If you were responsible for controlling drugs in your country, how many laws would you pass? How much money would you spend? How many of your people would you punish? How much democracy would you sacrifice?

The Reagans started the war on       President Clinton helped   U.S. Representative Mark Souder
crack cocaine while ignoring               triple the U.S. prison       created a law to make sure drug
poverty and the AIDS crisis             population during his term       users in college lose their aid

Health care, job security, a college education, the U.S. Constitution - These are just a few of the reasons that Chinese people have always referred to America as the Golden Mountain, the land of opportunity and freedom. But in terms of drug policy, the United States is far from being a democratic society. American lawmakers focus almost exclusively on punishing its people as a solution to the "drug problem." Drug users in this country face a harsh list of consequences: getting kicked out of school, loss of voting rights, being denied employment, and the lack of access to public resources including college financial aid, housing, medical benefits, & welfare. Ironically enough, these are the very qualities that attract immigrants to America - the wealthiest country & strongest government in the world.

Anjuli Verma and Graham Boyd of the American Civil Liberties Union speak on a panel in
Santa Cruz, CA. Discussing both local and national issues, the speakers cited how U.S.
drug policy has directly violated our constitutional rights & freedoms. - March 3, 2005
Check out more pictures of people & places I'm visiting for this project

Golden Mountain (a Chinese reference to America) is a documentary that will examine exactly how and why the United States government has waged a decades-long drug war and the destructive consequences of such efforts. Other free nations such as Canada and Amsterdam (whose lawmakers focus less on harsh punishment and more on treatment programs) experience far lower rates of drug-related problems than the U.S. does. On the other hand, the type of countries with which America shares similar drug laws are those in Asia and South America. It comes as no surprise that the U.S. and these societies also share similarly high rates of drug-related problems: police corruption, overcrowded prisons, street violence, homelessness, addiction, and disease. So being a Chinese immigrant, the time has come for me to ask: If America is truly a democracy - the Golden Mountain - then why do we have more resemblances to a Third World or Communist state than to another free country in terms of how we deal with drugs?

* And now, for a few not-so-fun facts on what China and America have in common!!! *

"The United States is second only to China in the number of death sentences passed, and until 2005, was one of the few countries in the world to allow the execution of those who committed a crime as a minor." - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

	CHINA	UNITED STATES
The Death Penalty	"On June 22, the 31-year-old woman was executed by firing squad in Beijing along with six other people convicted of drug trafficking. The next day, 11 drug dealers in the southwestern city of Chengdu were rounded up and paraded before a stadium of spectators, then led away to be shot. Within a single week, authorities put to death at least 48 people as part of an aggressive national anti-drug campaign...China executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined..."   - Henry Chu, San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 2000	In 1988, a statute was passed by Congress allowing capital punishment for murders within large criminal conspiracies. Effectively, the statute was to be applied to organized drug cartels. Five years later, Texas marijuana trafficker Juan Garza was convicted and sentenced to die for his involvement in at least three killings related to his blackmarket trade. He was eventually executed during the same time that Timothy McVeigh was on death row for the Oklahoma City bombings, becoming the first drug convict ever to receive the death penalty.
Access to illegal substances	During December of 2001, my cousin successfully obtained ecstasy for me at a nightclub in Guangdong. If I had wanted other substances, I probably would have had no problem getting them, based on what he told me. Otherwise, how would so many young men he knew and hung out with have been able to do drugs? The fact that drug dealers are executed has apparently had no effective impact against supply and demand.	If I wanted a cigarette or a beer, I'd have to walk down the block to the liquor store. The drugs that are illegal, however, are just as easy to get. Weed, ecstasy, crack, speed, whatever. All it takes is a few phone calls, a visit to your dealer's place, or approaching some dude on a street corner. Sometimes, drug dealers will deliver the goods right to your door. The fact that police raids and arrests occur daily in every city has had no effective impact against supply and demand.
HIV Rates & Needle Exchange	In my native village in Southeast China, the major drug problem being discussed amongst my relatives and locals seems to be addiction to powder cocaine. My father has at least one friend whose son was in rehab when we were in China in December 2001. Nationally, however, addiction among injection drug users is the central concern. Rates of infections from dirty needles are skyrocketing to epidemic numbers. Meanwhile, discussion is only now beginning to surface about HIV prevention for these addicts, including the use of needle exchange programs.	America has a higher rate of overdose among injection drug users than any other free country. To this day, needle exchange programs have never been embraced by the federal government. They have only been allowed to operate outside of standard legal policy and with the support of local politicians and law enforcers. For example, California law prohibits clean needles from being distributed to drug users until a public health crisis has been established. "So that's what we do is every two weeks, the Board of Supervisors votes on declaring a state of emergency, because that's how long the state of emergency can last."   - Tom Ammiano, San Francisco Board of Supervisors

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