I recently saw a wonderful movie titled, “How To Make Money Selling Drugs”. It’s not your usual documentary although it did get 7.8 rating on IMDB which is a very high rating.
The title is tongue in cheek. It doesn’t really promote selling drugs. It’s about the War on Drugs, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing for Drug Crimes, Building more Prisons and Imprisoning More People (especially minorities like Black & Brown people and Latinos & Chicanos).
I loved this film and think that if you are interested in any of these issues, you will find it extremely interesting. I would like to recommend it to you whole heartedly. IMO, it was one of the best movies I had seen in a long time.
My favorite thing about this movie is that it features an ex-cop named Barry Cooper (in the second half of the film) who became a star Federal agent doing drug raids and eventually became disgusted with the entire rotten legal system as it applies to drugs. He has made several videos to help people who have been wrongly busted by crooked cops. Here is a sample:
Closely related to his videos, you might want to check out two excellent videos about talking to the police without a lawyer present. You can find them by Googling:
regents university “never talk to the police”
The video “never talk to the police” was made of a Regents University professor named James Duane who explains why people who are taken into custody by police should never talk to them until they have a lawyer present.
I found these videos to be closely related to the movie and to convey some of the most eye-opening information I’ve ever seen.
I hope you will enjoy this movie and videos as much as I did. Even if you only like them a tiny fraction as much as I did, I’m sure you will find them to be a terrific viewing.
I watched this a few months ago and enjoyed it despite the heavyhanded partisan slant. As long as you take it with a grain of… whatever white crystals you want, I think it’s a pretty good doc. 7.8 seems about right (maybe a tad high).
I just saw this. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed by it.
They really didn’t go into detail about the sociology of drugs, the history of prohibition, racial disparities, the failure of prohibition (drugs are cheaper than ever), etc. Most of what they did was talk about the various levels of the drug trade and how the higher up you go, the more money you make. This documentary was targeted towards the already converted and IMO didn’t offer much new to people like that.
I liked Barry Cooper, he seems like a good person (somewhat, since he is a self admitted bully). He seemed to have genuine remorse for the lives he ruined as a police officer and it is a shame the state of Texas is trying to retaliate against him in the ways it is (taking his kids away, false arrests, etc).
I guess this movie was ‘cocaine cowboys 3’, that is how it was remarked as. If so, I highly recommend cocaine cowboys 1 (Mickey Munday, Jon Roberts). That was an awesome documentary about the drug trade in the late 70s/early 80s in Miami.
One thing that was brought up about the drug trade back then was they were a victim of their own success. Jon Roberts once said that the price of wholesale coke dropped almost 10 fold between the 70s and the 80s, so the cartel had to import 10x as much coke just to make the same amount of money.
On the subject of not getting arrested, the most important thing you can do is not break the law in public or in your car (which is also in public). If you are going to break the law, do it at home with either no witnesses, or only friends as witnesses (by break the law I mean victimless crimes). More than one cop who realized their job was doing more harm than good at times has said this is the most important rule.
Thanks a lot for the recco on Cocaine Cowboys. I had never heard of it before and I’m looking forward to seeing that.
I would think that just as important as it is to not break the law in public or in your car, it is equally important to know what to do if you are ever questioned by the police. After all, you can be stopped and questioned without ever having broken any laws and you can get into unbelievable amounts of trouble (meaning imprisoned) if you don’t know about the huge importance of asking to have a lawyer present before you talk with the police. Then never talking with the police until your lawyer is present - with a few common sense exceptions of course.
For example, if some crazed gunman is running around your neighborhood shooting people and the police ask you what way he ran or they ask you for info to help them stop the gunman, it’s almost certainly a good idea to co-operate with them fully in that case.
