see what some americans now just by stepping out their front door. problem todayus is cocaine, in particular, crack. who is responsible? everyone who uses drugs. everyone who sells drugs. everyone who looks the other way. tonight, i will tell you how many americans are using illegal drugs. i will present to you our national strategy to deal with every aspect of this threat. involvedk you to get in what promises to be a difficult site. -- sight. this is crack cocaine. it was seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents and a

park just a screw the street. -- just across the street. it could have been heroin or pcp. it looks like candy. it's turning our cities into battle zones. it's murdering our children. this stuff is poison. drugs are not harmless recreation. they are a real and terribly dangerous threat to our neighborhoods, friends, and families. no one among us is out of harm's way. when four-year-olds play playground strewn with discarded hypodermic needles and crack files, it breaks my heart. deadly, one of the most and addictive illegal drugs is available to schoolkids. it's an outrage. babiess of thousands of are born each year to mothers

premature babies born desperately sick, and even the most of -- defenseless among us are at risk. >> you have seen that speech years agodent bush 30 today, looking at the legacy of the war on drugs. cassondra federica is with us. cassandra frederick is with us. how do you view the war on drugs? >> i think this is an important moment for us to talk about. when we think about the legacy of the war on drugs, we recognize it is one of the biggest domestic policy failures in this country. word drugsplace the with drug policy and the president's speech and we will see the real effects. the war on drugs has not made our company -- country safer. we could do better to do actual

public education that is about reducing the risks associated with drug abuse. we could have conversations that are not filtered or having mischaracterizations or stigma, which we know it has created some rearrests and overdose deaths. middle of a large public health crisis, and there are direct linkages to our responses to drugs that comes from that speech to what is happening right now. some states have largely ended the war on drugs. others, not so much. new york, quite a downfall. ,rom oklahoma, the rise probably reflective of the drug offenders in the opioid crisis. what are things we can make progress on in terms of the war on drugs? where are the areas where we are finding success? >> i think we are in the middle of a moment where people are

recognizing that the current policies around incarcerating people cost way too much money internet effective to give people the resources to make healthier choices. people are figuring out different ways to increase access to things that work like methadone, or creating opportunities for people to get access to sterile equipment. needlesclean hypodermic for people who inject. we are having conversations where prosecutors are realizing that diverting people potentially into jobs, housing, or treatment is a more effective use of resources. places likeng albany, new york, santa fe, seattle, having conversations with law enforcement about waterways we can shift resources to build communities, as opposing to filling our jails and prisons. joining us from new york, our

guest. we want to open up our phone lines to you to hear your thoughts on the legacy of the war on drugs. it sounded like a cut you off midsentence. you were talking about national issues. finisher thought. out was aas pointing few places that have taken on the idea that we should be from criminal justice resources and focusing more on behavioral health and what people actually need. harmtreatment is based on -- harm reduction principles. we know it works. we know what has worked. we need mode -- more people to the response will be

crucial to giving people the resources they need to make happier choices. >> it's the opioid epidemic now. the latest out of the white house with a headline from washington times, trumped those out more than $2 billion for the opioid fight. what was your response to the action by the administration yesterday? >> one of the things we have seen is that this is not a new announcement that the initiation has made. need more action as opposed to headlines. the rhetoric is not always matching the action and the experiences people are having on the ground. moment, we are very interested in supporting people on the ground that are actually doing the work, and seeing how we can get access to those people that are on the front lines.

having people work through whatever it is they are struggling with. >> how do you get most of your funding? >> most of it comes from foundations and major donors. people that support ending the drug war. we have a direct mail program where people give money every month because they believe the work we are doing is going to be crucial to making america healthy and safe. the drug war is something we all have to work toward. it's something that is failed. there are a lot of people in this country that believe that. >> we will go to calls next to and in florida. -- to ann in florida. >> i'm here. how are you today? >> i'm fine. you are on the air. >> i know you are an advocate.

a lot of the speech that you are using has to do with incredible efforts in raising funds for this task. by a master psychologist and i raised a master psychologist who does counseling in-house. i would like to say two things. i'm kinda nervous. bear with me. i think that some of the donors are also getting funds through investment that are for pharmaceutical companies benefit. you might want to do some homework on that. second of all, i want to ask you how old you are. never mind. i'm in my 60's. i have seen a lot of friends go by the wayside.

the most important thing to take away for people who want to work on alliances to create a better place for saul to live his education. i think a lot of the things you are trying to do our very important it we have a split thing here. pharmaceutical versus nonlegal. thanks. we hear your point. >> i think your biggest point exhibition is very -- education is exactly our point. we see a lot of work around public education. we see a lot of issues on this, so she run the overdose crisis, is people don't understand the

toxicology of drugs. certain drugs shouldn't be mixed together, and that increases the chance ofe overdosing. so really pushing for drug checking so people know what is happening at their making the choice to use drugs. the other thing we have invested in his safety first. that's a curriculum to talk to young people about drugs and give them all of the information that is necessary for them to make healthier choices in their lives. i think education is crucial to how we are going to deal with this. that's one of the reasons why i think if we are going to have and talk about how we are going to get people and not -- safer and not promote stigma and misinformation about what is happening. it's really important for us to stick to the science and give people the opportunity to make healthier choices. we will hear bob -- we will hear from bob next -- >> we will hear

from bob next. i don't want our fellow democrats to forget that joe biden is more responsible for the war on drugs than any one person in this country. after the war on drugs was wrapped up, senators and representatives started acquiring prison stocks, and the whole thing is just a big morass of corruption. it has destroyed so many lives all over the country. thank you. go ahead if you have a response. >> that's exactly right. candidates,dential it will be crucial to hear joe biden apologize for what he has done, be held accountable, and give us a new vision of how he can do this. we know what he pushed before do not work. >> kevin in brownsburg, indiana. good morning. >> good morning.

the last two colors were spot on. we look one color said, at legal and illegal drugs into different ways. as far as the war on drugs, our government didn't have a war on drugs. we all know about what bush's role was in the cia and ronald reagan, the biggest drug dealer we have ever seen. everything is about money, like biden. people started buying stocks in prisons. america is all about the money. i have been on both sides of the fence of this. i work in a situation where i see a lot of overdoses right now. i've probably seen 200 or 300 overdoses. i've yet to see one african-american overdose on opioids. since we invaded afghanistan, the opioid crisis has gone through the roof. we have big pharma like perdue,

who is putting -- been running rampant as the biggest drug dealers of all time. our government is not going to do that. it has to come from the private sector. i applaud you for what you are doing and trying to get a hold of the drug crisis and i appreciate you taking my call. i think they're a couple of points there. -- there are a couple points there. we have to talk about the role that capitalism plays in incentivizing how we deal with drugs. i think there's a conversation to be had about the role that pharma has played. more importantly it's about our drug policy responses. how we give people access to medication and how it works. the drug policy work we have been doing has shown that there are people with chronic pain because of our draconian drug policies around pharmaceuticals.

there are people that opioids work for. there are people who are struggling with opioids. we need to deal with that as well. we need to make sure there are multiple communities being harmed. a lot of times, people talk about overdoses as if it is only hurting one community. they are increasing among african-americans and black americans in this country. that has not been given the kind of attention that needs to happen because the larger mainstream relic -- rhetoric focuses on white people. that's true as a community that is suffering. black americans are also suffering. we are sure to have conversations about communities that are suffering from a response to the opioid crisis. natalie white, latino, black and indigenous, but those people who

have pain. >> we are talking about the drug epidemic in the legacy of the war on drugs. we are joined by our guest with the drug policy alliance. we will go to myrno. -- myron. >> good morning. the last thing that last guy said was on my mind. there was something i wanted to say this morning. jesse jackson ran for president twice. one of those times, he spoke at a convention and had people crying in the aisles and he was you can't keep someone in a ditch unless you get in the ditch and hold him down. every time smitty passed --

somebody passed, to our communities and this nation. when drugs were investing the black communities and cracked ,nd the murder rate went up there was no nice terminology about it. just a bunch of criminals. now that we have the opioid incredible, iis didn't have a clue until a year ago. 50,000 people die a year or something. i could not imagine that kind of stuff happening in this country. how it was allowed to be so. that's a huge amount of people. we are losing a lot of doctors and lawyers and engineers in bus drivers and dog catchers and everything. it takes everything to run the

world. at some point, we have to get on our knees and ask god for some moral direction. thank you for your call. -- >> thank you for your call. >> if you believe in god, you can get on your knees. i also believe we have the science and health interventions that can help us. this is an important moment. the clip that started out this segment talked about crack cocaine. there have been a lot of parallels that people have made between what the government did for crack cocaine and what is doing in the opioid crisis. we haven't given people the access or drug treatment that we know that works. we haven't given people access to housing. have a top of the structural factors at play. gentler version of

the drug war. it's important for our viewers and listeners to realize that the rhetoric does not match the practice. people are still getting incarcerated and separated from their families. people are not being given access to the kind of treatment that works and is effective. right now, some of us have to get our knees and pray and get into the rooms and a community responses we know that work. that's working in social determinants of health and focusing on harm reduction practices. resourcesut shifting to build communities as opposed to jails and prisons. >> maybe you can help understand the discrepancies in the number. you look back in the 90's, any drug possession arrests each year, at that time in 1990 were 700,000. 300,000 for drug distribution. for drug distribution.

2017, 1.4 million arrested for possession but about the same number as the sale and manufacture. discrepancy? for us tois important recognize the difference between the terminology of prison and jail. we are also seeing an increase of people in jails and the assistive criminal justice -- we are having a conversation as there are a lot of people who have gone back and forth between charged with sales or position because users and sellers can tend to be the same people. now, around incarceration, there is a focus on moving people to diversion or treatment and what we see is people struggling about how to navigate through this moment.

the prison policy initiative we reportth has issued this and is looking at these different numbers. for us, we see they may look the same but we are also looking at distribution. our people in prison or in jail or different treatment positions? we are trying to focus on the pervasiveness so we can find where people are. as someone from new york and does research, the distribution of for the numbers are can be different depending on how you look at them. illinois -- and teresa in illinois. caller: good morning. i just want to say, you know, this war on drugs, go back to the crack cocaine epidemic, and iran-contra, they were sent to the black community

intentionally. they had congressional hearings about it and it did not go anywhere and nobody was ever held responsible. those drugs were intentionally sent into the black community and along with the gangster rap, that was intentionally done, we have 35 years of all of this and crack cocaine epidemic started the prison industrial complex. host: a couple of callers have made that point. kassandra frederique? guest: it is important to acknowledge there was a systematic -- this was a systematic policy initiative to criminalize poor people and people of color, in particular, black people. your callers are right, when we talk about the policy, it cannot be divorced from the systematic way that race was used to

propagate incarceration and stigmatization. conversationt a about gary webb and contra, but around relying the interests and motivations behind richard nixon's war on drugs was a way to destabilize the black community and antiwar left. work, butpolicies there is a larger conversation about the war on drugs. most drug laws passed in this country have usually been connected to a group of people that were not white. the first drug was associated with asian folks in san francisco with cocaine laws associated with black americans. even right now with conversations about building the wall and the heroine crisis, we

see the role xenophobia and racism has played, a motivating factor as we move forward. the reason it keeps coming up is because we cannot have a conversation about the drug policy the country has propagated without having a serious conversation of the role race has played in building drug policies. host: a headline from the associated press on the opioid crisis, australia faces a opioid crisis as companies push drugs abroad. abilene, texas, maddie. caller: good morning. guest: good morning. caller: i just have a couple of things to say. deal, it affects whites now more than blacks. old, he had2 years

a good job. when he was in his late 30's, he got burnt late -- really bad on his back. third-degree burns. opioids,ted him on coding, hydrocodone. it does not take much for somebody to get addicted to hydrocodone. pills,nd them out like just like candy. you go to the dentist and get hydrocodone. he was taking 16 pills per day. problem but hea did not know what to do without it. it, to him and pay for be in a rehab center. ok?

he went once and got out, it lasted a month. he got back on them. when it got hard for him to get them, and his wife was also on them, and they had children, three. whichound another outlet was methamphetamines. they took them by mouth at first and snorted forever and started using needles. crap about giving people free needles, you are just giving them permission to do drugs. you are not getting them help. 2012ughter-in-law died in because she shared so many needles with people and her advised son, that's my son, they

were making methamphetamines in their home and selling it out of their home. host: i will let you go there, a awful story, sorry to hear that. your response? guest: i am so sorry. isrything you are saying reflective of a lot of things i have heard and witnessed in my work in trying to deal with this crisis. and criminalatic that your son did not have the information to get the resources he needed. he did not have a treatment process that worked for him. that is polymeric. -- that is problematic and why we work so hard with people around the country to figure out

ways to make treatment better and more accessible and responsive to the needs of the people who come in. a lot of people who do great work in the treatment space but they need more. so many people are struggling. about clean needles, your point is important. reducing the harms and giving people access to sterile equipment is critical to ending the war on drugs and critical to dealing with the opioid crisis because it is not only giving people access to clean needles but prevents them from contracting blood-borne illnesses like appetite is be or hiv -- hepatitis b or hiv. important for people to access these resources because it gives them the ability to not die from something else. the ability to keep people alive enough to give them resources to

stay alive. dead people do not recover. multipleo give people pathways to recover and for some people that is abstinence-based treatment and other people that may be methadone. for other people, syringe assess where they get syringes but are connected to wraparound services which include drug treatment. giveve to give more -- people more options and not less which is hard because we want our family members to be alive, some want family members to stop using. sometimes it does not work that way. i'm a social worker and i believe in my heart that we have to not the people there. it is hard for listeners and viewers with family struggling but we work with families every day that have lost people who lost loved ones to overdoses or to incarceration or are still struggling with people using or

still struggling with people incarcerated. our goal is to give people more options, not less. , when youint about hear about race and the drug war and you think, no big deal, we know is affecting everybody. the longer we have conversations , the more we have full or conversations about all of the communities impacted by the drug war, the better we are and the more effective we will be in seeing robust solutions that work for everyone. host: kassandra frederique, we appreciate our conversation with you this >> c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up friday morning, former republican congressman and bobent nra board member

barr discusses efforts to reduce gun violence. then a discussion of women in the republican party. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern friday morning. join the discussion. >> coming up tonight on c-span, president trump presenting the medal of freedom to former la lakers basketball player jerry west. then vice president mike pence's with british prime minister boris johnson in london. later, a discussion about the role of u.s. space policy in intelligence gathering. president trump awarded the medal of freedom to basketball hall of fame player jerry west. 81 years old, who played guard lakers.los angeles the ceremony took place in the white house oval office. >> thank you very much for coming today. it's my privilege to award