|
 |
CNN SATURDAY
Interview with Matthew Brzezinski
Aired June 29, 2002 - 18:10 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Worldwide crackdowns on terrorism have increased in the aftermath of September 11, of course, but they are also having an impact -- or are they having an impact -- on the global drug trade.
Let's talk to Matthew Brzezinski; he is a writer for the "New York Times" magazine. He has written a book on the subject called "Casino Moscow," and he's joining us from Washington tonight. Thank you for being with us.
MATTHEW BRZEZINSKI, THE "NEW YORK TIMES": Oh, it's my pleasure.
CALLAWAY: I was reading through your article that you wrote in the "New York Times" magazine and it's amazing to me just how the drug industry truly is run like a corporation.
With a certain -- few adjustments, of course -- because they're breaking laws, of course, but certainly run like a corporation, a worldwide corporation.
BRZEZINSKI: It's a very, very sophisticated industry. And, what's amazing is just how marketing-driven it is. They work just like Coca-Cola, Marlboro, or any other consumer products company.
CALLAWAY: And, you know, we were talking about the connection between terrorism and drug trading and there really is a connection in some cases, isn't there?
BRZEZINSKI: Oh, very much so. Of the 28 individuals and entities that President Bush included in the list of international terrorist organizations, fully half of them are very active in trafficking in drugs. This is partly because a great many of these organizations are based in these lawless areas controlled by rebel groups or warlords, where law enforcement has no say, and this is where the drugs are grown and then refined and produced.
CALLAWAY: Matthew, we should say you traveled extensively for just this one report that you did, you went to a number of countries. Tell us what you found and what stood out in your mind.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, I was thinking of a way of explaining how the industry works, and sort of decided to go from source to street. And in this case, from the mountains and the jungles of Burma, which is now known as Myanmar, down to going in the end and buying with undercover police officers in Baltimore, buying the finished product.
CALLAWAY: And, Matthew, while you're talking -- I just want you to know, I don't see that you have a monitor near you but we're going to show some photographs while you're talking about how you did follow this streets -- from the source to the streets, and you just mentioned Myanmar, this here is opium, right?
BRZEZINSKI: Yes, this is a seizure of around three tons of opium. Which is enough to produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 kilos of raw heroin, 90 percent proof China White, as it's called, which is amongst the best and most lethal and potent heroin in the world. And this is a seizure that they -- whenever they catch it they bring it down to Rangoon, the capital of Myanmar, and then every year they have a huge bonfire and they burn it all.
CALLAWAY: And, continue what you were saying, I'm sorry to interrupt you there. Just wanted to make sure you knew we had those photographs that you were able to get there. And, of course, there are arrests and the way some of these, you have some photographs of some of the arrests that have been made and the transportation of the drugs.
BRZEZINSKI: Yes, we were fortunate enough to stumble upon a few actual arrests and what really struck me was that the people that we saw that were being arrested, which, generally speaking, you know, very poor, illiterate, uneducated peasants.
And, the three young ladies you're looking at now, they were promised 20 dollars. They took this incredible risk and for 20 dollars. And now they're going to spend ten years of their life, a minimum of ten years of their life, in jail. And, we went to some of these Burmese prisons and you don't want to go to jail in Burma. It is really, really harsh.
CALLAWAY: You know, you just showed us some of the opium. But, tell us about the drugs that you found out there that are popular not just in America but worldwide.
BRZEZINSKI: Right, well, I think probably in terms of the global drugs, that heroin is the big one. Followed increasingly by ecstasy. By synthetic drugs, what are known as designer drugs. This is really the wave of the future.
Heroin, ironically, is making a comeback. Partly because of some very interesting marketing. Mainly on behalf of Colombians who guarded the heroin production in the early 1990s. After the cocaine craze of the '80s was winding down, they were looking at diminished profits and sales, and they found that heroin addicts tended to be around a lot longer than habitual users of cocaine, who would burn out.
And, what they did is they introduced heroin at sufficiently high purities and they forced their distribution cells to hand them out without cutting them or lacing them or altering them with other products in purities high enough so people could snort or smoke them. This is in the sense the reverse of crack cocaine, which took a yuppie drug and then opened it to the mass market. They took a low-end drug and opened it to upscale users, to doctors and lawyers.
CALLAWAY: So they're changing their products so that they can sell it better, is basically, what they're doing.
We're running out of time, Matthew, and I know you have so much information on this. I wish we did have more time but we want to ask you one final question on this. This is a $400 billion industry out there. Are the new rules, the new efforts on terrorism really going to make a dent in this?
BRZEZINSKI: You know, that's a very good question and I think only time will tell. I think in the short run, we saw that yes they made a dent but only mainly because passenger traffic at all the points of entry in the United States were way down. So, customs officers had time to scrutinize each entrant more. And, so, the seizures were way up.
But we're already seeing seizures are falling as passenger flows increase and we're also seeing that the drug runners, the traffickers, are using different routes, they're changing up, they're burying their loads deeper and they're getting more and more product in and right now based on purities and prices, supplies of hard drugs like heroin are at an all-time high in the United States.
CALLAWAY: All right, Matthew Brzezinski thank you for being with us. I do wish we had more time, but thank you for being with us today.
BRZEZINSKI: My pleasure.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
|
|
|
|
|
