January 25, 2023 • 32 mins
In the wake of college basketball star Len Bias’s death from a cocaine overdose, Congressional Democrats sought to retake the Senate by portraying themselves as tough on drugs. What resulted was one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in the entire history of the War on Drugs, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Among its key provisions was the introduction of federal mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses. The result was generations of men and women, disproportionately from minority communities, lost to over incarceration.
Clayton and Greg talk with Eric Sterling, the special counsel to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary from 1979-1989, who helped write the mandatory minimum sentencing laws that were part of the legislation. Clayton and Greg also talk with Eric about a little-known figure in the War on Drugs, a D.C. police officer who served as a chief investigator for Congress before he was discredited for perjuring himself hundreds of times as a government witness.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Clayton got a question for you. What if I told
you that the modern day drug war all began with
the NBA draft. You've got to do some more explain.
So Len Bias was a basketball prodigy. Yeah, I'm an
NBA now I've got drafted. Though, now my dream has
come true. Len Bias, on his way to becoming a
(00:23):
world champion Boston Celtic, died of an apparent heart attack today.
Bris So just suffered a seizure from taking too much cocaine.
We must be in the tonament of drugs, not because
we want to punished drug users, but because we care
about them and want to help. Members of Congress are
back in New District's campaigning for the nineteen eighty six
congressional election and realize if we use this tragic death legislatively,
(00:46):
we have the chance to appeal to the American public
that we're the anti drug party. What we need is
another d Day, not another Vietnam. With the Anti crime Party,
we have to hold every drug user accountable. Because there
were no drug users, there would be no appetite for drugs,
and there'd be no market for them. To be clear,
a lot of this was based on a confidential informant
(01:09):
that has the name of like a strip club DJ Drew,
Saint Valentine Brown and no way, that's your real name,
and who lied about his actual expertise on this issue?
Is that accurate? That's the essence of it. This is
(01:31):
Greg Gold and this is the war on drug Clayton
has it going? Man? I'm good man, Greg? What's up?
Not much? Um? Really really excited to talk to our
guests today, Eric Sterling, I just love like the history
of all this stuff and and it's amazing how arbitrary
all was, Like why do we have ten year mandatory
(01:53):
minimums for this amount of drugs? Why do we have
a thirty year Why is crack treated one hundred times
worse than cocaine and they're literally this same drug. Yeah,
when we were starting this series, one of the things
that you said, you know, we had to talk about was,
you know, mandatory minimums, right, And what a mandatory minimum
really says is that we don't care who you are,
we don't care why you're here, we don't have any
(02:16):
value in your life. You've done this and now you're
going to stay in prison for a minimum amount of time,
regardless of the facts. And circumstance around your case, regardless
if you were a low level person in this organization,
regardless if you're a father or a mother. So if
you were a part of this, you were just hopeless
and who cares where you come from. We don't want
to hear your excuses rights. It's a mandatory. And things
(02:37):
get like triviaalized too, because you hear about people getting
a hundred years or like back to back lifnse like
what are they gonna do dying come back? And it's like, yeah,
that's what they expect, Like they expect you to do
more time than you can physically exist on earth. In
some of these cases, judges are throwing out like what
they say football numbers, like if you're giving somebody the
(03:00):
eighty eight years, Like that's a jersey number, right, That's
not a number that you give somebody to ride away
in a cell. Like yeah, And so we're gonna we're
gonna talk to Eric Sterling and he makes a pretty
you know, bombastic claim that the death of Len Bias,
who was amazing Maryland basketball legend, got drafted number two
(03:20):
overall I think by the Boston Celtics, was gonna play
with Larry bird Um and they were just gonna win
title after title together. Whip Yeah, yeah, you know, dies
of a cocaine overdose. Everyone said it was crack. And
the crazy thing is a lot of the laws that
we see today kind of started from that lit the match.
And so Eric Sterling, our guest, says that this is
(03:40):
about as you know, consequential as nine eleven was in
that way because it brought on a lot of these
mandatory minims and drawings. I want to hear why he says,
is as big as a nine eleven. Yeah. I think
Eric's got an interesting point. I think he's got a
decent case, and so I'm interested to hear about it. Yeah,
I want to see where he stands. And so you
probably think that we're just bringing on a criminal justice
(04:02):
advocate to talk about history and everything else, but you know,
you'd be wrong. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little deeper than that.
I mean, the reason we got Eric here is because
he actually helped write the laws that he's spent the
last forty years trying to overturn. Yeah, so that's crazy.
That's we got somebody that wrote the laws that have
(04:23):
just decimated you know, communities and people well play and
you're a part of the Marvel world. It does sound
like the scientists that like developed like the thing for
good and it turns out, oh yeah, they're trying to
destroy it for their like the rest of their lives.
Oh yeah, you're you know, Frankenstein trying to destroy his
monster exactly. Yeah. So yeah, he's trying to u make
that right, But I want to know how he came
(04:44):
up with it in the first place. And Frankenstein's the doctor. Yeah,
and it's just the monster. Yeah, Frankenstein's monster. Yeah. If
Frankenstein should be the name of the monster, right, it's
like a brand name thing you can you can have
a monster, but it's not a Frankenstein's mon right. No,
but you know what the real thing is. The doctor
was the monster right here, right, The monster was never Yeah,
(05:09):
I could do this all day to write a book
report that I used just no song to get shout out.
Mary Shelley almost fell empathy for him at the end,
Like he didn't want to be here, that's fair. He
wants to be made up of a bunch of different
dead people. Yeah, and so going back it Yeah, so
the monster is the drug laws doctor Frankenstein is Erica
(05:32):
and Frankstein's trying to kill the war on drugs? Yeah,
I think about right, I think, all right, that makes sense.
But no, he's definitely trying to undo you know, what
it's done. But then, yeah, let's get into it because
a lot of this stuff was founded on false information,
some very interesting ways that our drug laws were created.
(05:54):
And you know, Eric, he was the principal aid and
in counsel um crafting the anti drug abuse of nineteen
eighty six and nineteen eighty eight. And I want to
get into him with that, like living in that time,
how did that impact everything moving forward? And like where
they getting their information from it? And they made the
laws so fast with such little information and they've lasted
(06:16):
so long. Yeah, we're still living it. Yeah, I mean
most of them are still you know, around today at
the federal and state level. So, I mean, he has
an amazing resume. There's no one better to talk to
about this issue than Eric. He was living it, he
created it. Now he's trying to kill it. So yes,
let's get into it. Yeah. So thank you Eric so
(06:39):
much for taking the time to chat with us today.
My pleasure. We were chatting before and you had mentioned
that the death of len Bias was a trigger point
in the war on drugs and where we're at today.
And I think you even coined as almost like a
nine to eleven moment in our country from the diametric
shift that we were before and after that change. Can
you talk a little bit about who len Bias was,
his portance just as an individual, and then you know,
(07:03):
really what happened moving forward from his death and you
know the weeks leading after that. Yeah, comparing it to
Nana eleven. You got to explain that to some newer people.
We'll explain why. So Lent Bias grew up in the Washington,
DC area, went to the University of Maryland, which is
here within the Washington Beltway, and he was a star there,
(07:25):
you know, I mean, his principal league rival was Michael Jordan.
And it's announced he's been drafted by the NBA champion
Boston Celtics. He's going to be the next star of
the NBA champion team. And people are ecstatic for him.
They're excited. And that night he is actually now partying
(07:47):
in his dormitory at the University of Maryland. And as
the papers are going to press with this story. His
roommates are calling nine one one because he's gone into
a seizure, and by the by the morning he has
died from a cocaine related seizure. It was rumored that
(08:07):
it was crack cocaine. It was not crack. It was
powdered cocaine. This is the end of June, it's the
recess of the fourth of July, and members of Congress
are actually back in their district's busily campaigning for the
nineteen eighty six congressional election. The Speaker of the House
in this period of time is Tip O'Neill from Boston,
(08:31):
and he realizes, if we use this tragic death of
len Bias as Democrats legislatively, we have the chance to
appeal to the American public that we're the anti drug
party with the anti crime party, even though that's been
something the Republicans had been able to claim for some
(08:54):
number of years. Republicans, Yeah, we're gonna that's that's exactly right.
So biases death is the match that lights this explosion.
And the consequence then was this was legislation to completely
transformed the American justice system in terms of ushering in
(09:16):
long mandatory sentences. So this happens. Tip O'Neill, you know,
says I think he wanted this whole thing done in
like four weeks, right, I mean, it was just a
very quick thing. And where are you at this point?
Tip says, hey, four weeks. We got to get this
thing out and then we roll from here. I'll to
hear that the Speaker wanted all the House Democrats. He
wanted Democrats all over to be able to take credit.
(09:40):
And so every committee, whether it was the Small Business Committee,
or the Merchant, Marine and Fisheries Committee, or the Interior
Committee or the Agriculture Committee, all of these committees were
kicking in to this huge process. And so they're all
having hearings on the plague of drugs. So the Interior tomte,
he has the plague of drugs in the Virgin Islands
(10:02):
in Guam, and the Agriculture Committee has the plague of
marijuana in the national forests. All of these just gigantic
change in national policy is being crammed into this four
week window. And the reason that I drew in part
of comparison to nine to eleven is after the attack
(10:22):
on the World Trade Center or in the Pentagon and
the threat of nine to eleven Congress in the same
hasty period growth the Patriot Act. Was this going to
ran this legislation through barely gonna have time to consider
what the implications are. Bam, We're going to show we
can move fast because there's a crisis. And that's unbelievable. Yeah,
(10:48):
Like you think about that time, all the implications that
this all had, and it was all written four weeks
and the fishing in a Wildlife committee is getting you know,
crack and trout? Is it a them for your sam
and your state? That's and so I mean who was
involved in it was the DA Party? Like who was
actually in halder right of this was their scientists physicians?
(11:10):
Like how lacking of actual research and data went into
this bill? In this four weeks right, we are nothing
from the judges, nothing from the Bureau of Prisons, nothing
from main Justice, you know, nothing from the Bar Association,
nothing from law professors. Nothing. Nobody talked about the disaster
of the Rockefeller drug laws and their mandatory. Man, you
(11:33):
know is Bam bampan. You know, because of the drama
of how quickly the Congress worked and what the language
of the statute says five grams, which is the way
of a nickel would get you up to forty years
right now, before these laws were enacted, you're a big dookio,
you get fifteen years. If you're a kingpin. You know,
(11:54):
you make millions of dollars. If you're a kingpin, then
you can get you know, a mandatory minimum and up
to life. But when these Dow laws came in in
nineteen eighty six, you didn't have to show anybody who's
a kingpin because you could get these long sentences from
these very small amounts. Now, one consequence of this is
(12:17):
if you get charged and you're facing mandatory minimum of
ten years, your defense counsel may say, look, the government
is willing to reduce the ten years, but you've got
to you've got to testify against somebody else. You've got
to cooperate. And so a whole snitching thing sort of
(12:39):
developed and I get to walk free. Yeah, so Tommy's
in the car with me a couple of times, I
can say he knew and brand stuff for me, and
no drugs can even be found. Right, It's I think
that's a misnomber people have that they need the drugs
on the table, and you don't, right, No, that's correct.
You're gonna tell laterally, you're gonna tell who's next to you.
We're not gonna go up the ladder. If the informant
(13:01):
says I saw five kilos, that's evidence of five kilos.
If if the informant says the defendant Bragg that he
shipped an airplane load through and then said he he
flew a ton in from Haiti, that's a ton. And
their criminal informants. They're both professional informants. And then there
(13:24):
are opportunistic informants, you know, who are caught up in
the in the in the activity. Yeah, and I think
most of those people aren't even the most reliable people,
Like they'll say anything to get out of doing their
time sometimes, you know, and that's counted as evidence, especially
if they're being encouraged. Exactly. We'll be right back with
(13:44):
the War on Drugs. Hi. I'm Jason Flam CEO and
founder of Lava for Good podcasts from Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction,
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(14:04):
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(14:29):
Drugs podcast is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
a philanthropic community that partners with America's boldest change makers
to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems.
Weldon Angelos is one of those change makers. At the
age of twenty three, Weldon was arrested for a first
time offense for selling weed to a confidential informant. At
the time, he was a budding musician spending time with
(14:51):
artists like Tupac's Snoop Dogg, Pink, and Nas. His entire
life was ahead of him when he was sentenced to
a mandatory fifty five years in federal prison without the
possibility of early release. After serving thirteen years, a bipartisan
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he founded The Weldon Project, a nonprofit working to create
(15:12):
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is one of many entrepreneurs partnering will Stand Together to
drive solutions and education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice. To
learn more about stand Together their partners or how you
(15:33):
can partner will Stand Together, go to Stand Together dot org. Yeah,
and these numbers I'm going to assume based on what
you talked about, probably just out of thin air, Like
(15:53):
where do you get five years for that amount? Where
does ten years come from? And yeah, yeah, the House
our penalties for the mid level trafficker. It was a
mandatory of five years up to a maximum of twenty years,
and then the highest level offenders were a minimum of
(16:15):
ten years up to forty years. When it went to
the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans, and at that
time Senator Biden was the top Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Working with strom Thurman from South Carolina, they
came up with much longer sentences, so five years with
(16:36):
a maximum of forty for the small mandatory minimum ten
years with a maximum of life imprisonment. The other piece
of it is the quantities that are picked. The quantities
are obviously critically important, So when the conversation began the
first proposal, I came back with legislatives, let's use DA's
(16:59):
own definition of the highest level traffickers that they investigate.
So I brought this to the subcommittee, and Congressman Missoli
from Louisville, Kentucky says, wait a minute, we don't have
drug traffickers this big in Louisville. Now, nobody said, Ron,
that's a good thing. Nobody said Ron. Hey, Ron, look, Louisville.
(17:21):
It ain't Miami, it's not Los Angeles. You know, uh,
maybe we don't have to worry about you know, these
mandatories top kingpin levels in Louisville, Kentucky. But no, every
Ron's right, Ron, Missoli's right, Eric, this isn't any good.
You know, you got to bring back smaller quantities. We
(17:43):
come bring and pick us up in a day or two.
And so, so I consulted as the opposite of which
I were trying to accomplish, right, if you went from
kingpins to little fish. So, so here's the most comically
tragic kind of dimension of this is that I consulted
(18:04):
with an expert who was on the staff of the
Select Committee or Narcotics Abuse and control in the House
of Representatives, and so I knew the staff and I
call up this narcotics investigator who has been detailed to
the Select Committee from the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington
(18:26):
d C. Named Drew Saint Valentine Brown, and Jerus Saint
Valentine Brown was the most famous narc in Washington, DC,
and I knew. I called I said, look, I've got
to come up with a great narc name, you know,
I've got to come up with some numbers. And so
this street level narc gave me the numbers that we
(18:50):
ended up using. Brown later went back to being a
narc and in one of the cases, a defendant that
he was prosecuting had an attorney who was a court
appointed lawyer who usually did civil work. And in a
civil work, when when you know the other side has
an expert witness, you check them out, you know. So
(19:14):
Jeru had said I was a pharmacist. I went to
the Howard School of Pharmacy. So he calls up, No,
he never went to the Howard School of Pharmacy. And
he had perjured himself time and time again and was
then prosecuted by the Justice Department for perjury in countless cases.
(19:34):
At his sentencing he forged letters of recommendation in his defense.
That's the god Jeru, Saint Valentine Brown, so that's who
you got man. And literally it was, hey, how are
you nabbing street dealers? Let's use those numbers to somehow
(19:55):
great bills to get high little traffickers. And the way
that they're written everyone a kingpin because everyone's involved in
every bit of drugs and there doesn't even have to
be drugs. And to be clear, a lot of this
was based on a confidential informant that has the name
of like a strip club DJ name and who lied
(20:19):
about his actual expertise on this issue. Is that accurate?
That's the essence of it. The final numbers came from
the Senate. We didn't have one hundred to one in
the house. We had a big disparity. The idea for
these numbers was, how do we identify where somebody is
(20:40):
if they're a trafficker in a drug traffic pipeline. And
then when the numbers went to the Senate, the Senate
Republicans they were going to be tougher than those libts
in the House, so they shrink the numbers and they
raised the sentences, so a maximum of forty becomes life imprisonment,
twenty grams of crack becomes five grams of crack. In
(21:03):
the Senate, there isn't any sort of analysis. They didn't
have Jerus, Saint Valentine Brown or anybody. They just had
politics were we don't care what these numbers really are,
but they got to be tougher. We got to own
the lips. We have to own them. Yeah, what about you?
Was it kind of a slow deterioration of like, this
was not what we intended? Or was there a kind
(21:25):
of a come to Jesus moment in a ha moment?
Was there anything specific that happened within your time or
that you're just like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe
what's happening here. It was a briefing of the Select
Committee or Narcotics on the problem of AIDS among injecting
drug users. We had epidemiologists who are briefing members of commis.
This is the very beginning the AIDS epidemic, when the
(21:47):
word was just being invented, when people didn't even know
exactly what this terrible disease was or how it was spread,
and so epidemiologists are now explaining to members of Congress
who are just in the problem of narcotics that men
and women who are injecting drugs sometimes share needles because
needles are contraband and they're expensive, and that that sharing
(22:11):
of needles means that they're sharing blood, and that HIV
is being shared among heroin addicts and they're dying at
very high numbers. And I'm watching the members of Congress
sitting on their diis hearing this information, and a member
kind of suddenly like perks up, like, oh wow, I
just had this insight, and he says, you know, mister Chairman,
(22:33):
well this is going to solve the heroin epidemic, meaning
they're all going to die. When the heroin addicts die,
that will solve the heroin epidemic. Wow. It was a
recognition that drug users are not really human beings and
they're not part of any family I know, and there
if they die, well, because they're such bad people and
(22:55):
they're so dangerous and they're so threatening and they're so
criminal and depraved, that's a good thing. And so we'll quote,
you know, we'll let nature take its course. Wow. It
was seeing that and understanding how full of hate and
contempt the war on drugs is in the minds of
(23:17):
the architects and the drivers. That was the big turnaround
for me. You saying that made me realize how much
of a war it really, Well, you don't care about
who dies where. That's Oh, that's a win. Just that
person saying that in that moment, like, oh, this is
the answer. Wow, that's going to solve this part of
(23:39):
the drug problem. I can't imagine, Eric, you're kind of
You must have had some days writing this stuff, hearing
those things previously about how people thought about addicts, and
then helping to draft these bills. I mean, there must
be some apprehension and then some regrets, and just battling
with that must have been incredibly difficult, and you know,
during it, and then you know after the short answers. Yeah,
(24:01):
it was very hard. When I helped start Families against
mandatory minimums, and I would meet the family members of
people who are serving twenty and thirty year mandatory minimum sentences,
you know, and to know my role it is, It's
always been disturbing to me. I don't believe that the
word drugs makes any sense. When drugs are legalized and
(24:21):
regulated to control, the users will be safe and the
crime of the streets goes away. Legalization is what we
need to reduce crime. If you're concerned about organized crime,
legalized drugs, If you're concerned about crime in the streets
and prostitution and all these other kinds of things that
shoplifting or whatever, burglary, robbery, those crimes go down when
(24:43):
drugs are legalized. And you can't save the lines of
drug users by giving them poison that criminals have sold
them right now, in one sense, it can't be stopped.
We know, you know, you shut down the market here,
it will pop up somewhere else because of the demand.
Until we make treatment available without stigma and without you know,
without degrading people who need treatment, until we treat people
(25:05):
who need treatment as people we love instead of people
we hate or disrespect or that we're war with. Thank
you so much, Eric for your efforts and all your
work you've done through the years, and take the time
to talk to us today. Thank you man. Clayton Gregg,
thank you so much for inviting me to talk to
your audience. We'll be right back with the War on
(25:30):
Drugs podcast. So, Greg, did you know about this guy,
Saint Valentine Brown. No, I did not know about Johnny
Saint Valentine Brown Junior. That is. I love that name
(25:52):
so much. Yeah, No, I had to google it. Well,
I had Michael Good. I don't do my own googling, right,
are too big to google for ourselves. I'll text Michael
to google for me, yeah, and then bring me the results.
But I mean this guy, um, I mean, if if
it wasn't like in like the Washington you wouldn't believe
the story that like this man was a major contributor
(26:15):
for why we the way that we have quantities and
drug laws. And I mean, listen to how they talk
about this guy in nineteen eighty three. So I gotta
I'm gonna read you a little bit of this article
from The Washington Post. Sadle flamboyant narcotics expert is key
witness in drug cases, and Lamboyant is how they started
Flamboyant with, Yeah, exactly what you want to hear about
(26:38):
your narco. Yeah. I don't know why that was a yeah.
Did he have a feather boa when he did? I
don't know what, like what makes the play? He was
dressed like rig Flair, exactly the Bishop Don magic bornotics expert.
The Golden Chalice was fair. Um. Yeah, so he was
a DC police investigator for fourteen years. Brown, a dapper
(26:59):
man who drives to work in a Brown nineteen seventy
seven E type Jaguar, is the resident narcotics expert. So
it goes on to say that Brown's testified in thousand
narcotic related trials, three to five each day. This guy's
coming into and like literally says, this is a quote
from It's My High. I want the journey to experience
the drug trip without going through it all. I want
to put him there at the drug corner. I want
(27:21):
them to see what's happening up close. I want them
to live it, smell it tasted. Johnny Brown loves a
little bit of Johnny Brown. The more you know, there's
a lot of quotes out there. Yeah, and this guy
was essentially who Congress went too and said, all right,
Congress is in DC. This guy's in DC. He seems
pretty legit. He's got a bunch of you know, degrees
(27:43):
and diplomas and all this stuff. We'll just show it
him like and I'm I don't know, but it sounds
like he does drugs. Let's just be really, if anybody
says I want you to live it, feel it, taste it,
smell it, then what are you doing? And that article
was from when nineteen eighty three. Oh so I got
(28:03):
an article from a little bit later where you can
see just how much Johnny Saint Valentine Brown was actually doing.
In two thousand and one, he got convicted of perjury
and got an additional one year prison term for submitting
a batch of phony letters to the court that attested
(28:23):
to his redeeming character. So basically, this man has been
lying every time he hits the stand, and then when
it came time for people to you know, write a
letter and you know, just attesting to his character, he
wrote the letters. He wrote all the letters. They found
him on his computer. He was given names of preachers,
(28:45):
he's given names of other people in the government, and
he said, this is the part to kill me. He
felt like he was authorized to write the letters on
behalf of other people. Yes, because this is his quote.
He said, certainly, no one can write a better letter
about me than me. That's a great line. That's an
(29:07):
amazing line. I love this guy. If he didn't if
he didn't incarcenrate thousands of people on board man. And
then they said his initial troubles really stemmed from his
testimony at trials and not even what he was saying,
but what he said about himself. Once again, this is
this dude likes himself. So he was telling people he
was a registered pharmacist, which he isn't, that he had
(29:31):
a doctorate in pharmacology from Howard University, which he doesn't.
They said, he just started lying about himself years ago,
and all of this came to perjury and looks like
he had to serve about at least a year maybe
two in jail. And this this is this is their guy. Yeah,
this is their guy. He was quarterback in eighty three.
(29:51):
And I think this is a very telling line from
like what you're saying a lot of times, it's not
the evidence that wins the case, it's whether the jury
likes you. And who doesn't like Howard graduated pharmacists exactly,
like a pharmacist who has Valentine in his name exactly
like I don't even think that's your real name. And
this is the guy Eric went to to get the quantities. Yeah,
(30:14):
that have got so many people fucked over in the
world drugs. Yeah, apparently he used to. He would move
around and jerk around, like this is what you look
like when you're high on like preladent, it says, and
all these like different heroin boosters, and that's what you're
doing court. So he's just like he's a screenwriter. He's
doing bits. Yeah, he's literally doing bits. Yeah. Yeah, like
(30:37):
reading and stuff. Is funny, but it's fucked because this
dude did not have any information that was valuable and
it's gotten so many people crushed. Yeah, it's funny until
you realize, like what this actually the consequence were that
this perjur or this guy who lied on the witness
stand in thousands of cases, was the foremost expert on
(30:59):
what triggers someone to spend the next five, ten fifty
years behind bars. Yeah, he's known as Downtown Freddie, right,
and that's in statue. Now what Downtown Freddie said? Wow,
that's how American law was made in nineteen eighty six.
That's crazy. There. We are make sure you follow the
(31:22):
War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss any new
episodes or any of our Quick Fix bonus content, and
we'll be back next week with another episode of War
on Drugs until then, Thank you for listening. Executive producers
for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Works.
Senior producer is Michael Epstein. Editing by Nick Massetti and
Michael Epstein, Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.
(31:46):
Additional production by Jeff Cliver and Anna McEntee. Be sure
to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at
Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at
Greg Blode and Clayton on Instagram at Clayton Engle The
War on Drugs. This is a production of Blaba for
Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number One. I'm
your host, Claig Niglas, and I'm Greg Glad. We'll see
(32:09):
you next time. See you later. I was supposed to talk. Yeah, man,
we got it.
Clayton got a question for you. What if I told
you that the modern day drug war all began with
the NBA draft. You've got to do some more explain.
So Len Bias was a basketball prodigy. Yeah, I'm an
NBA now I've got drafted. Though, now my dream has
come true. Len Bias, on his way to becoming a
(00:23):
world champion Boston Celtic, died of an apparent heart attack today.
Bris So just suffered a seizure from taking too much cocaine.
We must be in the tonament of drugs, not because
we want to punished drug users, but because we care
about them and want to help. Members of Congress are
back in New District's campaigning for the nineteen eighty six
congressional election and realize if we use this tragic death legislatively,
(00:46):
we have the chance to appeal to the American public
that we're the anti drug party. What we need is
another d Day, not another Vietnam. With the Anti crime Party,
we have to hold every drug user accountable. Because there
were no drug users, there would be no appetite for drugs,
and there'd be no market for them. To be clear,
a lot of this was based on a confidential informant
(01:09):
that has the name of like a strip club DJ Drew,
Saint Valentine Brown and no way, that's your real name,
and who lied about his actual expertise on this issue?
Is that accurate? That's the essence of it. This is
(01:31):
Greg Gold and this is the war on drug Clayton
has it going? Man? I'm good man, Greg? What's up?
Not much? Um? Really really excited to talk to our
guests today, Eric Sterling, I just love like the history
of all this stuff and and it's amazing how arbitrary
all was, Like why do we have ten year mandatory
(01:53):
minimums for this amount of drugs? Why do we have
a thirty year Why is crack treated one hundred times
worse than cocaine and they're literally this same drug. Yeah,
when we were starting this series, one of the things
that you said, you know, we had to talk about was,
you know, mandatory minimums, right, And what a mandatory minimum
really says is that we don't care who you are,
we don't care why you're here, we don't have any
(02:16):
value in your life. You've done this and now you're
going to stay in prison for a minimum amount of time,
regardless of the facts. And circumstance around your case, regardless
if you were a low level person in this organization,
regardless if you're a father or a mother. So if
you were a part of this, you were just hopeless
and who cares where you come from. We don't want
to hear your excuses rights. It's a mandatory. And things
(02:37):
get like triviaalized too, because you hear about people getting
a hundred years or like back to back lifnse like
what are they gonna do dying come back? And it's like, yeah,
that's what they expect, Like they expect you to do
more time than you can physically exist on earth. In
some of these cases, judges are throwing out like what
they say football numbers, like if you're giving somebody the
(03:00):
eighty eight years, Like that's a jersey number, right, That's
not a number that you give somebody to ride away
in a cell. Like yeah, And so we're gonna we're
gonna talk to Eric Sterling and he makes a pretty
you know, bombastic claim that the death of Len Bias,
who was amazing Maryland basketball legend, got drafted number two
(03:20):
overall I think by the Boston Celtics, was gonna play
with Larry bird Um and they were just gonna win
title after title together. Whip Yeah, yeah, you know, dies
of a cocaine overdose. Everyone said it was crack. And
the crazy thing is a lot of the laws that
we see today kind of started from that lit the match.
And so Eric Sterling, our guest, says that this is
(03:40):
about as you know, consequential as nine eleven was in
that way because it brought on a lot of these
mandatory minims and drawings. I want to hear why he says,
is as big as a nine eleven. Yeah. I think
Eric's got an interesting point. I think he's got a
decent case, and so I'm interested to hear about it. Yeah,
I want to see where he stands. And so you
probably think that we're just bringing on a criminal justice
(04:02):
advocate to talk about history and everything else, but you know,
you'd be wrong. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little deeper than that.
I mean, the reason we got Eric here is because
he actually helped write the laws that he's spent the
last forty years trying to overturn. Yeah, so that's crazy.
That's we got somebody that wrote the laws that have
(04:23):
just decimated you know, communities and people well play and
you're a part of the Marvel world. It does sound
like the scientists that like developed like the thing for
good and it turns out, oh yeah, they're trying to
destroy it for their like the rest of their lives.
Oh yeah, you're you know, Frankenstein trying to destroy his
monster exactly. Yeah. So yeah, he's trying to u make
that right, But I want to know how he came
(04:44):
up with it in the first place. And Frankenstein's the doctor. Yeah,
and it's just the monster. Yeah, Frankenstein's monster. Yeah. If
Frankenstein should be the name of the monster, right, it's
like a brand name thing you can you can have
a monster, but it's not a Frankenstein's mon right. No,
but you know what the real thing is. The doctor
was the monster right here, right, The monster was never Yeah,
(05:09):
I could do this all day to write a book
report that I used just no song to get shout out.
Mary Shelley almost fell empathy for him at the end,
Like he didn't want to be here, that's fair. He
wants to be made up of a bunch of different
dead people. Yeah, and so going back it Yeah, so
the monster is the drug laws doctor Frankenstein is Erica
(05:32):
and Frankstein's trying to kill the war on drugs? Yeah,
I think about right, I think, all right, that makes sense.
But no, he's definitely trying to undo you know, what
it's done. But then, yeah, let's get into it because
a lot of this stuff was founded on false information,
some very interesting ways that our drug laws were created.
(05:54):
And you know, Eric, he was the principal aid and
in counsel um crafting the anti drug abuse of nineteen
eighty six and nineteen eighty eight. And I want to
get into him with that, like living in that time,
how did that impact everything moving forward? And like where
they getting their information from it? And they made the
laws so fast with such little information and they've lasted
(06:16):
so long. Yeah, we're still living it. Yeah, I mean
most of them are still you know, around today at
the federal and state level. So, I mean, he has
an amazing resume. There's no one better to talk to
about this issue than Eric. He was living it, he
created it. Now he's trying to kill it. So yes,
let's get into it. Yeah. So thank you Eric so
(06:39):
much for taking the time to chat with us today.
My pleasure. We were chatting before and you had mentioned
that the death of len Bias was a trigger point
in the war on drugs and where we're at today.
And I think you even coined as almost like a
nine to eleven moment in our country from the diametric
shift that we were before and after that change. Can
you talk a little bit about who len Bias was,
his portance just as an individual, and then you know,
(07:03):
really what happened moving forward from his death and you
know the weeks leading after that. Yeah, comparing it to
Nana eleven. You got to explain that to some newer people.
We'll explain why. So Lent Bias grew up in the Washington,
DC area, went to the University of Maryland, which is
here within the Washington Beltway, and he was a star there,
(07:25):
you know, I mean, his principal league rival was Michael Jordan.
And it's announced he's been drafted by the NBA champion
Boston Celtics. He's going to be the next star of
the NBA champion team. And people are ecstatic for him.
They're excited. And that night he is actually now partying
(07:47):
in his dormitory at the University of Maryland. And as
the papers are going to press with this story. His
roommates are calling nine one one because he's gone into
a seizure, and by the by the morning he has
died from a cocaine related seizure. It was rumored that
(08:07):
it was crack cocaine. It was not crack. It was
powdered cocaine. This is the end of June, it's the
recess of the fourth of July, and members of Congress
are actually back in their district's busily campaigning for the
nineteen eighty six congressional election. The Speaker of the House
in this period of time is Tip O'Neill from Boston,
(08:31):
and he realizes, if we use this tragic death of
len Bias as Democrats legislatively, we have the chance to
appeal to the American public that we're the anti drug
party with the anti crime party, even though that's been
something the Republicans had been able to claim for some
(08:54):
number of years. Republicans, Yeah, we're gonna that's that's exactly right.
So biases death is the match that lights this explosion.
And the consequence then was this was legislation to completely
transformed the American justice system in terms of ushering in
(09:16):
long mandatory sentences. So this happens. Tip O'Neill, you know,
says I think he wanted this whole thing done in
like four weeks, right, I mean, it was just a
very quick thing. And where are you at this point?
Tip says, hey, four weeks. We got to get this
thing out and then we roll from here. I'll to
hear that the Speaker wanted all the House Democrats. He
wanted Democrats all over to be able to take credit.
(09:40):
And so every committee, whether it was the Small Business Committee,
or the Merchant, Marine and Fisheries Committee, or the Interior
Committee or the Agriculture Committee, all of these committees were
kicking in to this huge process. And so they're all
having hearings on the plague of drugs. So the Interior tomte,
he has the plague of drugs in the Virgin Islands
(10:02):
in Guam, and the Agriculture Committee has the plague of
marijuana in the national forests. All of these just gigantic
change in national policy is being crammed into this four
week window. And the reason that I drew in part
of comparison to nine to eleven is after the attack
(10:22):
on the World Trade Center or in the Pentagon and
the threat of nine to eleven Congress in the same
hasty period growth the Patriot Act. Was this going to
ran this legislation through barely gonna have time to consider
what the implications are. Bam, We're going to show we
can move fast because there's a crisis. And that's unbelievable. Yeah,
(10:48):
Like you think about that time, all the implications that
this all had, and it was all written four weeks
and the fishing in a Wildlife committee is getting you know,
crack and trout? Is it a them for your sam
and your state? That's and so I mean who was
involved in it was the DA Party? Like who was
actually in halder right of this was their scientists physicians?
(11:10):
Like how lacking of actual research and data went into
this bill? In this four weeks right, we are nothing
from the judges, nothing from the Bureau of Prisons, nothing
from main Justice, you know, nothing from the Bar Association,
nothing from law professors. Nothing. Nobody talked about the disaster
of the Rockefeller drug laws and their mandatory. Man, you
(11:33):
know is Bam bampan. You know, because of the drama
of how quickly the Congress worked and what the language
of the statute says five grams, which is the way
of a nickel would get you up to forty years
right now, before these laws were enacted, you're a big dookio,
you get fifteen years. If you're a kingpin. You know,
(11:54):
you make millions of dollars. If you're a kingpin, then
you can get you know, a mandatory minimum and up
to life. But when these Dow laws came in in
nineteen eighty six, you didn't have to show anybody who's
a kingpin because you could get these long sentences from
these very small amounts. Now, one consequence of this is
(12:17):
if you get charged and you're facing mandatory minimum of
ten years, your defense counsel may say, look, the government
is willing to reduce the ten years, but you've got
to you've got to testify against somebody else. You've got
to cooperate. And so a whole snitching thing sort of
(12:39):
developed and I get to walk free. Yeah, so Tommy's
in the car with me a couple of times, I
can say he knew and brand stuff for me, and
no drugs can even be found. Right, It's I think
that's a misnomber people have that they need the drugs
on the table, and you don't, right, No, that's correct.
You're gonna tell laterally, you're gonna tell who's next to you.
We're not gonna go up the ladder. If the informant
(13:01):
says I saw five kilos, that's evidence of five kilos.
If if the informant says the defendant Bragg that he
shipped an airplane load through and then said he he
flew a ton in from Haiti, that's a ton. And
their criminal informants. They're both professional informants. And then there
(13:24):
are opportunistic informants, you know, who are caught up in
the in the in the activity. Yeah, and I think
most of those people aren't even the most reliable people,
Like they'll say anything to get out of doing their
time sometimes, you know, and that's counted as evidence, especially
if they're being encouraged. Exactly. We'll be right back with
(13:44):
the War on Drugs. Hi. I'm Jason Flam CEO and
founder of Lava for Good podcasts from Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction,
The War on Drugs, and many other great podcasts. Today
(14:04):
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(14:29):
Drugs podcast is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
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to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems.
Weldon Angelos is one of those change makers. At the
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the time, he was a budding musician spending time with
(14:51):
artists like Tupac's Snoop Dogg, Pink, and Nas. His entire
life was ahead of him when he was sentenced to
a mandatory fifty five years in federal prison without the
possibility of early release. After serving thirteen years, a bipartisan
effort led to him getting officially pardoned. Upon his release,
he founded The Weldon Project, a nonprofit working to create
(15:12):
a better outcome for those still in prison that funds
social change and provides financial aid for all those who
are still serving time for cannabis related offenses. Weldon Angelos
is one of many entrepreneurs partnering will Stand Together to
drive solutions and education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice. To
learn more about stand Together their partners or how you
(15:33):
can partner will Stand Together, go to Stand Together dot org. Yeah,
and these numbers I'm going to assume based on what
you talked about, probably just out of thin air, Like
(15:53):
where do you get five years for that amount? Where
does ten years come from? And yeah, yeah, the House
our penalties for the mid level trafficker. It was a
mandatory of five years up to a maximum of twenty years,
and then the highest level offenders were a minimum of
(16:15):
ten years up to forty years. When it went to
the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans, and at that
time Senator Biden was the top Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Working with strom Thurman from South Carolina, they
came up with much longer sentences, so five years with
(16:36):
a maximum of forty for the small mandatory minimum ten
years with a maximum of life imprisonment. The other piece
of it is the quantities that are picked. The quantities
are obviously critically important, So when the conversation began the
first proposal, I came back with legislatives, let's use DA's
(16:59):
own definition of the highest level traffickers that they investigate.
So I brought this to the subcommittee, and Congressman Missoli
from Louisville, Kentucky says, wait a minute, we don't have
drug traffickers this big in Louisville. Now, nobody said, Ron,
that's a good thing. Nobody said Ron. Hey, Ron, look, Louisville.
(17:21):
It ain't Miami, it's not Los Angeles. You know, uh,
maybe we don't have to worry about you know, these
mandatories top kingpin levels in Louisville, Kentucky. But no, every
Ron's right, Ron, Missoli's right, Eric, this isn't any good.
You know, you got to bring back smaller quantities. We
(17:43):
come bring and pick us up in a day or two.
And so, so I consulted as the opposite of which
I were trying to accomplish, right, if you went from
kingpins to little fish. So, so here's the most comically
tragic kind of dimension of this is that I consulted
(18:04):
with an expert who was on the staff of the
Select Committee or Narcotics Abuse and control in the House
of Representatives, and so I knew the staff and I
call up this narcotics investigator who has been detailed to
the Select Committee from the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington
(18:26):
d C. Named Drew Saint Valentine Brown, and Jerus Saint
Valentine Brown was the most famous narc in Washington, DC,
and I knew. I called I said, look, I've got
to come up with a great narc name, you know,
I've got to come up with some numbers. And so
this street level narc gave me the numbers that we
(18:50):
ended up using. Brown later went back to being a
narc and in one of the cases, a defendant that
he was prosecuting had an attorney who was a court
appointed lawyer who usually did civil work. And in a
civil work, when when you know the other side has
an expert witness, you check them out, you know. So
(19:14):
Jeru had said I was a pharmacist. I went to
the Howard School of Pharmacy. So he calls up, No,
he never went to the Howard School of Pharmacy. And
he had perjured himself time and time again and was
then prosecuted by the Justice Department for perjury in countless cases.
(19:34):
At his sentencing he forged letters of recommendation in his defense.
That's the god Jeru, Saint Valentine Brown, so that's who
you got man. And literally it was, hey, how are
you nabbing street dealers? Let's use those numbers to somehow
(19:55):
great bills to get high little traffickers. And the way
that they're written everyone a kingpin because everyone's involved in
every bit of drugs and there doesn't even have to
be drugs. And to be clear, a lot of this
was based on a confidential informant that has the name
of like a strip club DJ name and who lied
(20:19):
about his actual expertise on this issue. Is that accurate?
That's the essence of it. The final numbers came from
the Senate. We didn't have one hundred to one in
the house. We had a big disparity. The idea for
these numbers was, how do we identify where somebody is
(20:40):
if they're a trafficker in a drug traffic pipeline. And
then when the numbers went to the Senate, the Senate
Republicans they were going to be tougher than those libts
in the House, so they shrink the numbers and they
raised the sentences, so a maximum of forty becomes life imprisonment,
twenty grams of crack becomes five grams of crack. In
(21:03):
the Senate, there isn't any sort of analysis. They didn't
have Jerus, Saint Valentine Brown or anybody. They just had
politics were we don't care what these numbers really are,
but they got to be tougher. We got to own
the lips. We have to own them. Yeah, what about you?
Was it kind of a slow deterioration of like, this
was not what we intended? Or was there a kind
(21:25):
of a come to Jesus moment in a ha moment?
Was there anything specific that happened within your time or
that you're just like, oh my gosh, I cannot believe
what's happening here. It was a briefing of the Select
Committee or Narcotics on the problem of AIDS among injecting
drug users. We had epidemiologists who are briefing members of commis.
This is the very beginning the AIDS epidemic, when the
(21:47):
word was just being invented, when people didn't even know
exactly what this terrible disease was or how it was spread,
and so epidemiologists are now explaining to members of Congress
who are just in the problem of narcotics that men
and women who are injecting drugs sometimes share needles because
needles are contraband and they're expensive, and that that sharing
(22:11):
of needles means that they're sharing blood, and that HIV
is being shared among heroin addicts and they're dying at
very high numbers. And I'm watching the members of Congress
sitting on their diis hearing this information, and a member
kind of suddenly like perks up, like, oh wow, I
just had this insight, and he says, you know, mister Chairman,
(22:33):
well this is going to solve the heroin epidemic, meaning
they're all going to die. When the heroin addicts die,
that will solve the heroin epidemic. Wow. It was a
recognition that drug users are not really human beings and
they're not part of any family I know, and there
if they die, well, because they're such bad people and
(22:55):
they're so dangerous and they're so threatening and they're so
criminal and depraved, that's a good thing. And so we'll quote,
you know, we'll let nature take its course. Wow. It
was seeing that and understanding how full of hate and
contempt the war on drugs is in the minds of
(23:17):
the architects and the drivers. That was the big turnaround
for me. You saying that made me realize how much
of a war it really, Well, you don't care about
who dies where. That's Oh, that's a win. Just that
person saying that in that moment, like, oh, this is
the answer. Wow, that's going to solve this part of
(23:39):
the drug problem. I can't imagine, Eric, you're kind of
You must have had some days writing this stuff, hearing
those things previously about how people thought about addicts, and
then helping to draft these bills. I mean, there must
be some apprehension and then some regrets, and just battling
with that must have been incredibly difficult, and you know,
during it, and then you know after the short answers. Yeah,
(24:01):
it was very hard. When I helped start Families against
mandatory minimums, and I would meet the family members of
people who are serving twenty and thirty year mandatory minimum sentences,
you know, and to know my role it is, It's
always been disturbing to me. I don't believe that the
word drugs makes any sense. When drugs are legalized and
(24:21):
regulated to control, the users will be safe and the
crime of the streets goes away. Legalization is what we
need to reduce crime. If you're concerned about organized crime,
legalized drugs, If you're concerned about crime in the streets
and prostitution and all these other kinds of things that
shoplifting or whatever, burglary, robbery, those crimes go down when
(24:43):
drugs are legalized. And you can't save the lines of
drug users by giving them poison that criminals have sold
them right now, in one sense, it can't be stopped.
We know, you know, you shut down the market here,
it will pop up somewhere else because of the demand.
Until we make treatment available without stigma and without you know,
without degrading people who need treatment, until we treat people
(25:05):
who need treatment as people we love instead of people
we hate or disrespect or that we're war with. Thank
you so much, Eric for your efforts and all your
work you've done through the years, and take the time
to talk to us today. Thank you man. Clayton Gregg,
thank you so much for inviting me to talk to
your audience. We'll be right back with the War on
(25:30):
Drugs podcast. So, Greg, did you know about this guy,
Saint Valentine Brown. No, I did not know about Johnny
Saint Valentine Brown Junior. That is. I love that name
(25:52):
so much. Yeah, No, I had to google it. Well,
I had Michael Good. I don't do my own googling, right,
are too big to google for ourselves. I'll text Michael
to google for me, yeah, and then bring me the results.
But I mean this guy, um, I mean, if if
it wasn't like in like the Washington you wouldn't believe
the story that like this man was a major contributor
(26:15):
for why we the way that we have quantities and
drug laws. And I mean, listen to how they talk
about this guy in nineteen eighty three. So I gotta
I'm gonna read you a little bit of this article
from The Washington Post. Sadle flamboyant narcotics expert is key
witness in drug cases, and Lamboyant is how they started
Flamboyant with, Yeah, exactly what you want to hear about
(26:38):
your narco. Yeah. I don't know why that was a yeah.
Did he have a feather boa when he did? I
don't know what, like what makes the play? He was
dressed like rig Flair, exactly the Bishop Don magic bornotics expert.
The Golden Chalice was fair. Um. Yeah, so he was
a DC police investigator for fourteen years. Brown, a dapper
(26:59):
man who drives to work in a Brown nineteen seventy
seven E type Jaguar, is the resident narcotics expert. So
it goes on to say that Brown's testified in thousand
narcotic related trials, three to five each day. This guy's
coming into and like literally says, this is a quote
from It's My High. I want the journey to experience
the drug trip without going through it all. I want
to put him there at the drug corner. I want
(27:21):
them to see what's happening up close. I want them
to live it, smell it tasted. Johnny Brown loves a
little bit of Johnny Brown. The more you know, there's
a lot of quotes out there. Yeah, and this guy
was essentially who Congress went too and said, all right,
Congress is in DC. This guy's in DC. He seems
pretty legit. He's got a bunch of you know, degrees
(27:43):
and diplomas and all this stuff. We'll just show it
him like and I'm I don't know, but it sounds
like he does drugs. Let's just be really, if anybody
says I want you to live it, feel it, taste it,
smell it, then what are you doing? And that article
was from when nineteen eighty three. Oh so I got
(28:03):
an article from a little bit later where you can
see just how much Johnny Saint Valentine Brown was actually doing.
In two thousand and one, he got convicted of perjury
and got an additional one year prison term for submitting
a batch of phony letters to the court that attested
(28:23):
to his redeeming character. So basically, this man has been
lying every time he hits the stand, and then when
it came time for people to you know, write a
letter and you know, just attesting to his character, he
wrote the letters. He wrote all the letters. They found
him on his computer. He was given names of preachers,
(28:45):
he's given names of other people in the government, and
he said, this is the part to kill me. He
felt like he was authorized to write the letters on
behalf of other people. Yes, because this is his quote.
He said, certainly, no one can write a better letter
about me than me. That's a great line. That's an
(29:07):
amazing line. I love this guy. If he didn't if
he didn't incarcenrate thousands of people on board man. And
then they said his initial troubles really stemmed from his
testimony at trials and not even what he was saying,
but what he said about himself. Once again, this is
this dude likes himself. So he was telling people he
was a registered pharmacist, which he isn't, that he had
(29:31):
a doctorate in pharmacology from Howard University, which he doesn't.
They said, he just started lying about himself years ago,
and all of this came to perjury and looks like
he had to serve about at least a year maybe
two in jail. And this this is this is their guy. Yeah,
this is their guy. He was quarterback in eighty three.
(29:51):
And I think this is a very telling line from
like what you're saying a lot of times, it's not
the evidence that wins the case, it's whether the jury
likes you. And who doesn't like Howard graduated pharmacists exactly,
like a pharmacist who has Valentine in his name exactly
like I don't even think that's your real name. And
this is the guy Eric went to to get the quantities. Yeah,
(30:14):
that have got so many people fucked over in the
world drugs. Yeah, apparently he used to. He would move
around and jerk around, like this is what you look
like when you're high on like preladent, it says, and
all these like different heroin boosters, and that's what you're
doing court. So he's just like he's a screenwriter. He's
doing bits. Yeah, he's literally doing bits. Yeah. Yeah, like
(30:37):
reading and stuff. Is funny, but it's fucked because this
dude did not have any information that was valuable and
it's gotten so many people crushed. Yeah, it's funny until
you realize, like what this actually the consequence were that
this perjur or this guy who lied on the witness
stand in thousands of cases, was the foremost expert on
(30:59):
what triggers someone to spend the next five, ten fifty
years behind bars. Yeah, he's known as Downtown Freddie, right,
and that's in statue. Now what Downtown Freddie said? Wow,
that's how American law was made in nineteen eighty six.
That's crazy. There. We are make sure you follow the
(31:22):
War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss any new
episodes or any of our Quick Fix bonus content, and
we'll be back next week with another episode of War
on Drugs until then, Thank you for listening. Executive producers
for War on Drugs are Jason Flam and Kevin Works.
Senior producer is Michael Epstein. Editing by Nick Massetti and
Michael Epstein, Associate producer and mix and mastering by Nick Massetti.
(31:46):
Additional production by Jeff Cliver and Anna McEntee. Be sure
to follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at
Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on Twitter at
Greg Blode and Clayton on Instagram at Clayton Engle The
War on Drugs. This is a production of Blaba for
Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number One. I'm
your host, Claig Niglas, and I'm Greg Glad. We'll see
(32:09):
you next time. See you later. I was supposed to talk. Yeah, man,
we got it.
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