middle men in new york he's the executive director of the drug policy alliance in edinburgh we go to dr ian all over he's a consultant for the united nations office on drugs and crime and in london we have sebastian seville the executive director of release the u.k. center of expertise on drugs the law and. when rights and another member of our cross talk team on the hunger are a gentleman cross talk rules are in effect that means you can jump in any time to respond to a panel member first of all i'd like to go to ethan in new york after forty years a trillion dollars has been spent and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost during what has been called the war on drugs is out war a complete failure or a slight earlier. let's call it about a ninety five percent failure you know it may it may be the case that treating a variety of drugs is illegal has reduced the number of people who use it by a modest amount but as with alcohol prohibition the united states is generated extraordinary levels of crime and violence and corruption in the u.s. and all around the world it's responsible for

politicians by the people to automatically throw someone in jail well joining me here to discuss it is dr jeffrey ian ross an author and criminologist at the university of baltimore dr ross thanks so much for being here my pleasure as i mentioned the u.s. has the largest criminal justice system in the world how do you get to this point how do they get to be this gigantic bloated machine or monster or whatever going to college well there's no simple answer there's lots of reasons including a desire for law and order the fact that it's a large part of our g.n.p. g.d.p. we have this criminal justice industrial complex a prison industrial complex and it just feeds on itself and so you have a law enforcement officers who are you know law being for you know better more power you have a correctional officer unions who are a law being for increased numbers of correctional officers more severe penalties more facilities being built and you have a public that is not satisfied when they hear stories of people who are out on parole who really offends who engage in crimes particularly the kind of the gruesome kind

our next witness is dr. ian macdonald. dr. mcdonald is a professional -- a professor of oceanography at florida state university. he uses satellite technology to locate natural oil releases on the ocean surface. thank you for coming dr. mcdonald. whenever you feel comfortable, please begin. >> i am a professor of oceanography at florida state university, but today i am here of my own accord. i have 30 years of professional and private experience travelling around, cruising on, diving to the bottom of the gulf of mexico, and i deeply and fiercely loved this ocean and its people. i thank you for your exemplary service during this catastrophe. i would like to comment briefly with a critique on the noaa report that we discussed earlier. i feel that this report was misleading. although it was done by very competent scientists, without any side station to the scientific literature -- and a citation to the scientific literature, it is impossible for someone reading this report to check the numbers that are there, and we have concern

our next witness is dr. ian macdonald. dr. mcdonald is a professional -- a profess of oceanography at florida state university. he uses satellite technology to locate natural oil releases on the ocean surface. thank you for coming dr. mcdonald. whenever you feel comfortable, please begin. >> i am a professor of oceanography at florida state university, but today i am here of my own accord. i have 30 years of professional and private experience travelling around, cruising on, diving to the bottom of the gulf of mexico, and i deeply and fiercely loved this ocean and its people. i thank you for your exemplary service during this catastrophe. i would like to comment briefly with a critique on the noaa report that we discussed earlier. i feel that this report was misleading. although it was done by very competent scientists, without any side station to the scientific literature -- and a citation to the scientific literature, it is impossible for someone reading this report to check the numbers that are there, and we have concern ab

our next witness is dr. ian macdonald. dr. mcdonald is a professional -- a professor of oceanography at florida state university. he uses satellite technology to locate natural oil releases on the ocean surface. thank you for coming dr. mcdonald. whenever you feel comfortable, please begin. >> i am a professor of oceanography at florida state university, but today i am here of my own accord. i have 30 years of professional and private experience travelling around, cruising on, diving to the bottom of the gulf of mexico, and i deeply and fiercely loved this ocean and its people. i thank you for your exemplary service during this catastrophe. i would like to comment briefly with a critique on the noaa report that we discussed earlier. i feel that this report was misleading. although it was done by very competent scientists, without any side station to the scientific literature -- and a citation to the scientific literature, it is impossible for someone reading this report to check the numbers that are there, and we have concern

our next witness is dr. ian macdonald. dr. mcdonald is a professional -- a professor of oceanography at florida state university. he uses satellite technology to locate natural oil releases on the ocean surface. thank you for coming dr. mcdonald. whenever you feel comfortable, please begin. >> i am a professor of oceanography at florida state university, but today i am here of my own accord. i have 30 years of professional and private experience travelling around, cruising on, diving to the bottom of the gulf of mexico, and i deeply and fiercely loved this ocean and its people. i thank you for your exemplary service during this catastrophe. i would like to comment briefly with a critique on the noaa report that we discussed earlier. i feel that this report was misleading. although it was done by very competent scientists, without any side station to the scientific literature -- and a citation to the scientific literature, it is impossible for someone reading this report to check the numbers that are there, and we have concern