Dave Hartley Related Sites
Articles by Mike Gray
Subject-Related Books
Gray grew up in the small farm town of Darlington, Indiana, and after
graduating from Purdue University with an engineering degree in 1958, he
worked in New York as an editor for AVIATION AGE.
In 1965 he joined with partners John Mason and Jim Dennett to form The
Film Group, a Chicago based production company. Their work in TV
commercials provided the foundation for a series of theatrical and
television documentaries. The three men have worked together on more than
fifty film and television projects over the last two decades.
After moving to Hollywood in 1973, Gray began writing the screenplay
that was to become the eerily prophetic CHINA SYNDROME. His years
of research were uncannily confirmed less than two weeks after the movie's
release by the accident at Three Mile Island.
Gray went to Harrisburg to cover the TMI story for ROLLING
STONE magazine and collaborated on THE WARNING (W.W. Norton), a
definitive account of the accident based on 200 hours of exclusive
interviews and 50,000 pages of transcripts from five government
investigations.
In 1981 Gray wrote and directed the theatrical feature,
WAVELENGTH, a science fiction thriller starring Bobby Carradine and
Keenan Wynn (New World).
Gray and Mason also worked together on the screenplay for CODE OF
SILENCE (Orion), and a pilot for ABC based on the film STARMAN.
They were hired by Columbia as writer-producers for the STARMAN
series (1986-87) and Gray directed the pilot and three of the 22 episodes.
In 1988 Gray and Mason were hired as writer/producers for the Paramount
"STAR TREK" series.
Gray is also the author of ANGLE OF ATTACK: Harrison Storms and
the Race to the Moon, a history of the Apollo program and the men who
built the first spaceship from planet Earth. It was published by W.W.
Norton and released in paperback by Penguin.
After six years of research and writing, he has just published DRUG
CRAZY: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out, a critique of
the War on Drugs, being published by Random House in June 1998.
Mike Gray lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Carol, a reporter for
public radio. Their son, Lucas, is an animator for The Simpsons.
Elliott Richardson Daniel Schorr Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate Ira Glasser Henry Kendall, Nobel Laureate George McGovern "It also explains how the increase in petty drug busts has been used to
make politicians look tough on crime, build jail cells and deny funding
for drug prevention and education programs for children."
Dr. Joycelyn Elders "This book is a must read for as much of the general pubic as possible,
for only when democratic government and the quality of life in our country
cause by a totally failed criminal drug policy, will our political leaders
find the courage to endorse drug sanity."
Samuel Dash Alvin F. Poussaint, MD Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, City of Baltimore
Joseph McNamara Randy K. Jones America's War on Drugs, declared originally by Richard Nixon and waged
with varying degrees of enthusiasm by every President since, has become a
nearly invulnerable monster, thriving on its own failures and seemingly
capable of destroying anyone reckless enough to speak out against it. Its
simplistic central premise- drugs pose unthinkable dangers to our
children, and therefore must be prohibited- has helped elect legions of
politicians who then cite the latest drug scare as reason for tougher
crack-downs, harsher laws, and more prisons. So completely has this idea
of "illicit drugs" become society's default setting, and so beholden are
politicians and others to it, the policy itself receives no critical
scrutiny from government and little from academics dependent of federal
funding. "Legalization" is a deadly brickbat hurled indiscriminately at
all critics without thought that in a society based on capitalism, it is
the illegal markets which are abnormal.
Although several scholarly, historically accurate books have pointed
out shortcomings of this policy since the late Sixties, not one author has
effectively attacked drug prohibition as a policy based on a completely
false premise, incapable of preventing substance abuse problems; indeed,
certain to make them worse. None, that is, until Mike Gray. A professional
from the film world, Gray may have written the book no one else has yet
been able to: a concise, readable, historically accurate, and well
documented indictment of our drug policy. Very few reading his book all
the way through will see the drug war the same way they did before. A
major question then becomes: how many people will read it? Will it sink
without a trace, overlooked like so many earlier criticisms of official
policy- or will it be discovered by a public growing increasingly
disillusioned by a perennial policy failure which is jamming prisons,
impoverishing schools and colleges and effectively canceling! many
Constitutional guarantees of personal freedom? Read by enough people,
"Drug Crazy" could do for drug reform what "Silent Spring" did for the
environment in 1962.
Like the film maker he is, Gray opens with a tight close up: Chicago
police on a drug stake-out. The view quickly expands to the futility of
enforcement against Chicago's massive illegal market. first from the
perspectives of an elite narcotics detective and then through the eyes of
a dedicated public defender. A comparison with Chicago seventy years ago
during Prohibition reveals that police and the courts were equally unable
to suppress the illegal liquor industry for exactly the same reasons: the
overwhelming size and wealth of the criminal market created by
prohibition. This beginning leaves the reader intrigued and eager to learn
more; he's not disappointed.
The rest of the book traces the history of our drug crusade from its
idealistic populist origins, starting in 1901 when McKinley's
assassination thrust a youthful TR into the White House. The 1914 Harrison
Act, purportedly a regulatory and tax law, was transformed by enforcement
practice into federal drug prohibition with the assistance of the Supreme
Court. Drug prohibition not only survived the demise of Prohibition, but
emerged with its bogus mandate strengthened.
Thirty years of determined and unscrupulous management by Harry
Anslinger, the J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics shaped
drug prohibition into what would eventually become a punitive global
policy. Anslinger was dismissed by JFK in 1960, but not before politicians
had discovered the power of the drug menace to garner both votes and media
attention.
Illegal drug markets have since thrived on the free advertising of
their products which inevitably accompanies intense press coverage of the
futile suppression effort and dire official warnings over the latest drug
scare. This expansion was accelerated when Nixon declared the drug war in
1972. Gray covers that expansion beyond our borders in Colombia ("River of
Money"), in Mexico (Montezuma's Revenge"), and also at home ("Reefer
Madness"). He also describes how some European countries have blunted the
most destructive effects of our policy forced on them by the UN Single
Convention Treaty ("Lessons from the Old Country").
In his final chapter, Gray opines that the push to legitimize marijuana
for medical use may have exposed a chink in the heretofore impregnable
armor of drug prohibition. Beyond that, he believes that the policy,
having thrived on relentless intensification, can't allow relaxation
without risking the sort of scrutiny which might reveal its intrinsic lack
of substance, therefore, any change must come from outside government. He
doesn't offer a detailed recipe for a regulatory policy to replace drug
prohibition; rather he suggests that it will be very similar to that which
replaced alcohol Prohibition after Repeal in 1933- a collection of state
based programs, sensitive to local needs and beliefs.
There is a desperate need for this book to be read and discussed by
hundreds of thousands of thinking citizens. The pied piper of drug
prohibition has beguiled our politicians and led us dangerously close to
the edge of an abyss. Mike Gray's warning has hopefully come just in time
and could itself be a major factor in initiating needed change of
direction toward sanity.
Thomas J. O'Connell,
MD,
http://www.Asheville-Computer.com
http://www.ioa.com/~davehart
Drug Crazy:
How We Got Into This Mess and How We can
Get Out
by Mike Gray
About the
Author
About the Author
Like several other Hollywood realists, Mike Gray comes
from a documentary film background. His Chicago-Based Film Group
chronicled the political violence of the 1960's, including the
award-winning feature documentaries, AMERICAN REVOLUTION II, and
THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON.
Mike Gray's Credits
"AMERICAN REVOLUTION II" - 1970 - Documentary - Camera:
Mike Gray and
Howard Alk. Sound: John Mason. Produced by Mike Gray and
Howard Alk.
"THE MURDER OF FRED HAMPTON" - 1971 - Documentary -
Camera: Mike Gray
and Howard Alk. Sound: John Mason. Produced by Mike
Gray and Howard Alk.
"THE GIFT" - 1973 - Documentary on Marc
Chagall - Camera: Mike Gray. Sound and editing: John Mason. Produced by
Chuck Olin.
"THE CHINA SYNDROME" - 1979 - Feature - Columbia -
Original story and screenplay by Mike Gray. Academy Award nominee.
"WAVELENGTH" - 1980 - Feature - New World - Written and Directed
by Mike Gray.
"THE WARNING" - Accident at Three Mile Island" - 1982
- Book - W.W. Norton & Co. - by Mike Gray & Ira Rosen.
"CODE OF SILENCE" - 1985 - Feature - Orion - Michael Butler and
Dennis Shryack screenplay - rewritten by Mike Gray & John
Mason.
"STARMAN" - 1986-7 - One hour television series -
ABC/Columbia - Conceived by Mike Gray and John Mason with Henerson-Hirsch.
Mason & Gray were writer-producers of the series pilot and 22
episodes, writing two episodes, with Gray directing the pilot and three
episodes.
"STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION" - 1988-9 - One hour
television series - Paramount - writer producers
"ANGLE OF ATTACK:
Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon" - 1992 - Book - W.W. Norton
& Co. - by Mike Gray - 1994 - Paperback - Penguin Books
"AREA 51"
- 1995 - Feature - Mondo Entertainment - Original screenplay by Mike Gray
"CHAIN REACTION" - 1995 - 20th Century Fox - production rewrite by
Mike Gray
"DRUG CRAZY: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get
Out" - 1998 - Book - Random House - by Mike Gray
Press Release
Publication Date: June 15, 1998
Blistering New Expose of the "War on Drugs" is Drawing
Bipartisan Acclaim
Drug Crazy, Forthcoming New Book By China Syndrome
Writer, Paints a Vivid Portrait of Futility and Failure
Corruption Now Infecting U.S. Law Enforcement; Worldwide
U.N. Conference on Drugs in Early June
As politicians proclaim their support for an
ever-escalating "War on Drugs," the first popularly written book exposing
the futility and enormous costs of this losing war is being praised across
the political spectrum.
Drug Crazy: How we Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get
Out, [Random House, 240 pages, $23.95; Publication date June 15, 1998]
dramatically reveals the violence, corruption and chaos that characterize
America's longest-running war.
The publication of Drug Crazy also coincides with a
special session of the United Nations on the worldwide drug problem, which
is expected to bring some 25 heads of state, including President Clinton,
to New York in early June.
Author Mike Gray is a prominent journalist,
screenwriter, author, producer and documentarian, whose best known work
includes the film China Syndrome, which he wrote, and the television
series Star Trek: The Next Generation, for which he has served as a writer
and producer.
In an era when politicians vie to offer ever more
draconian penalties to prove they are "tough on drugs" � and when a
marijuana conviction can result in a longer prison sentence than murder �
Gray dares to point out that our current policies are an abject failure,
despite the world's highest incarceration rates and the expenditure of
more than $300 billion in the last fifteen years alone. He eloquently
argues for the return of a medical rather than a law enforcement model of
drug control.
Drug Crazy is being praised in advance of publication
from across the political spectrum: By two Nobel Prize winners (economist
Milton Friedman and physicist Henry Kendall); by former Attorney General
Elliott Richardson and former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders; by liberal
journalist Daniel Schorr and conservative journalist William F. Buckley;
and by other prominent academics, scientists, public policy experts,
criminologists and social commentators.
While many political and sociological treatises have
been written on drug policy and reform, Drug Crazy breaks new ground by
vividly and dramatically recreating eight decades of ongoing and
escalating drug warfare, including:
The compelling similarities between today's drug scene
and the Prohibition era, as seen through the windshield of a police
cruiser on the same Chicago streets where today's drug gangs recreate the
marketing tactics of a 26-year-old booze "kingpin" named Al Capone.
The tragicomic political history of U.S. drug wars from
their beginning in 1914 to the present day � 85 years of cynical posturing
and mindless bungling, manipulation of statistics, ostracism of opponents
and falsification of medical and scientific data.
The inevitable and rampant racism that has always
pervaded the War on Drugs.
The impossibility of "supply side" solutions like border
interdiction or eradicating drug crops at their source, vividly
demonstrated in Drug Crazy with trips to the US-Mexican border and the
Andean jungles of South America.
The chaos clogging America's court system, where we are
taken to new drug courts that run a night shift to keep up with staggering
caseloads, and our overstuffed prison system, now one of the nation's
fastest growing industries.
The corrupting power of the "river of money" that flows
from drug criminalization, which is increasingly infecting US border
control and law enforcement agencies.
The disproportionate focus of law enforcement on
marijuana (more than 600,000 arrests last year) despite its basically
benign nature.
Finally, Drug Crazy points toward possible solutions to
the quagmire of our failed drug wars, based on the successful European
model of a medically-based system of regulated narcotics prescriptions.
Gray contends that the success of such programs in Britain, Holland and
elsewhere has been suppressed � and supporters of such programs
methodically maligned � by "Drug War" advocates in the United States.
ATTENTION EDITORS AND PRODUCERS: Advance
copies of "Drug Crazy," press kits, and author and other expert interviews
may be arranged by contacting Ellen Braune at Fenton Communications/New
York, 212-989-3337, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FENTON COMMUNICATIONS � 2 HORATIO ST, 8P �
NEW YORK, NY � 10014 � (212) 989-3337, http://www.fenton.com/
Quick Review
"Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We can
Get Out," is a gripping and dramatic review of the drug war over the last
100 years. It is being published by Random House. From the opening scene,
a shoot out between police and drug gangs in Chicago, the book draws you
in with human stories, amazing revelations and the whole sordid history of
the drug war.
"Drug Crazy" will capture the imagination of the public,
convince many that prohibition will never work, and open a dialogue on
drug policy at a level we have never seen before.
The author is Mike Gray, best known as the writer of the
screenplay of "The China Syndrone" (Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael
Douglas) which forever altered the public view concerning nuclear energy.
"Drug Crazy" could do the same thing to the war on drugs.
"Drug Crazy" is fascinating, informative, scary and
rewarding. Everyone who has seen an advance copy is enthusiastic about its
potential to open people's minds and change opinion.
You can help spread the word. Ask your local book store
manager for "Drug Crazy" by Mike Gray, published by Random House. If they
don't have it, ask when they will.
Comments on Drug Crazy
"Anyone who thinks the war on drugs is succeeding should
read this book. It shifts the burden of proof from the critics of existing
policy to its defenders. That is no mean achievement!"
Former United States Attorney General
"Never did I think one could learn so much about the
drug crisis all in one place. Mike Gray has written a book of profound
compassion that nevertheless deals intelligently with the facts. Drug
Crazy is an antidote for passivity."
National Public Radio
"The true story that Mike Gray tells so effectively is
indeed stranger than fiction. Who would believe that a democratic
government would pursue for eight decades a failed policy that produced
tens of millions of victims and trillions of dollars of illicit profits
for drug dealers; cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars;
increased crime and destroyed inner cities; fostered widespread corruption
and violations of human rights and all with no success in achieving the
stated and unattainable objective of drug-free America."
Fellow, Hoover Institution
"'Drug Crazy' is an oasis of clarity and common sense in
a desert of misinformation and hysteria."
ACLU
"This urgent issue badly needs the exposure given in
this book, a chilling array of facts which hopefully will move the
country."
Chairman, Union of Concerned
Scientists
This is a book that every American who is concerned
about the problem of drugs in America should read and take seriously. It
is a revealing and well-documented account of some of the weaknesses and
problems involved in our present approach to drugs and a suggestion of how
we can do better.
former Presidential candidate
"This is an insightful book about the discriminatory
nature of the drug war in America and how our politicians have converted a
chronic medical problem into a criminal justice problem.
Former U.S. Surgeon General, Professor
of Endocrinology, Arkansas Children's Hospital
"Drug Crazy dramatically and in stark detail exposes the
truths of the futility of our Nation's self-destructive drug war over the
past 80 years -- truths shamefully known by law enforcement officials,
judges and political leaders for almost just as long.
Professor of Law, Georgetown
University
Former Chief Counsel, Senate Watergate Committee
"I learned an enormous amount about the underside of
drug politics from reading Drug Crazy. It is an eye-opener. The book
raises controversial but reasoned suggestions for rethinking drug policy
in the United States. I highly recommend this book to everyone concerned
about developing an effective strategy toward drug abuse."
Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard
Medical School
"This book sheds real light on what is happening in
American cities today and how current drug control strategies undermine
our efforts to keep our kids and streets safe. Anyone who is serious about
finding solutions to drug-related problems should read this book, debate
it with their colleagues and demand real solutions from their elected
leaders."
"This book tells the public what many front line police
officers know from their experience, the drug war needs radical
re-evaluation."
The Hoover Institution; Former Police Chief,
San Jose, Califonia
"Drug Crazy provides an incisive historical analysis of
America's ongoing problem with drug control - from alcohol under
Prohibition to heroin and crack today. Gray suggests we're fighting the
wrong battle in the war on drugs, and makes a strong case for refocusing
our attention on the root of the problem, the kingpins behind the drug
trade, not the street players who now crowd our jails."
President, National Bar Association
Review by Thomas J. O'Connell, MD
A long-overdue indictment of a lunatic national
policy.
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
DrugSense Director
Title:
