Don Clark, director of public information for Bakersfield College, former news anchorman and admitted conservative Christian, gave a speech April 20 denouncing the nation’s drug war during a benefit concert for BC group NORML at the Empty Space Theater.
The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws is a group that supports the legalization of marijuana for medicinal and personal use. The concert included bands Addiction Theory, Three Chord Whore, and Liars and Thieves.
At the opening of his speech, Clark said, “There is one question that needs to be answered here tonight about my brief appearance here. That question is: What is a guy like me doing at an event like this?”
He went on to say, ” What is a man who seldom uses even legal drugs doing at an event that many will choose to construe as a back-door effort to legitimize an illegal drug? In short, there is absolutely no upside for me to be here tonight.
“In my judgment, the so-called War on Drugs is one of the most massive and disastrous government hypocrisies of the modern era.”
Clark’s reasons for giving the speech have manifested over 35 years. In an interview with the Rip two days after the speech, Clark said that in 1970 as a cub reporter for the Boston Herald he was sent on assignment to what he referred to as “the finest drug conference in America.”
“Every top expert in every field was there. From pharmacology, law enforcement, the media, national security, they all gave presentations. Their conclusion was it would be best to give drugs away free than to fight it with law enforcement means.”
The Herald refused to report what Clark heard at this conference.
“They were not even interested in hearing the other side of this debate,” Clark said. “What I have seen for 35 years is that the media has blacked out and silenced the whole other side of this problem. So the American people can’t even think about it clearly. The trade-offs are so enormous that the very weapons we use to fight drugs have a worse impact and result than the drugs themselves.”
Clark believes the U.S. government has not stopped the flow of drugs, only increased the incentive and motive to buy and sell them.
“If we cannot keep illegal drugs out of our tightly packed prisons, how are we to keep them out of our open and free society?”
Clark even lambasted Bill O’Reilly of Fox News.
“If someone even brings up the subject as an intelligent discussion or debate he shuts them off,” Clark said. “You’re nuts, you’re crazy, you’re stupid, how dumb can you be? That’s the response you get from mainline media.”
Clark mentioned that drug agents would tell you that the closer they get to the source of the problem, they get shut down by the higher sources above them.
“There is something desperately wrong, that there seems to be forces that actually want the drug trade to go on and this fraud of a drug war to continue because that is billions and billions of dollars in someone’s pockets and a total waste of our tax money,” he said.
When asked why he chose this event to come out and speak on this topic, he said, ” This is the first time anyone has given me the freedom.”
Clark challenged the U.S. government to explain why they send people to far away places to give other people the freedom of democratic choice while they deny the people of California the right to a democratic choice they already made and prosecute those who exercise that right.
Clark told those who attended the concert, ” As a conservative, I believe in the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box. The people of California have gone to the ballot box on this issue. By a decisive margin, the people of California have said to the world: ‘We approve of the medical uses of marijuana. We reject the federal government’s unreasonable actions against those uses.’
“And what I know from my research into the subject of the medical uses of marijuana is that what the American government has fed the American people for decades on this issue is not the truth. … It is not designed to protect us. It is designed to prevent us from making intelligent decisions about a health care alternative that runs counter to the enormous profits of powerful interests that are able to exert undue influence on what our government does and does not do, on what it approves and what it disapproves, and on who it rewards and who it punishes.
In the interview with the Rip, Clark said, “If I were president, I would do it very differently. I would empty our prison systems of those who were in for nothing more than drug use and build more treatment centers. After 35 years of frustration, given this opportunity to speak out, I jumped on it.”