00:00You know how they say that everybody has a purpose in life?
00:07Well, at one time I felt that selling cocaine was my purpose.
00:11We were starving, just looking for a way to succeed.
00:16The first time I seen rock cocaine was 1980.
00:20Murder rate was sky high.
00:22South of the 10 freeway was kind of a no man's land.
00:26So, you know, we're selling it to the blacks.
00:28So you go into these neighborhoods, there's no cops, you can sell it where you want,
00:32and when they start killing each other, nobody cares.
00:34I was going through like a million dollars worth of drugs just about every day.
00:38Let's like go, we can make a fortune.
00:41He was maybe the biggest guy in L.A.
00:44Rick, Rick, Freeway Rick.
00:47Freeway Rick was getting his dope from a very big operator.
00:50I think we're into something that's bigger than us, something we really can't deal with.
00:56She could prove what she was saying.
01:00The story was mind-boggling.
01:12There's a lot of people who think that, you know, I made that whole thing up.
01:15What they don't realize is the CIA admitted it.
01:17See, I didn't know until I was sitting in prison how valuable an education was.
01:22Yeah, drugs suck. Drugs are really bad.
01:24But the drug war is worse.
01:25You want to know a version of hell?
01:27Be the only guy playing straight in a 30-card game.
01:29And that's what the drug war was.
01:31There are more people in prisons and jails today just for drug offenses
01:35than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.
01:41Me being here is defying all odds.
01:44People don't get federal life sentences.
01:47You can beat them.
01:48We've been spending billions and billions and billions of dollars every year on this war on drugs
01:52to find out that the government was involved.
01:55That's pretty astonishing.
02:02Even if the government just turned a blind eye and didn't do anything about it,
02:05then you have to start questioning the whole system.
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