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Bbc Documentary - Our Drugs War - 3 Part Series
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Nuclear replied on Thu Aug 26, 2010 @ 1:57am |
 Coolness: 2603940 | CH4 Website: [ www.channel4.com ]
Filmmaker Angus Macqueen’s investigation into the impact of the drugs trade left him clear about one thing: our current policy just isn’t working. 
Drugs. Its a bloody minefield. For the most part, people seem to take them recreationally without too much fuss. A lot of those people are those that chastise the drug trade in the press. However, the underbelly of the drugworld is unspeakably grim. And so, we go to Our Drugs War (Channel 4, Monday, 2 August, 8pm) in the first of a new series, subtitled: Everyone's at It. This first of a three-parter examines the global impact of drugs on society, focusing in particular on Scotland. Why Scotland? Well, it was named by the UN as Europe's drug capital. Angus Macqueen visits an estate in Edinburgh with a couple of volunteers from the anti drug charity, Crew. Together, they look at how the trade operates on a day-to-day basis and how some children as young as eight are involved in it all. There's also the prickly topic of how the police are trying to control the situation. Alas, it is an unenviable task as reports state that the law enforcers have seized just one per cent of the heroin consumed. Part 1: [ forums.mvgroup.org ] Part 2: [ forums.mvgroup.org ] Part 3: [ forums.mvgroup.org ] ABOUT: Angus Macqueen Series director/presenter Five years ago, I made a series on the impact of cocaine production on Latin American countries. I picked the drug because, sadly, apart from football, it seemed the single thing that connected the continent to viewers here. For me, who had never particularly questioned our drugs policies, it was a revelatory journey: the degree to which illegal drugs threaten the fabric of whole societies. What became immediately apparent was that it was not only the drug itself that was doing the damage - but its illegality. Illegal spells huge profits, violence and crime. I remained obsessed by the tragic madness that I had discovered making the series - and, most importantly, by our unwillingness as a society to face up to what our drugs policies are creating. What was also striking was the unwillingness of people in the know to speak honestly about the situation. Off the record, politicians, policemen and drugs workers admit that our approach to drugs not only doesn’t work but cannot work. On the record, apart from a few brave souls, there is a silent shrug as if there is nothing we can do. So I have returned to the subject, and for the first time in my career, I decided to explore and make the argument myself on camera, attempting to pull together the whole picture from the poppy fields where our troops are dying in Afghanistan to the almost comic but earnest attempts of our police to stop supply here. The difficulty of examining the subject lies in the prejudices and knee-jerk reactions that drugs generate. The moment the word ‘legalisation’ is used, you are labelled a naïve liberal or worse, and a huge number of people instinctively reject any rational argument. The other problem is that so much is so familiar - the inner city estates with their drug users are a staple of films and documentaries. We have consciously attempted to visit those familiar realities head on, hopefully getting audiences to look again and ask questions. Sasha Djurkovic (my producer and camerawoman) and I worked constantly to keep the human stories as the driving force of the argument. In Britain, we deliberately started out with families who have lost people to drugs, never pretending that drugs are harmless but asking if what we are doing now is the best approach. So much of our drugs policy seems to be driven by individual tragedies that are picked up by the media - Leah Betts and ecstasy, Hester Stewart and GBL, or the recent deaths attributed to methadrone when in at least two cases it turned out there was no methadrone involved. This is not to say the drugs are not dangerous, just questioning if banning them is the best approach. The constant issue for us was how much did I need to be present - how could we knit the argument into real stories, without losing one or overwhelming the other? The balance ends up being different in each film. In New York, we were seduced by the life and death of a minor drug dealer, who for us came to stand for a world of tragic failure. In Afghanistan, the realities of working during a war required a more controlled approach. During filming, we ran into the controversies raised by the sacking of Professor David Nutt, former head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, for questioning the scientific basis of government policy. Drugs policy is an explosive issue but, strangely, there is little open discussion about the basis on which it is built. Another danger for the presenter is that drugs statistics are notoriously alluring: the profits to be made from growing poppy, coca or cannabis plants; the percentage of black people in US prisons when whites sell and consume just as much; or simply the number of drugs laws on the statute book. Making the film has left me clear about one thing: our current policy is absurd and tragic - and not helping those it is supposed to protect. We are getting the worst of all worlds: fuelling wars with the lure of the profits, while consumers end up in toilets or back streets buying they know not what. I firmly believe that the war on drugs is doing more harm than the drugs themselves. The solution is for the state to control and regulate supply, and honestly educate us about the dangers. Look at the impact of tobacco education on demand. |
| I'm feeling nuclear right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» crimson replied on Thu Aug 26, 2010 @ 11:44am |
 Coolness: 66380 | Great series, and very eye opening! |
| I'm feeling empty right now.. | |
Bbc Documentary - Our Drugs War - 3 Part Series
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