NCJ Number
131126
Date Published
1990
Length
0 pages
Annotation
One of Columbia University's seminars on media and society, this video discusses the means and efforts to control drug protection in foreign countries as part of the overall drug problem being explored in the 4-part video series, "Hard Drugs, Hard Choices."
Abstract
Using a panel of judges, attorneys, directors of the FBI and CIA, presidential advisors, and Congressmen, this video explores what it would take to stop the production of drugs in poor developing countries and what is involved in extradition and immunity deals. The video first discusses the impossibility of stopping all drugs from entering this country by just using the Customs resources and the Coast Guard. The legality of using the military resources and of shooting down suspected drug transporting planes is addressed. The rest of the video explored the economic basis of producing drugs in the developing countries that have become economically dependent on the drug production crops and on the drug lords who have become politically powerful as a result of their wealth. The conflict arises in that one must substitute these countries' drug crops with other crops which will give them an economic basis as profitable as the drug crops. Giving the farmers money not to grow the crops has failed in the past due lack of regulation by the foreign government. The results of arresting and extraditing are discussed such as threats and terrorist attacks on the judges. (See NCJ 131123-131125)