KEVIN BOOTH OF “AMERICAN DRUG WAR” INTERVIEW

WORDS BY KHALID STRICKLAND a.k.a. BLACK PACINO

Although local dope dealers took the heat during the Crack Era, ghetto folk always suspected that Uncle Sam was at the top of the food chain, supplying the weight.  But in 1999 a prize-winning investigative journalist, Gary Webb, published a bombshell book called “Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.”  Backed with intricate research and extensive sources, “Dark Alliance” charged that in the 80′s, the CIA was aware of cocaine transactions and drug shipments into the U.S. by Nicaraguan Contra personnel.   The CIA also directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, who were backed by then-president Ronald Reagan and his grimy lapdog, Colonel Oliver North. After a government-led harassment campaign ended his journalism career, Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head in 2004.  The coroner’s office ruled his death a suicide.

In the acclaimed documentary American Drug War: The Last White Hope, director Kevin Booth not only sheds light on this murky connection, but also details why the never-ending Drug War has failed.  With an ensemble cast from opposing sides of the law, the multi-layered film (which took three years to make) examines the Drug War’s hypocrisy from diverse angles.  Commentators include Tommy Chong of comedy duo Cheech and Chong, former U.S. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, former DEA agent and Iran/Contra-whistleblower Celerino Castillo III, Joe Rogan (host of reality TV competition “Fear Factor”), Bloods gang co-founder T. Rodgers and the ex-kingpin many accuse of starting the crack epidemic, Freeway Ricky Ross (unbeknownst to Ross, his biggest connect was a CIA-affiliate).  Another key player is Arizona law-extremist Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who made Mike Tyson wear pink undergarments while the boxer did time in his prison and most recently, hunted down rapper DMX.  American Drug War covers the battle to legalize medical marijuana and dissects how the prison system reaps huge profits by jailing more people.  Also discussed is the racist drug bust in Tulia, Texas where 46 innocent people (40 of whom were African-American) were unjustly arrested.  American Drug War, available on DVD, will air January 24^th and January 29^th on cable-network Showtime.

Black Pacino, who’s all for legalizing marijuana, had an in-depth convo with Kevin Booth.  Respect the realness.

Filmmaker Kevin Booth

Black Pacino: What inspired you to make this film?

Kevin Booth: The death of three family members and a best friend from what I refer to as the “legal drugs” of pharmaceutical, alcohol and tobacco.  Also the realization of seeing some of my friends being shipped off to prison because they got caught growing some marijuana, and just the hypocrisy of it all. I’d seen this Ron Mann film, Grass, which I recommend to anybody.  It’s narrated by Woody Harrelson several years back, but I was heavily inspired by that.  It really told a great story… the story of marijuana going back to Reefer Madness and Harry Anslinger and it tells the entire story.  I was like, “Wow, somebody finally put all this together in one movie.”  It’s funny and it’s great so what I thought is, somebody needs to take this and do it about all drugs.  Someone needs to take this idea and zoom-out.  Not zoom-in; people always zoom-in on these stories.  I wanted to zoom-out on this story and encapsulate many different issues and show the synchronicity between all these different issues kind of going on all at once.  I know I’m not the first guy to tell the story about Ricky Ross.  I’m not the first guy to talk about medical marijuana or Tulia or anything of these things; but what I was trying to do is be the first one to tie all the knots together just to say, “Look, all these issues that are happening simultaneously.  This one of here’s about a racist cop… this one’s about dying cancer patients.  These are all drug war issues.”  I try to put the blanket over the entire drug war and show how all these synchronized issues going on are all linked together by this one common thread… even the war on terror.  The next thing that got me really inspired though was… I was in a transitional period where I was wondering what my next project was going to be.  When Bush came out with that “Nick and Norm” campaign after 9/11, basically stating that if you buy a little bag of weed from the kid on the corner there, you’re supporting terrorism… when I saw that it’s like, okay, I knew we heading into a fascism dictatorship.  I’ve known we’ve been a police state for a long time but now it’s just like they’re telling everybody, “We’re not even going to pretend anymore.  You sell pot, you’re a terrorist.”  That was one of the final inspirations.

Pacino: How were you able to corral such a diverse group of people? You have Ricky Ross on there.  You’ve got Tommy Chong, T. Rodgers of The Bloods, Barry McCaffrey, Sheriff Joe… What were some of the things you had to go through to get this cast together?

Booth: Well, for one thing, I’m a Libra.  And one thing I am good at, I can somehow even make friends with the most evil people (laughs).  And I was raised in a real conservative upbringing, mostly Republicans.  I know these people, right? So, I just you can say I was the black sheep in a real White corporate, conservative family.  I just have that ability, I guess, to kind of mingle in with the Republicans.  Unless they know who I am they don’t really sense that I’m any different than them.  And then when it came to just getting into South Central, one thing led to another.  Actually, a long, long time ago I went to a website called StreetGangs.com.  This guy Alonzo, a really smart guy who’s doing a lot of things… I think he’s even got a reality show now… I talked to him and he said, “You’ve got to hook up with this T. Rodgers guy” and he hooked me up.  At first T was somewhat threatening towards me and very, very suspicious of me.  The first couple of meetings and talks were pretty tense (laughs).  So it took me a while to kind of get in but now, all these years later, T and I are great friends.  I mean, we hang out all the time; he just went to the (High Times magazine-sponsored) Stony Awards with me and we work on websites and stuff together.  But T was really my point-man on getting these contacts in South Central (like) Ricky Ross.  He connected me to Ricky Ross; (Ricky) and I have become great friends.  We talk almost every single week by phone.  He’s got email now and everybody from the various websites, he would love to get letters.  He should’ve been out by now; it’s extremely screwed-up what he’s going through right now.  It really sucks because he came to a re-sentencing hearing here in San Diego back in ’05 and I think he was supposed to have three more years, which means he would’ve been getting out by now.  But now the prison in Texas is not abiding by the ruling and his public defender is a Californian guy, you know what I mean? They kind of just screw with you… the system will just beat you down.  Hopefully at the most he’s got another year and a half to go.  I know there’s going to be a lot of big movie interest and exciting stuff when he gets out.

With Tommy Chong, I found out where he was in prison.  I started by contacting the prison where he was and just worked my way back and got to know his wife Shelby and interviewed her and the family.  Then I finally got my day.  But getting in to see Tommy in jail… boy, they really just kept putting me off.  It even got to the point where I flew in a camera crew from Austin to Los Angeles, and the next morning we’re supposed to get in a rental car and drive to the prison.  And then they call and say, “Well, now you’ve got to fax us this information” or “We need this license” or “We’ve got a problem with some prior arrest one of your crew members has.” Now they’re digging into the history of a guy that’s going to set up a light.  It’s like, “Jesus Christ.  They’re going to do anything to get rid of me.”

Pacino: People that challenge the government, like Gary Webb, they get harassed and intimidated.  They get followed and have all kinds of problems.  Have you had any kind of problems like that and if not, has the thought ever crossed your mind that someone may approach you?

Booth: I might be a little different than Gary Webb or some of these other people.  And it’s just the one thing; I’m part of this whole Alex Jones Network.  Alex Jones is the founder the 9/11 Truth Movement.  He comes to New York and has these big rallies all the time.  I was the best man at his wedding; we’ve been really close friends for the past five years.  Look, I know they record my phone calls.  I know people watch me and my phones click whenever Ricky Ross calls.  People go up and down my telephone poles when Ricky calls all the time.  I think if you keep a certain high-profile… because people always ask, “Well, why don’t they kill Alex Jones?” Well, because if they do, he’ll be a huge martyr.  And it’s better for the government just to (say), “Well, most people think he’s a kook.”  And they let you get away with that.  But on a personal level maybe where I do differ from Gary Webb a little bit, is that if somebody fucks with me they’re going to have twenty Jewish lawyers on them.  I’m not going to put up with it.  So we’ll have to see, right?

Pacino: What role does race play in the drug war?

Booth: The origins of the drug war were based on a racial agenda.  I don’t know if you saw a little YouTube clip I made about racism and the drug war.  If you haven’t, you can go to my YouTube channel and check it out.  But it goes into some details that are not in the film.  About how in 1913 or 1919, the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado kind of helped start these drug laws, a lot of them.  Basically, it’s the same thing they did to the Chinese railroad workers.  You got all these Chinese railroad workers in there; hmmm… they all smoke these weird pipes, they all smoke this Opium stuff, right? That’s what they do at night to relax, it’s just this custom they brought form their homeland.  They all do it.  You know what? Why don’t we make that against the law so we can basically now control them. If one of them does something we don’t like, we have a reason to arrest them.  We can incarcerate them.  We can take away their property and so on and so on.  These same exact measures go back through history over and over again.  They outlawed weed for the Mexican migrant workers in Southern California and Texas and Arizona back in the early days. And back to what happened with the Tulia case, now they get more money by making these large arrests.  It’s all about the numbers and just like I said, I’m not bragging about that, but if somebody fucks with me I’m going to have twenty Jewish lawyers on it.  Well, they know they can take a guy like Joe Moore the (poor, Black) hog farmer, thrown him and jail and no one’s going to come for him.  You know what I mean?  A lot of it in that case too, when they try to build the numbers up in these private prisons, of course they’re going to take out the poorest, most uneducated people.  It’s just a way to get them in the (prison) warehouses and turn them into slaves.  So it’s another reason for people to educate themselves.  Just because you go to college doesn’t mean you’re educating yourself, because I meet so many freakin’ lazy kids in college out there, it’s sad.  Book-smarts is one thing, but you’ve got to have street-smarts if you want to last in this world.

Pacino: You had to do so much to get American Drug War done.  Was there ever a time when you said, “I can’t do this?”  Was there a time when you were in doubt?

Booth: Not so much that, but there were plenty of times I’d get discouraged like, “You know… I’m just going to put it out like this.”  Look, when I started making this thing I certainly didn’t intend to film for 3 and ½ to 4 years.  I thought I was going to go out and film interviews for three or four months, edit the thing in about two months and put it out there and spend a small amount of money.  That’s how I went into it, right? So as it just kept growing and evolving and changing; that’s kind of what got discouraging.  Because it would almost be like I kept wanting to quit, and of course there’s my wife who was like, “Come on, you’ve got to finish this thing (laughs).  You’re spending money, you’re not making money.  When is this going to end? You’ve got to wrap it up.” But she also stuck in there with me and trusted my intuitions and I kept telling her, “There’s something bigger here that I haven’t gotten to yet.” I would edit it together and I would show it to people and they’d like it, but then they’d kind of get bored.  I don’t know… I had to just keep going with it.  So there was many times when I felt like cashing it in and saying, “This is it, I’m done.”  Every time I entered a film festival it was a different version of the film.  At a local festival out here in Los Angeles, I screened one version on a Friday night and based on the audience’s reaction, re-edited like twenty things the next morning.  I burned the new thing and showed the new version the next day.  It went over much better.

Pacino: Obama says he’s going to change things.  But realistically, is there anything that any president, not necessarily Obama, can really do about the drug war? Is this problem so deep rooted that it goes beyond the presidency? Where would a change have to come from?

Booth: Well first of all, I understand that a lot of people are kind of disappointed that Obama isn’t standing more for ending a drug war right now.  But I do know that if the first Black president ever comes this far along and says, “Let’s legalize pot…”

Pacino: (Laughs) Hell no, he can’t do that.

Booth:  He can’t do that, so he has to be tough.  That’s why when a lot of my friends are kind of like having their doubts, saying, “But he says he wants to crack down on the military in Iran.” I’m like, “Dude, he’s got to say that shit.”  Give him the benefit of the doubt.  So that given, one of the more depressing things that throw some people for a loop is that Joe Biden does have a rather bad past with the drug war.  Joe Biden actually helped create the office of the Drug Czar and helped to create some of these mandatory minimum (jail sentences).  But he did help to overturn most of the stuff that he did before Obama even asked him.  So that’s good.  Now on to your real question, I think government is just one part of it.  I don’t even think the government can fix our economic crisis.  We do ultimately have to be responsible for ourselves.

In my mind, we could start by changing some of these prison sentencing laws and just basically try to get a trend going where the prisons are just for violent people; for real criminals.  And I do think by legalizing medical marijuana in certain states it does kind of open up the channels.  I used to always be hung up on the argument that you’ve got the M.P.P. (Marijuana Policy Project) who’s all about legalizing it for medical use and you have NORML, who just wants to legalize it period.  And of course, in a perfect world, I would say just legalize it period.  But obviously, we’re not there.  So I do think with what I’ve seen in Southern California, is that legalizing medical kind of helps change the entire community’s mind about what it really is.  So once you have all these medical marijuana dispensaries around and people see that they’re not really creating crime… they’re not creating anywhere near the problems that liquor stores do… you’ve got liquor stores and gun shops but you can’t sell a little weed.  It does kind of change the attitude of the community; even to the point where the local law enforcement realizes the huge tax base that these places bring in.  Everybody needs money right now and marijuana could be our number one export.  I mean, marijuana could save the Unites States ultimately somehow (laughs).

Pacino: (Laughs) It’s been my savior for some time now.

Booth: I know one thing for sure… people are always going to do drugs.  I was in Oklahoma and some kid asks me what I thought about some weird drug name I never heard of.  I’m like, “What is that?” He goes, “It’s when prisoners ferment their own piss and shit and start inhaling it real fast.” And I go, “I think it’s disgusting.” (Laughs) But the point is it just shows that no matter what you do to people, they’re still going to want to get fucked up.  You take away everything from a person and they’re just going to get high off their own excrement.  I think it’s a perfect metaphor for what the drug war is really all about, and how prohibiting the natural safer drugs, you drive people to the more dangerous ones.  Not to mention that almost all kids do try smoking marijuana in life.  Do you want your kid buying it from a real drug dealer? I certainly wouldn’t want my kid going to a guy who also has Crystal Meth.

Pacino: Was making cocaine into rock Freeway Rick’s idea or was that something the C.I.A. agent suggested to him?

Booth: No. He was already making it on a smaller level before he got hooked-up with the C.I.A. guy.  I think he and his partners, they were poor kids.  Ricky was literally just wanting money to buy tennis shoes… little things.  They were stealing cars and I think he just had an opportunity one night to buy a little coke and sell a little coke.  Then some older neighborhood guy he knew, I forget his name, one night demonstrated freebase to him.  The guy said, “Look, man.  Check this out, here’s what I do.”  And the story is Ricky never really tried it but this guy tried it.  He’s saying, “Look, dude, if you want to quadruple your profits here’s the way to do it.  You can make a lot of this crack out of a small amount of cocaine.”  I believe that guy was Ricky’s original source on a smaller level.  That’s when it got to the point when Ricky was calling him ten times a day; he couldn’t even handle Ricky’s demands anymore.  Ricky was just out there hustling adding new employees and just kind of growing like a pyramid.  That’s when this other hook-up with these friends of a friend (happened).  This guy knew some car rental place out here where this guy was working that was flying in from Nicaragua all the time.  And that’s how the association got started.

Pacino: Has Freeway Ricky ever spoken to you on how he feels about the rapper Rick Ross taking his name?

Booth:  Oh yeah.  He’s very, very aware of it.  I guess the story goes that Rick Ross the rapper was actually talking to him early before he got famous, and just wanted Ricky to be cool about it.  I don’t know if (rapper Rick Ross) said he’d share the wealth or anything like that, I’m not sure what he said.    But as the story goes, the second he got popular, he stopped talking to Ricky.

Pacino: That’s not cool.

Booth: No, that’s not cool.  I think there’s probably going to be some backlash when Ricky gets out.  There’s one too many Ricky Rosses out on the street (laughs).

For more information on American Drug War: The Last White Hope, visit www.AmericanDrugWar.com and www.SacredCow.com.

Peep the trailer for American Drug War: The Last White Hope.