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Jan. 12, 1998 - Art Bell
02:55:06
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Peter Gorman - The War on Drugs
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Welcome to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from January 12th, 1998.
From the high desert and the great American southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be across all these many time zones.
Stretching from the Hawaiian and Tahitian Islands in the west, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S.
Virgin Islands south into South America.
North all the way to the pole, this is Coast to Coast AM.
I'm Art Bell.
And yes, back from the dead, or nearly dead, I have had the flu.
A very serious version of the flu that kept me with temperatures varying up to around 102 for several days.
So, you're going to have to bear with me and my voice this morning.
I'm a little bit better, as you can tell.
I mean, I'm on the air, right?
But Ramona now has the flu and for her it is a far more serious situation because she has asthma and she also is having a current full-blown asthmatic attack.
So we're monitoring that as the night progresses.
There is breaking news.
A Japanese gunman has entered the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has taken hostages.
Apparently for a short time they halted trading and then began trading again.
They are trading currently, I believe.
One cannot but mention the incredible victory of the Packers over the 49ers, where the rain came down so hard today that the sky cried for the 49ers.
Sorry about that.
To all of you who sent me faxes about this, Now, having said all that, and looking forward to the Packers doing it again, I've got a guest coming on in a moment, Peter Gorman, who is editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine.
Counterculture, remember?
Yeah, High Times is still out there, as a matter of fact.
And so we'll talk to Peter Gorman, who is really much more than High Times.
You'll find out all about that.
First, updating the story that we broke at the top of last hour.
Mount Etna in Sicily would appear to be beginning to erupt.
Now, in doing research trying to find out about this, I got to a site that has live cam shots of Mount Etna.
And we have logged, on my website now, A whole series of those shots from today, earlier today, into the night time.
Some of the shots where you can see lava going straight into the air and coming down on three sides of Etna.
It's incredible!
The daytime photographs taken earlier in the day, being sometimes zones yesterday, show the lava flowing down three sides of the mountain.
This just cleared the wire from the Washington Post.
Jakarta, Indonesia.
hot glowing lava has now been spotted on top of a volcano in central java
promoting authorities to warn nearby residents friday they may have to evacuate quickly
there you go now we've got news of one on the other side in indonesia
Stream link the audio subscription service of coast to coast am has a new name
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Visit coasttocoastam.com to sign up.
Now we take you back to the night of January 12th, 1998, on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Now Peter Gorman.
Peter began studying the Amazon in 1984, when he made his first trip to Peru's jungles.
Since that time, He's made nearly two dozen additional trips to the Amazon, as well as numerous trips to the jungles of Mexico, India's rainforest, and the denuded former scrub jungles of southern India, where he worked extensively with noted herpetologist, environmentalist Romulus Whitaker.
During those same years, Mr. Gorman has studied several at-risk tribal cultures firsthand.
Most extensively in Peru and India.
He is the editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine, the voice of the counterculture since you were probably a baby.
He's got lots of other editorial clients that you would know.
The Boston Globe, New York Times, Omni, Panorama, Penthouse, Playboy, The Spy, Just on and on and on and on.
He is a very, very interesting guy.
Somebody sent me a fax and begged me to have him on because he was so interesting.
And I surely do remember high times very well.
I speak of it almost as though it was gone.
It is not.
It is still very much alive.
Peter, welcome to the program.
Thanks a lot for having me on.
Where are you, Peter?
Middle of New York City.
New York City, oh my!
You're in WABC country.
You bet.
Well, thanks for staying up late.
I appreciate it.
I'm curious, let us begin by talking about High Times Magazine.
It's been around a long time.
What is High Times today?
How is it different than it was when I was young?
In fact, we're entering our 24th year.
And how is it different?
Let's say in 1974, when the magazine was founded, I think High Times represented the voice of the people who were kind of, at that point, the residual voices for civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, anti-war sentiment.
As well as those who were pro-marijuana and pro-mine expansion.
Some of those issues are no longer at the fore today, but they remain part of what we consider the legacy of the counterculture, or at least we hope that we had some effect in getting changes made in some of those issues.
Is that a fair statement, the legacy, you said, of the counterculture?
Does that mean it's over?
No, but I was recently talking to somebody downstairs at a place where I play darts with my beautiful wife.
There was a fellow who was studying for his police test in New York.
He happened to overhear something that somebody said.
He made a comment, and I made a comment back.
He said, well, as far as I'm concerned, people who smoke pot never did anything.
They're worthless, they're useless, they sit around by the TV and they've never done anything that helps the world.
And coming from a family of New York City cops, and almost having been one myself, I took offense and I turned around and I said, you know, without the counterculture, the free speech movement doesn't really get underway.
Without the counterculture, the Martin Luther King's civil rights movement gets stalled.
Without the counterculture, You don't have women's rights.
You don't have an anti-war movement.
You don't have gay rights.
You don't have any of the rights that we now take for granted in this country.
We never had them.
They're just 30 years old.
So whether you agree or disagree on those issues, without those issues, or if those issues were successfully non-negotiable in any way at all, we wouldn't be free.
Well, I mean, if you think back 30 years, I think you really see that we've made gigantic strides.
Were we ultimately 100% successful, that's debatable.
In fact, I think in most cases, no.
It takes a long time to implement social change.
But I think that were strides made?
Is there an awareness towards these subjects?
Absolutely.
I think a lot of that grows out of the counterculture.
The base of the counterculture was probably, I mean, the one thread that holds it all together might have been the use of cannabis.
All right, let me stop you and ask you about cannabis.
It's a great subject.
Arizona, California passed some pretty liberal laws here recently.
Whether or not they're going to actually come to fruition, I guess we're going to have to wait for the courts to decide.
But there's a drug war, Peter.
Are we winning it?
Well, uh... Who's we?
What side are you on?
Well... Are we more liberal?
No, for me... No, I mean, look, except that generically, we as in the people represented... supposed to be represented by the American government.
The American government has a drug war going on.
So kind of a collective we.
Is the government winning or losing the drug war?
The government is losing the drug war unless you're a conspiracy puff, in which case it's going along just fine.
Well, I mean, you know, consider that at the moment we've got 1.7, edging towards 1.8 million Americans in jail at any given time.
Record number.
Roughly 60% in for non-violent drug crimes.
You know, if the government Has no use for a certain segment of the population.
And in this case, mostly poor whites or uneducated whites and uneducated inner-city blacks.
The government might say, we're doing great.
We've got them off the streets.
And that's what we wanted.
So capitalism could charge ahead.
Yeah, but we're also discharging violent criminals out the back door to keep these people in jail.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You know, from the point of view of high times, Speaking for myself and probably speaking for the magazine, we don't care if you smoke marijuana.
We don't encourage you to smoke marijuana.
It doesn't really matter to us.
But the idea that you might do 5, 10, or 200 years in jail for smoking marijuana, depending on what state you're in, is sort of beyond and beyond.
This is not a social program.
We don't see who's being aided by this.
So from our point of view, The government, while it's losing because of the record numbers of people who are dissenting from the government's position, we also recognize that record numbers of us are serving time, who shouldn't be serving time.
People who are doing time only for the crime of smoking cannabis, not for any other criminal activity associated Well, I come from a state, Nevada, that's where I am now, where it is a felony.
Very serious crime.
It is a felony.
In most states now, it is some form of misdemeanor, but here it is a felony.
And in many states, there are required minimum sentences you get with certain amounts of marijuana that are going to put you in jail, mandatory minimums, and they're going to keep you there While other violent types come and go.
So no question about it.
I mean, we've got in Oklahoma, while we consider Nevada to be one of the bad states, and while we consider a state like Rhode Island, most people consider it fairly East Coast, liberal, educated.
Nonetheless, a state like Rhode Island has a zero to 30 years for growing one cannabis plant.
My God.
Which means Ninety-nine percent of the people are getting zero time.
But, if you happen to be somebody who has a personal problem with the local prosecutor, the local sheriff, if you were a kid and you used to throw snowballs at the local judge's house, and now you grow up and you're growing marijuana, then good-bye.
He can nail you for 30 years.
But, near Nevada, obviously, is Oklahoma, and Oklahoma is a state... We had a poor fellow, Jimmy Montgomery, about a year and a half ago, A paraplegic with a disorder that was a bone tunneling disorder, costing him bone every month out of his body.
Yes.
Got life plus 16 for 40 grams of marijuana, an ounce and a half.
Good Lord.
And he wasn't selling it, he was actually out driving his car when some snitch turned over and said, well I think he's got it.
And when they went to his house, the guy couldn't identify his house, but nonetheless they finally narrowed it down by looking at mailboxes.
And when they entered the house, yeah, it was 42 grams a pot.
About, you know, depending on how good the quality was, maybe $100 to $200 worth of pot.
And they nailed him for life plus 16.
And a fellow named Will Foster, who's using it for medical purposes, six months ago got 93 years on a first... This is a fellow who'd never been arrested before.
Nothing.
He had... He might have had a traffic ticket or two, but 93 years.
When a snitch who was buying his own freedom by turning in people.
In Oklahoma, there's a silly program that if you're a felon and you turn in six people, you walk free.
And so Will Foster was one of the six.
He swore Will Foster had an amphetamine lab in his basement and was wholesaling methamphetamine.
And the police, of course, you know, it was a $10 buy and buy operation.
The police trusted the informant that, oh, wow, you really You left the car and you came back half an hour later and you don't have the $10.
And poor Will Foster was found not with any methamphetamine, no methamphetamine, but a small marijuana garden the size of your kitchen table, which they announced was worth $2 million, probably was worth $250, and nailed him for 93 years.
So it's still going on.
I mean, there are tens of thousands of guys and women out there.
Smoking pot, buying pot, selling pot, who are doing legitimately 5, 10, 20, and 93 years.
I know.
I think it's insane.
And Peter, I want to ask about, you know, everybody kind of thought the first Democrat, first liberal that would get elected, i.e.
Bill Clinton, the pot laws would quickly, the federal pot laws would quickly change.
And Bill Clinton got in office.
Uh... gave his famous statement about not inhaling uh... uh... having tried it but not didn't inhale got himself in a lot of political trouble then got in a lot more political trouble had no more political capital could have done something about pot but didn't and now obviously will not what hope is there well uh... you know that was boy bill clinton i mean at the risk of uh... getting voted tomorrow what a gutless bump On this issue.
You know, plenty of people in the marijuana movement have spoken to him, and I've spoken to several people who would later prove to be his aides and right-hand men, and it was a done deal.
They were not necessarily going to legalize pot, but it was going to be discussed.
That much we were promised.
And in fact, the moment that he waffled and said, I didn't inhale, Any credibility on the issue he had whatsoever.
Now, we're talking about, this remains an administration in which Donna Shalala, head of Health and Human Resources, I mean, you know, HHS, admits to having smoked pot.
Newt Gingrich smokes pot.
Al Gore admits to having smoked pot for several years, and Bill Clinton admits to having at least tried it.
Right, you know, on the right and the left, everybody's tried pot.
He's connected with this administration currently.
But Waffling was the one cardinal sin that could have been committed by someone like this because it left him no out.
And I think at the moment the only political party that can do any good for easing the marijuana laws is going to have to be extreme right wing.
It's really strange, isn't it?
You're absolutely right.
The person who could really do it would probably be Gingrich or somebody on the far right.
It would take somebody like that because anybody on the left is going to be immediately crucified by the right.
Yes, and if Al Gore ends up being the presidential timber for 2000, even though he's admitted that he did it and admitted that he enjoyed it for years, Uh, which doesn't mean either frequently, but you know, over a period of time.
Um, he can't have any credibility on the issue.
It's too late.
So I think we're going to be stuck.
And, uh, you know, Gingrich's latest proclamation is either legalize it or let's make a rule that says, if you import drugs, sell drugs, buy drugs, use drugs, we're going to cut your head off.
So that's a tough place to look for hope.
It is.
It is indeed.
I wonder, really pressed on the issue, which he would prefer to do.
Well, I'll tell you the truth.
I think that you're certainly old enough to remember the marches in Washington.
Of course.
Both for civil rights and then for the anti-war movement.
I remember all of them.
I was a kid for the anti-war movement marches and certainly for the civil rights stuff, okay?
So you know, I was in Vietnam.
Well, I salute you.
Way to go.
It was a tough place to be, I'm sure.
It was a hard way to go.
I had a brother who was in Vietnam.
Initially, when he went over, he sent letters back talking about, well, I'm doing a body bag count and I'm finding little heroin in some of these bags and drugs and stuff.
I want to turn these guys in because it's criminal.
Six months later, he was saying, this is such a stinky war.
I wouldn't even look in the body bags anymore.
I hope they're all filled with heroin.
I hope everybody gets anything they want out of this because, you know, we're certainly not trying to win it.
We're just trying to execute as many of these American kids as we can.
So whatever they can get out with, by all means.
Don't hold him to task for that.
That's my recollection of it.
I think when I first went to Washington, probably in 67, I think all the TV cameras were able to point at us and say, scruffy hippies, smoking dope, Looking like chickens.
Now, we weren't.
I think that the vast majority of us were utterly disappointed.
Disappointed we couldn't morally go to Vietnam, right?
Because we grew up wanting to be Green Berets, but they didn't give us Hitler.
They gave us Vietnam.
I hear you.
I hear you.
They gave us Vietnam as an accurate assessment as well.
Peter, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
We'll be right back, all right?
All right.
Relax.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
I'm Art Bell.
Peter Gorman.
Editor of High Times Magazine is my guest.
Don't touch that dial.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12, 1998.
Don't lead me this way.
I can't abide.
Don't leave me this way I can't go back
I can't live a life Without your love
Oh baby Don't leave me this way
I can't accept I know you.
I'll surely miss your tender kiss.
Don't leave me this way.
Baby!
My heart is full of love and desire for you.
Now come on down and do what you gotta do You...
🎵 And it's alright and it's over
Oh, we gotta get right back where we started from Love you
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12th, 1998.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12, 1998.
You know, I heard they played this song as it became clear that the Packers were going to go back to the Super Bowl
again.
Is that true?
Well, all I can say is, I told you so.
And if you don't think they're going to run over Denver like yesterday's newspaper... Oh well.
Snap back to business here.
Peter Gorman is our guest and he'll be back in a moment.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
on premier radio networks.
tonight on core presentation of coast to coast a m from january twelfth nineteen
ninety eight once again peter gorman and we're talking about uh... vietnam
and peter You know, I said I was there, and I'll tell you the point of view of most people who were actually there.
They thought the real criminals, frankly, were in Washington.
And there were a series of criminals in Washington, and in my view and the view of those who were there and saw a lot of their friends die, if you're going to fight a war, if you are going to start a war, which we did in Vietnam, we began that war, we started it, we provoked it, We faked our way into it.
Once you get into a war, you don't fight a half-assed war.
Watching people die when you have the power to fight a full war and really kill the other guy, period.
And so I can get real angry beginning to talk about that, but that's the point of view of somebody who was there, and I understand yours as well.
Well, you know, it's funny.
One of the things that occurred, Lyndon Johnson, when I was a kid, probably 13, 14 years old, Decided that we were going to bomb North Vietnam.
Sort of.
Sort of.
Some areas.
We were going to go ahead and do that.
At the time, coming from a family of hawks, we all congratulated him mentally or congratulated each other.
Finally, we were going to fight this war.
But, when he decided to leave Hanoi Harbor and the Ho Chi Minh Trail unbombed, even for a kid, and this is not I mean, whether or not me, or a couple hundred million of us who go to Washington periodically, we're cowards is an entirely different issue.
But I think we lost our stomach for it, even as kids, saying, this is not a war.
This is not a war.
There are two ways North Vietnamese troops are getting armed.
Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Gulf of Hai Phong Harbor.
If you're not going to bomb those, you're not trying to win this war.
That's right.
If I could have strangled Johnson, I would have.
I'm real serious.
Like the drug war, when a lot of us and a lot of Vietnam vets came down and manned those lines marching in Washington initially, people could look at long-haired, scruffy guys playing guitars, smoking marijuana, And say, oh, you see, it's just cowards who don't want to go.
But by the 4th or 5th March, moms were involved.
And by the 6th or 7th, there were so many grandmas with signs that said, I am not permitting my grandson or my next grandson to die for your war, that the TV cameras couldn't avoid them.
At that point, it was critical mass.
Don't anger grandmas in this country.
They swing the vote on everything.
And I think the same thing would go with the drug war.
As we, more and more, for instance, medical marijuana issue.
As more and more people say, you know, I never smoked pot, but my grandson is dying of AIDS.
He can't eat.
As grandma gets on the picket line, the issue becomes reasonable to the American public.
And politicians in this country, unfortunately, have a history of not being visionaries, primarily.
But being reactionaries?
Well, for example, in California, where they pass ballot initiatives, in other words, the voice of the people says, here's what we want it to be, and then they pass it.
It's approved by the voter.
That's where it stops, and the federal court system grabs it and says, oh no, you don't.
You guys don't know what you need or want.
We're going to have to consider this and generally reject what the voters have done.
Well, you know what?
You're right, but there is wonderful news on the horizon.
I mean, absolutely wonderful, and if you want to break it, you can break it right here.
Go ahead.
If you like it.
One of our writers, John Getman, he's the former National Director of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
I know of it, yes.
Okay, they've been around since 1970.
Yep.
Well, some years ago, John, about four years ago, John came to me and he said, There is new material on marijuana in the brain.
How it works, what receptor sites are involved, what its mechanisms are.
These are studies commissioned by the U.S.
government.
Do you want a story on it?
Now, this is dull as dishwater for people who are not chemists.
Okay?
But, in it, in his two-part study, he was able to show, using U.S.
government data, that marijuana does not ...work along the same lines that the government claims addictive substances work.
Period.
It does not affect the same areas of the brain.
It does not affect serotonin, etc., etc.
After that, he decided, well, you know, marijuana's been placed on Schedule 1, which means it's got no medical use and it's got high potential for abuse.
So, he petitioned, essentially sued the federal government, saying, on what grounds Do you have high potential for abuse on what scientific grounds?
Well, normally this is a sort of lawsuit and petition that the federal government is allowed to toss down the wastebasket.
Except in this case, as of two weeks ago, the DEA acknowledged we have no scientific grounds to place marijuana in the schedule.
There is no scientific grounds based on new material from the U.S.
government on which to say marijuana has a high potential for abuse therefore we are tossing it back to Health and Human Services for a binding arbitration on where shall this indeed be placed.
Wow.
Shall it be legalized and they've only got two years essentially to come up with an answer and the DEA admitting that it has no scientific grounds to keep marijuana out of the hands of doctors And maybe not even out of the hands of ordinary adults is an amazing... You're right, that's big news.
I had not heard that.
Well, I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
tomorrow to meet with the New York Times about it, and with John Getman, who filed it, and with Michael Kennedy, who's the lawyer for Trans High Corporation, who is the legal end of this lawsuit, which is, you know, the parent corporation for High Times.
Once, you know, now that it's been passed to HHS, well, the branch of HHS that reviews the scientific literature has already, publicly, for 10 or 12 years, been very outspoken about marijuana does not belong on Schedule 1.
It simply doesn't.
There is no reason for it being there except somebody's whim, and we need legs on which to pin the drug war.
So, in other words, that could eventually Uh, result in a complete change of force, a change of attitude, uh, on the part of the federal government.
Yeah, absolutely.
Wow.
And it, and it, it no doubt will whether, you know, how much of a change is going to be on, you know, what HHS comes up with.
But, uh, uh, that the DEA acknowledges, we've got no reason, of course, but the thing is this, we are dealing with a very entrenched, you know, system, the drug war and the fear Generated by, I mean, you need fear to keep this drug war going.
We've got billions and billions of dollars invested in this.
We've got the largest prison industry anywhere in the world.
It's the number one growth industry, or close to the number one construction industry in the entire United States.
We are exporting billions of dollars of prison-made goods, primarily to China.
You know, we object.
All of us liberals here and even conservatives say, you know, hey, Chinese prison labor, how dare they?
Well, most people don't realize how many billions of dollars of goods are being sent to China by our prisoners.
So, to dis-entrench a system like this, to actually expose it to light, is going to be difficult.
And, if marijuana prohibition ended, nobody would fund, you know, 14 billion federal dollars a year to stop, what, a million and a half heroin addicts.
We would look at that reasonably and say, hey, this is a health problem.
Well, that's where I was going.
I have long been for the decriminalization or legalization of marijuana.
Because it's logical, because I'm tired of lying to kids.
You know, you tell a kid he's going to go crazy on marijuana, get hooked, fry his brain completely, whatever.
He tries it and he says, Lie.
And then it makes it easier to go on to the next step.
And, you know, take that first snort, or maybe even some heroin, or PCB, or some sort of amphetamine, or who knows what.
And so I thought, at the very least, marijuana ought to be separated.
We ought to start telling the truth about marijuana.
Separate it from the other drugs.
But then you're still left with the question about what you do with the much harder drugs.
You know, I do know something about cocaine.
Welcome to the club.
And crack.
There are women who will sell their babies for crack.
I mean, it is a really serious drug.
What do you feel about that?
I mean, once you separate marijuana from the rest.
In my heart of hearts, I'm a parent.
I'm a parent of a 12-year-old, a 9-year-old, a baby.
I've got a family and I've got to deal with it as a real life issue.
I made a decision to just tell my kids the truth about what I felt which was that marijuana is not a drug.
It shouldn't be considered a drug.
It's a helpful plant.
It's not for kids.
There is a time and there is a place and just like there is a time and a place for We've got a law for anything you might do under the influence of drugs.
or this is a girl, you know, some things are just, let's save them for a while.
And I mean that kind of seems simplistic, but somehow dads try to work this out with
their kids.
I think this is, in my heart of hearts, the real answer.
We've got a law for anything you might do under the influence of drugs.
If I don't feed my kids, it doesn't matter if I don't feed them because I spent the money
on crack, or because I spent the money on pot, or because I bet at OTP, or because I
blew it all, you know, flipping cards.
The law says feed your damn kids.
Yeah, even if you're broke.
We don't care why.
The law says you either do it, or we can haul your fanny into jail.
And take the kids.
If I steal from my friend, or somebody I don't know, it doesn't matter if I stole because I needed heroin, because I was drunk and thought it was cool, or because I felt like it, or because I didn't like the guy.
The law says you can't steal.
So I think we've got laws in place for any and everything you might do under the influence of drugs.
So why there are additional laws for the use of drugs is beyond me.
We don't need them.
We could use, in other words, we could, let's say, Nobody likes a junkie.
As a rule, 90% of the junkies are tedious to be around, self-indulgent, and pretty boring.
On the other hand, according to the federal government, 70% hold jobs.
They absolutely work.
And that's, you know, it's in subways all over New York City.
70% of the people who are using drugs are working.
Are they helping your workforce?
Well, you know what?
If you include everybody in this country, that's a whole lot better than the rest of the populace.
All right, but I've heard even our conservatives, and I don't have to name them, have come out for the legalization of drugs, but I've got one problem with it.
If crack and heroin and so forth were readily available at a good price, a cheap price, which they would be once they were legalized, I simply can't imagine the population of junkies And coke heads, not doubling, tripling, quadrupling, people partying on weekends.
You know, it begins with a little party on the weekends, since it's legal and it's obtainable, and it'd be great at parties, and then a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of people are going to get hooked.
Where's the answer for that one?
I mean, you and I both know it'll happen.
Well, okay.
I think there might be two things involved here.
One, if we look at the medicalization of substances with a high potential for abuse.
Medicalization as in what Switzerland does, which is that you register as someone who uses heroin and go to a pharmacy to get your heroin.
Okay, I've got a hole in that one.
I thought of that one too.
I had that presented to me.
Problem.
You work for High Times As a matter of fact, you're editor-in-chief of i-Times, so no problem for you.
But for the average executive, say, in New York City, where you are, who might get hooked on heroin, to go down and register as a heroin user is not going to be an option, because it's going to get out.
Somehow, you and I both know it's going to get out.
So instead of taking that chance, he's going to turn to the black market.
Do you think that fellow, at the moment, do you think anyone in America would need to spend more than an hour or two, I'll admit a couple of hours, but more than an hour or two acquiring any drug they felt like?
Oh, I absolutely agree.
If they are all within two hours, say, of someone who For instance, maybe I've got sisters and they don't even know what a drug looks like.
You know what I mean?
Sure.
It's not two hours for them because they wouldn't even know what the heck to do.
But for somebody who has some experience, if it's within a couple of hours, then we've got to say, excuse me, 30 years, the largest criminal justice system ever created on the planet.
These drugs are cheaper and more readily available now than they were 30 years ago.
What we're doing doesn't work.
At all.
Anything has to be at least an attempt at an improvement.
If it were medicalization, what if, you know, 25 years ago, heroin was as high as $700 for a gram of something fairly pure.
20 years ago, In fact, probably 22 years ago, the last time I ever took a snort of cocaine, and I did indulge myself to the point where I had a little problem, which cost me a wife and money and everything I had.
But 20 years ago, my last snort, it was still $130, $140 a gram.
Do you know what that cost now, 30 years later?
grand you know what that cost now thirty years later
no i really don't twenty five
dollars a gram You're kidding.
We are down by 70%.
The street price of cocaine is $25 a gram?
New York City, roughly 20-25% according to New York City Police, which is a phenomenally high percentage.
It's $25 in a gram.
You know somebody, it's $15.
It used to be 125 for that same grant.
That's incredible.
This is after hundreds of billions of dollars.
This is with nearly 2 million of us sitting in jail.
My God, that's incredible.
Not for committing other crimes, but simply for the crime of doing it.
I don't like it.
Why has the price fallen like that?
Well... Supply?
It must be supply.
I mean, everything's supply and demand.
What if you had a country like Bolivia, which Looked horrible on the world map.
And what if the World Bank said, you guys, we're going to try to, you know, improve your agribusiness, and, you know, we're going to push you to grow some legit crops and give you some means to grow crops, which Bolivia would love, and say, great, instead of producing so much protein, we're now going to produce these crops.
But if at the same time the World Bank said, in exchange, the U.S.
Can push as many crops into Bolivia without any restrictions on trade or any tariffs.
Well, the Bolivians could grow all the lettuce they want and it's never going to make it to the U.S.
as an export crop.
And that's really what did happen.
I mean, that was the condition to get the money from the World Bank.
Bolivia now looks good, but it really, to maintain its place, it's lost whatever edge it might have had.
In growing crops that nobody else could grow, economically, because of tariffs, I mean in export, etc.
But once Bolivia had to swallow the bitter pill, and say, okay, lose all your tariffs.
We don't care.
Suddenly, their local crops, or Colombia's coffee, same thing with Colombia's coffee, same thing with Peru's bananas, all of them, you know, dropped to zero.
There is no agri-crop.
We can talk all we want about crop substitution, but if they can't protect with tariffs
their crops on you know uh...
in terms of getting to world market a reasonable price and we in turn can use government subsidized crops to flood
their markets we have really reduced them to like looking for anything
they can produce they'll give them an edge
you know peru and bolivia obviously i've gone to a belief
and columbia's refining well if the price of cocaine really has fallen as you
suggest then that is a even that
a bigger indication that the drug war is a complete failure
If anything, the federal officials would try and cite the unavailability or high price of drugs, and it's certainly gone just the other way.
Absolutely.
No, no, this is... No, and if you're really conspiracy buff, I mean, we have a hard time to actually spend our lives involved in this, you know, the corruption that is, you know, grown out of this trade.
The corruption of Bolivian, Peruvian, Colombian, Mexican, and, you know, the Caribbean Island government officials.
The corruption of the U.S.
government.
It's beyond the beyond.
I mean, it goes to pretty high levels.
People drop all the time, and they get indicted, and they just kind of disappear from administrations for little, you know, small infractions, but it's, I mean, You know, as long as we're going to have dirty little wars, as long as we're going to need, oh, Afghani freedom fighters are not being funded by the U.S.
government, how are we going to get their money to them to buy guns?
Well, we're not asking them to make heroin instead of hashish.
All right.
Hold it right there.
We're at the top of the hour.
We'll be right back.
Peter Gorman is my guest.
time are at bell.
I'm going to play a little bit of the music.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM, from January 12th, 1998.
Good morning, everybody.
My guest is Peter Gorman.
Peter Gorman is the editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine.
Kind of a counterculture, druggy magazine.
I guess a lot of people would say.
A lot of people have said that.
It's a lot more, though, and so is Peter Gorman, and we are going to turn our attention to other matters here shortly.
We, uh... We're gonna have quite a program for you, presuming that it can continue.
Now, I am back after four days of having had the flu, and I still now have a low-grade temperature.
I was very, very sick for about four days.
And I'm still not all the way back.
Unfortunately, this morning, my wife came down with it as well, and she is now in the middle of a full-blown asthmatic attack, a bad one, at this hour.
She's also running high temperature, and so everything is sort of tentative, folks, and if you hear me bail out of here suddenly, that's going to be why.
Having said that, we will continue with Peter Gorman in a moment.
Two items to catch those in L.A.
who just joined.
I began getting reports yesterday that something was going on at Mount Etna in Sicily.
That there may soon be an eruption.
I found a live cam site on the internet which actually has a camera sitting there taking pictures of Mount Etna.
I found that about two hours ago.
And I started looking at the photographs over the last several hours, tonight, and into the daylight hours, and it was a true, oh my God, kind of moment.
If you'll look at the photographs, they're on my website now, you will see Etna with hot lava blowing straight out of the top of it, and coming down three sides of that mountain.
It is not yet, as far as I know, a full eruption, but Aetna is obviously, we've got the photos up there, active.
It's at www.artbell.com.
If you want to see the photographs, I've got them up there for you at www.artbell.com.
In addition, I've got this from the Associated Press.
Jakarta, Indonesia.
Hot, glowing lava has been spotted on top of a volcano in central Java.
Prompting authorities in Indonesia to warn nearby residents they may have to get out of there quickly.
Stan Dale had a report, Linda Moulton Howe had a report last, or no, in the first hour, and I just got a fact saying it's worth mentioning, Art, that all of this recent volcanic activity just happens to coincide with the most recent full moon, January 12th.
It seems this is yet another confirmation of Jim Birkland's theories regarding celestial influences on geographic activity.
I couldn't agree more.
Add to that the earthquake in China and predictions of earthquakes on the West Coast for the short term.
So I wanted to get that out.
and uh...
in a moment we'll get back to uh... peter gorman now we take you back to the light of january twelfth
nineteen ninety eight on our girls somewhere in time
and We will get phone calls.
My guest is Peter Gorman.
He is editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine.
Many of you know that magazine, probably from Your youth, as do I. It is considered, or was considered to be, the voice of the counterculture, and if you look at present conditions, it really can still make that claim.
We have talked about marijuana and the drug laws extensively in the last hour.
Peter Gorman is also an environmentalist, and Peter, there's a lot of stuff going on environmentally that I would like to ask your opinion about.
We've got deformed frauds, Showing up worldwide now.
We now know for sure that it is ultraviolet radiation.
We have a very large ozone hole thinning ozone over the U.S.
We have more environmental disasters underway in the sea, for example, than you can shake a fishing pole at.
We've got hysteria coming out of North Carolina into the Atlantic and now up in the North Atlantic.
Something that kills fish and puts bloody sores on them and now is beginning to affect people.
We've got simple-celled organisms in the Antarctic beginning to show actual genetic change.
I could really go on and on and on and rattle on what's wrong in the environment, and it really is wrong.
And I wonder where you think it's going.
That's a tough one.
I know.
Wild and extravagant.
I'm not sure how much is the hand of whatever, and how much is our hand, but I feel quite certain that we've played a large, you know, we've stirred the pot.
And in a lot of areas we can really see where we've done that.
If you look, for instance, in Seattle or in the Northwest when you have clear cutting and the foul air, you've got, you know, Nine feet of flooding in the middle of big cities and people say, whoops, this must be heavy rains.
When the trees, the roots of the trees acted like sponges and are, you know, absorbing that rain and are no longer there.
Or if you look, some beautiful islands like the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and, you know, see that, hey, let's cut all the trees down here and whoops, all the coral reefs die.
I'm, you know, certainly nobody who's an environmentalist or even an armchair environmentalist could look at any of these phenomena and not realize, you know, that we have done a great deal of disservice to the planet.
But I mean, you know, do I pin it particularly on feeding cows with parts of I'm not sure.
Your phone's cutting out on us.
Do you have a call?
It's probably somebody trying to come through, and I apologize.
I don't usually get calls at 3.15 in the morning.
Okay.
New York Times.
No problem.
Let's assume it's a fake one.
But yeah, from my point of view, I see it a lot down in Peru.
I spent a lot of time down in Peru over the last 15 or so years.
A couple of months a year, and I'm about to take a year off to spend a year down there.
You're going to take a year off?
I've got a year of sabbatical starting next month.
Wow.
Yeah, I think my employers realize that answering the phone calls of people who are in the process of, you know, I mean, their typical phone call might be, hello, is this Peter Gorman?
Yes.
Well, the police are here and they're saying if I don't testify against my husband, they're taking my children.
Can they do that?
It's been wearing on me for a while.
And I think it wears on anybody who's in the field.
And I just have to be lucky enough to have some employers who understand, like, get out of here, get fresh.
Yeah.
So you're ready for that.
I mean, it's been that stressful.
I've been waiting for it.
You know, it's funny, because of all the places where I can't involve myself in the drug war, it's in Peru.
And that's where 90% of the dirty deeds are.
But it's the one place, because You know, my mother-in-law lives there, my father-in-law.
Oh, really?
I can't report on any of it.
I mean, I've been told pretty straight up, you're not doing that down here.
You've got family and you like to see them.
Yeah, and so you've got to pay attention.
Oh, you know, there's no question.
We're not talking about me.
I'm not a single guy.
I can be honest.
I'm a journalist, but there are certain things you get privy to.
In a small place like the Amazon, it's small in terms of where the populace is.
And in those places, other people make the rules.
And as much as I can disagree with policies of the U.S.
government, as much as I will fight to change them, it still is the U.S.
government where there is a certain, in the end, reasonableness for most of us.
In other parts of the world, we don't have that.
You don't have the luxury of being able to tell the government to jump in the lake and talk about it the next morning.
And Peru is certainly one of those places.
Believe me, I understand.
Why do you go to Peru?
Why do you go to South America?
Why?
I'll tell you the truth.
I've always had wanderlust.
It's just been in my blood since I was a little kid.
Twenty years ago, I was with somebody who, on hearing I was going to start going into the jungles of the Amazon, bought me a book.
called headhunters of the amazon turn of the century and uh...
she met it here me away with the frightening tale of a fellow who was
lost six years down there
and instead it kind of gave me the road map of
that's where i got to go alright uh...
i know that you don't go to the area where the young mama uh... young mama people are
but i did a program with uh...
uh... with an expert on the young mama and uh... it was his view
that we're out of our minds to be
uh... intruding upon them and trying to cause them uh... to become uh... a christian
and change their ways And they do have some rather brutal ways.
There's no question about that.
The anthropologist who's been studying them did several hours on it with me.
And I think makes a very convincing argument.
I had another fellow named Mark Ritchie, who wrote a book called Spirit of the Rainforest, who has exactly the opposite view, and I interviewed him.
Thinks we ought to go down there and turn them into Christians, and stop all this brutality, and that that is our job as a civilized world, you know, to go down there and change everything.
How do you feel about that?
No, I certainly would agree with the former, and not Mr. Ritchie.
I think that I deal with a group called the Matez Indians, who are kind of a subgroup of an anthropological group known as the Mayaruna, and they are changing.
When I met them, they still painted their faces like jaguars, and primarily hunted and gathered, although there was some agriculture involved in their livestock, and like the Alamamo, they could be They're brutal, but it's a very brutal world.
They were being Christianized, and there were being missionaries come through, and traders have come through.
When I met them in 1985, I was certainly not the first white boy they'd ever seen.
Even to this day, it's a reasonably sporadic influence.
A teacher in Peru, to get their license, has to go into rural communities at some point and teach for some months.
So you might get somebody from Lima, and they just get plunked down in a community.
It could be Mestizo, it could be Indian, and they bring their influences as a rule to that community and say, oh, this is no good.
I mean, you know, you kill this animal, but you're not killing it.
You're letting it suffer overnight, and you're waiting until the morning to kill it.
That's no good.
If you're going to hunt, you have to kill the animal right away, which is humane to our point of view, but if you're actually living in the jungle and realize the heat and that The media is going to go bad overnight.
You suddenly would say, better to just wound it and let it sit overnight.
It is brutal.
It is very difficult for me to cope with that at first sight or for any of us.
But that's life.
That's life in the jungle.
I think I do my best to be as uninfluential as possible.
I don't bring people out to them as much as Indians.
Other people can find them if they want to.
I can't really stop them, but when I've written stories, I draw fake maps and fake rivers, and occasionally an anthropologist will accuse me of not knowing where they are, because, Peter, this river doesn't make any sense!
Instead of them recognizing, like, hey, look, I'm just kind of giving a general indication, but I mean, you know, but certainly I think, I think the more change, Look in Mexico.
If you just take people who are farmers, their life can be full and it can be a jubilant, wonderful celebration of life.
If you convince them they're better off coming to work in a factory near the border for six bucks a day, and they say, Wow, I've never had six bucks a day.
Well, they end up essentially becoming our indentured servants at best, our slaves at worst, and living in a community where For their six bucks a day, they can't get nearly as much as they got for their six bucks a month when they were growing their own food and living with their own extended families in a community that supported itself and supported each other in lean times and shared their goods.
So, yeah, you're talking to somebody who prefers to leave people the heck alone.
NASA keeps sending the shuttle up and they go around and they take photographs from space of the rainforest.
And these photographs keep coming back, showing the rainforest basically on fire.
And that's not an over-exaggeration.
They're burning incredible, incredible amounts of the rainforest down there.
Big problem?
In certain areas, it's a huge problem.
In certain other areas, the problem was solved by attrition.
In western Brazil, in Acre, when Brazil Had overpopulous on the east coast and said anybody who would go west to open up these territories, probably like we did in the 1840s, you know, you take a chance, but we're going to give you 40 acres and a mule.
Well, a couple of million people did go to Acre, to the western states in Brazil.
They built a road.
And as a matter of fact, we helped pay for that road.
Absolutely.
Fortunately, for people who like the forest, and unfortunately for the people who tried to settle it, The road functions very badly and is washed out most of the year.
About 75% of the people actually moved out there, moved back east and said, what are you kidding?
I mean, we can't grow anything.
Everything we grow by the time we get it anywhere is rotten.
Well, here's what bothers me.
There was a movie about the rainforest called Medicine Man.
Did you ever see that?
Yeah.
In that, it was fictional, but they discovered a cure for cancer.
Right.
From something that grew in the rainforest.
Right.
Now, I sit here and wonder, have we burned the cure for AIDS, the cure for cancer, the cure for heart disease, and many other crippling illnesses?
Have we already burned that stuff, or might it still be there?
Well, there's a couple of things, and I'm going to forget this fellow's name now, and he'll shoot me.
A fellow that's working out in South Pacific, and he just wrote a book, People, Culture, and Plants, with Mike Valick, and I apologize to him on the air for forgetting his name, and he had found something that did actually work for AIDS in a test tube, which is not to say a cure, but at the time it was an AP Wire story, and when he went back, The people that he was working with had been ordered by their government, the indigenous people that he worked with, had been ordered by the government to build a school.
And the only way they could build a school was to cut down their 40,000 acres of forest.
And so he ended up raising a fund and, you know, starting a fund and ended up saving their forest.
But that was one that really mimicked Medicine Man to the teeth.
I've collected twice for small Uh, pharmaceutical companies, um, and I think both are going to have immense success, uh, with products that, uh, that maybe I was involved in, but it wasn't really me.
It was the Indians.
All right.
Well, I, I heard something about you.
Uh, there was this big announcement here recently about some sort of something that comes from frogs that, uh, has the same, I think they said the same medicinal effect As the medical equivalent of heroin, morphine, without any of the side effects.
What do you know about that?
Well, two things.
During the 1970s, there was a tremendous interest in amphibian skin.
The same frogs that are disappearing now produce a certain kind of mucus on their body, or what I call mucus, which protects them from bacteria.
And protect them from infection.
And so some terrific herpetologists and scientists went down to the Amazon and all around the world began studying these frogs for their chemical components in the mucus.
Would this be something that would be good?
Like a natural penicillin, for instance, you know, the equivalent.
And one of them that was studied was a frog called the Epidates, which is a small tree frog.
And it was studied by a fellow named John Daly.
Now, Where I came into it was, all the study of frogs and amphibian skins, there was still nobody had ever written a first-person account of having used it, or used any of these substances.
Now, when I was at the Massas Indians, 1986, I was in a hut with a friend of mine, Pablo, and I was pointing at different things, trying to find a vocabulary that we could share, and I was pointing at his arrow and a bow and a You know, this and that.
And I point to a small medicine bag over a fire and I said, you know, kind of, what's that?
And he grinned and said, Sapo, hold it down, take a stick out of the fire, burns my forearm, spits into this stick of stuff that was hanging over the fire, mixes it up, and puts it onto the open wounds.
Like a subcutaneous, not an injection, but a subcutaneous infusion in my system.
And immediately, I had no idea what it was.
I was terrified.
my heart began to race i started vomit and defecated urinated sweating
rolled around the floor at first the indians thought it was a layer of
coming about this no i don't want to admit with bond there this is a great
place to hang the whole audience up
here's some relevant bumper music and we'll be right back from the high
desert this is close to close to him i guess peter dormant editor-in-chief of high times
story on the other side of the great you're going to work well so i'm going to talk about
featuring a replay of post-apocalyptic from january twelve nineteen ninety eight
the the
the presentable somewhere in time Tonight's program originally aired January 12, 1998.
Peter Gorman is my guest.
He's editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine, and we're going to get phone lines open here in just a very few moments.
So if you have a question for Peter, now would be a good time.
Thank you.
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Now, we take you back to the night of January 12th, 1998, on Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Alright, we're gonna finish this story, and then we're going to go to the phones.
Uh, Peter, so they scratched you, they put this stuff on you, Uh, you proceeded to sort of, uh, wet your pants and so forth, which I would too, not knowing what they had just given you.
You know, maybe on your way toward a serious acid trip or something.
Who knows?
Or even worse.
And what happened?
Well, uh, 15 or so minutes later, I, I, my heart started to beat fast and faster and faster and I thought, okay, I'm going to explode and this is all over and I don't know how to undo this.
And, uh, instead, 15 minutes later, when I, my heartbeat I was still fast, but kind of leveled off.
I was ecstatic and fell into a sleep.
I imagined that I was carried, because I didn't walk, to a hammock.
I woke up a couple of hours later and heard a conversation.
I thought someone was in the platform hut with me.
In fact, I was alone.
The conversation that I heard might have been 20 yards away, two people speaking in a normal voice.
It occurred to me that I could hear everything.
And suddenly I felt strong.
And I felt big.
And, uh, actually what had happened was I had been zapped with the most bioactive substance ever discovered on the planet.
What was it?
Which is this frog sweat, sapo, is how they described it.
The stuff we were talking about?
Yeah, this is just the goo from a frog, gently scraped.
It's the, actually, kind of the protection that some tree, this particular tree frog had against Uh, constrictor snakes who might swallow it and the frog would, you know, get frightened and pass this material out.
And the snake then presumably spits the frog out rather than crushing it.
And, uh, in the human body, almost, well, there were 73 separate proteins that interact with the human body and the human body deals with them as if they were produced by itself, including A naturally occurring opioid, which is very similar to opium, from which morphine is derived, which now has hit the news last week with a similar sweat from a different frog, but a very similar frog, as a potential for an analgesic that would be much, much more potent than morphine.
Non-addictive, is that correct?
Non-addictive, when we say bioactive.
You mean it interacts with the body the same way as something your body itself manufactures?
You know, that brings up another question.
If we have something that is as strong or stronger, if that's even possible to imagine, than morphine, with none of the negative side effects, how will society as represented or not properly represented by government react It'll be very difficult to get a hold of.
It'll be... I mean, imagine this.
In catching the frog itself, nearly every frog you catch passes out its full supply of this venom.
I presume they will go to work on trying to synthesize... Well, they synthesize it.
You know, in the real world, someone is going to profiteer.
Someone is going to black market.
But nothing changes.
I mean, you know, if we're realistic human beings, somebody wants to try it.
Somebody has access to it.
You can have it, whether it's bathtub gin, you can buy whatever you like at a liquor store now.
And yet still people are, you know, distilling spirits here and there.
Right.
And I mean, you can buy anything you've got the money for.
Exactly.
So somebody's going to put something like this on the market, but it's going to be for a very small crowd.
And it's going to be for, you know, probably people who are into those experiments, and those are the people who tend to get away with it anyway.
They're, you know, the moneyed people, the privileged.
Sure, sure.
But this is, no, this is certainly not something that's going to hit the streets.
I just can't imagine it.
And in fact, if you want to build up a clientele for a drug, one of the best ways to build it up is to supply a drug for which that clientele has a need tomorrow.
You wouldn't want to give them a drug for which they would say, never mind.
That was terrific, and I don't need to do that again.
I have no desire to.
I follow you.
One other angle, and then we'll definitely go to the phones, and that is this.
There's a big battle going on in this country.
Medical doctors are loathe to treat people who are in severe pain and or even dying with a fatal disease.
With sufficient amounts of narcotics that are presently available to keep them from pain.
In other words, we have thousands of people in this country who are dying very painful deaths when it need not be.
And it's because physicians are afraid of the DEA.
The DEA monitors what they write in terms of prescriptions, and if it surpasses their little numbers, That say, let's go investigate this guy.
The doctor is in trouble.
The net result is a lot of people who are dying very painful deaths, cannot get the drugs that they need, and that is a crime.
Right.
Well, no question about it.
I mean, this is... But I hope that this is a ten-year bump in the human heart, as opposed to a permanent bump.
I hope that, you know, fear of an agency like that Uh, you know, quickly de-escalates.
And I think that the doctors themselves, as well as patient groups around the country, have been vocal enough that, uh, you know, it's certainly my hope, but it's almost my expectation that this will pass soon.
Well, 60 Minutes did quite a piece on it.
And after they did it, I actually went out and asked a few doctors I know, and I know quite a few, And they said, you're damn right it's that way.
You better believe it's that way.
I would write a lot more prescriptions to stop pain if it were not for my fear of the DEA.
Well, no question.
I had a tooth pulled recently, and it was quite painful.
And the guy says, get Tylenol.
I said, well, give me something.
And he said, I can't.
I said, well, come on.
I had a tooth pulled.
You've got stitches all over my mouth.
So at the moment, yeah.
I'm just hoping that it's a glitch and that, you know, three more years down the line, we can put it behind us and let doctors be doctors.
They spend a lot of money, a lot of time, and we spend a lot of time subsidizing their medical schools to make sure they're intelligent about what they're doing.
And at some point, you've got to let go of the child's hand and say, we've trained you as best we can.
We trust you.
All right.
Let's try some phone calls.
First time caller online.
Can I give a plug before we do?
Oh, yeah, sure.
Plug anything you want.
A quick plug.
For the first time, and probably the only time I've agreed with a company as long as I'm going to be in Peru for a year.
I've been asked before, and I've always said no, but as long as I'm going to be there, okay.
I'll take some people out for in and around Iquitos, and I think that's a terrific trip.
And for anybody who happens to be listening, I've got a couple of weeks in March, April, and then in August with a few slots open.
And the company's called Axiom.
And they've got a free phone line at 888-777-5981.
Oh, so people have to grab paper and pencil and so forth.
That number again?
Okay, for Axiom, 888-777-5981.
And you take people down to Peru?
I've never done it before.
It's going to be the first time.
What are you going to do with them down there?
You know, I think the jungle is a fascinating spot, and I'm going to take them from Iquitos, smack in the middle of Peru's Amazon, out up the headwaters of the Amazon to a couple of lovely lakes for a few days, bring them back, let them clean up, take them out in a different direction for three or four nights of stomping through the jungle and setting up in the middle of nowhere where we can, you know, watch monkeys come over head at night and go night fishing in canoes, and then After we clean up the third go-round, I'll take them out and teach them how to collect plants and how to, you know, some of the medical plants and, you know, potential medical plants.
Teach people how to do some collecting out there.
I recently saw an anaconda.
There's none of that going on, right?
I mean, none of your group is liable to be eaten by a giant snake or anything.
Man, you know, I've been looking for 15 years for an anaconda bigger than 20 feet.
I just can't find one.
No, I'm not going to take people out to where they're going to, you know, At Deathly Hill, there is one other phone number, which is my own voicemail.
Really?
Do you want to?
It's going to load up.
2-1-2.
3-8-7.
3-8-7.
0-7-6-9.
0-7-6-9.
And it's... Yeah.
Okay, that was the plug.
And then they would be calling... Wait a minute.
They'd be calling the second number for the same reason?
Yeah.
To possibly go along with you?
Or if they called the first number and talked about what it might be and they wanted to See what I sounded like?
Yeah.
See if I sound like a reasonable human being?
In that way, that's something I would get back to them on and be able to discuss, you know, what's in the trip beyond, you know, what would appear in a brochure.
Okay.
2-1-2-3-8-7-0-7-6-9.
Now, to the phones.
First time caller line, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Good morning.
Good morning, Art.
Where are you?
I'm in Northern California.
Okay.
And my situation is...
That I'm a registered nurse, although I am a registered nurse.
I've not been working for the last four years.
I've been disabled and I'm still on disability.
The problem that I'm facing is that my doctor has prescribed marijuana for me.
I'm 48 years old.
I'm having to take the crash course on how to smoke marijuana for the first time at 48.
He prescribed it in connection with what?
A very unique set of circumstances in the sense that I have a bone infection.
Alright, so for medical reasons.
Medical reasons.
Anyway, it's a real complicated situation, but the bottom line of the situation is that without it, I was losing weight to the point where I'm 5'6 and I weigh 104 pounds and I was down to 85 pounds.
Yeah, it's hard.
Alright, so for Appetite, what is your question?
Okay, my question is, the problem is obtaining the marijuana in the first place.
I don't know about History Corners, but I'm 48 years old and I don't have a lot of friends and I don't have a lot of people that I know Who have access to marijuana?
Alright, it is a good question.
Peter, I think that they have started some marijuana clubs in California or something.
Now, maybe they're shut down.
I don't know what the current status is.
What would you say to her?
Well, despite at the moment there being a kind of a political football out there with the medical marijuana buyers clubs in California, I would say that if If this woman were to look in the alternative papers in San Francisco or Mendocino County, she's going to find the address or specific names of any one of near two dozen buyers clubs in California.
Any of which can steer her to someone who might be supplying marijuana for medical purposes in her area.
Alright, good answer.
She's lucky to be in California where that is possible.
Wild Card Line, you're on air with Peter Gorman.
I'm James from Wisconsin.
I'm calling to talk about what we can do to keep some of these smaller governments, like local governments, from cracking down too hard on people.
Um, one of my close friends was arrested, um, about a year ago.
I lived with him, and they rented our house.
Well, since then, I've been, like, stalked almost every couple of weeks.
Someone coming to my door from the local police department asking to buy marijuana or something.
And my house has been raided twice since.
Um, do you have any ideas about what we could do to Stop this kind of thing from happening.
All right, this sounds like the reason you're taking a year off, Peter, but go ahead.
Well, I would say, you know, any social movement needs bodies and the bodies have to come from, you know, from all of us.
So if you're feeling isolated, I would recommend that you call up National Normal And find out if there's a normal chapter in your neck of the woods or any other activist chapter in your neck of the woods.
And if there isn't, you might find out how to start one.
And you might be very surprised.
Those local police department might be visiting 20 people in your neighborhood every couple of weeks.
And if the 20 of you got together and began to say, this is not fair.
Whatever we, if we were arrested in the past, that's passed.
Continued harassment is not part of the deal.
If we went to jail, we went to jail.
Or if we were exonerated, we were exonerated.
So your real answer is political power?
Yeah, and it only comes in groups.
One at a time doesn't work.
So you've got to find out who else is being harassed and join with them, and then you've got a voice.
All right, a logical answer.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Where are you, please?
I'm in Kentucky.
Kentucky, all right.
Yes, what is your first name?
Tina.
Okay, go right ahead.
I was just wondering, how much is a year's subscription, and what's the phone number if you wanted to order the magazine?
Well, I hate to tell you, I don't have a subscription number right off the bat.
We're in New York City, and we're about 30 bucks for a year's subscription.
See, that's why they're giving you a year off.
Exactly.
You know what?
If you called my voicemail, the same number I gave out, You nailed it.
That's 212-387-0769.
By the way, I heard that somebody mentioned me in your magazine.
I don't know what it was in connection with or anything, but I know I was mentioned.
I think it was a piece.
When we say voices of counterculture, we don't just mean marijuana.
We had a story recently by a lovely writer, Leslie Stackle.
Is anybody out there listening?
It was about the state of talk radio.
Oh, no kidding!
And I believe you were mentioned in that piece as one of a handful of people who actually have good syndication, who are not to the right of center.
But in the same way, you spoke before about the environment, and that's one of our key issues every couple of months.
I'm probably more of a libertarian than I am anything else, to be honest with you.
don't seem so countercultural now because they are pretty environmental
movement is part and parcel of of our life we've got a separate our garbage in
but uh... that remains a you know a key topic so i'm i'm probably more of a
libertarian than i am anything else uh...
to be honest with you i used to have fairly conservative leanings
in some areas socially pretty liberal and then all of that sort of coalesced and i
sort of became more cynical about the government and that sort of turned me
into a libertarian Thank you.
It does many people, yeah.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Where are you, please?
I'm in California.
Okay.
I was wanting to know what Peter's views on hallucinogens are, and being as the strengths of them are going higher and higher, and the ages of children using them are going lower and lower, and I was also wondering I watch the news a lot, and every time they talk about drug traffic, the word control comes up.
The control of the drug traffic.
Do you think the government has anything to do with how much comes in, and if they're making a profit off of it?
All right.
Well, hallucinogens.
The reality is, the strength of hallucinogens is not up and up, it's down and down and down.
In my day, LSD, the primary hallucinogen, that's non-organic.
Mushrooms have not changed, right?
Peyote has not changed.
San Pedro cactus hasn't changed.
So we're talking about synthetics.
That primarily is going to be LSD.
In my day, one hit would have been what they call 350 micrograms.
Today, 50 micrograms is considered a nice, potent hit.
So you have to eat seven.
Please forget it.
Somebody might be listening.
Bottom line is you disagree on the first part of the question.
Listen, we're at a break point again.
Can you do one more hour?
Yeah, you got it in you?
Is your wife okay?
I do five hours.
I know, but you weren't saying you might say it.
Well, I don't know.
I'm monitoring by the break, Peter, so we'll see.
If you've got it, I've got it.
Peter Gorman is my guest.
This is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from January 12, 1998.
This is a presentation of the Coast to Coast AMX-CX-2.
I'm a wild man's thing, holding full of love and shame.
I am a man's game, falling in love with you.
Shall I stay, or let this be just pain?
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12th, 1998.
My guest is Peter Gorman.
He's editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine.
and we'll get back to him and uh... trying to uh... trying to uh... play
pretty heavily into the phones this power okay so you've got stream link for full access to coast to
coast am dot com you've downloaded the apple iphone app to take it all with
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Yes, you are!
It's the one and only After Dark magazine.
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one triple eight two six one six three nine two it's thirty nine ninety five
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dot com that's w w w dot coast to coast a m dot com here's what you missed on coast to coast a m with george
norrie Are you convinced that there are governments above governments?
Governments that we don't vote for?
Governments that are controlling presidents or prime ministers or leaders of other nations?
There's no doubt there were two governments.
There's the provisional government and the permanent government.
And that every once in a while you have a charade called an election.
Presidents come and go, but they're there, and they just keep on keeping on, as it were.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from January 12th, 1998.
Music Back now to Peter Gorman, the lucky duck.
He's about to take a year off and go to Prua.
A year off.
Lucky you, Peter.
Yeah.
I mean really lucky you.
Who gets to take a year off?
I'll be working down there, but it's a year out of the office.
That's right, it sure is.
You know, something about Peru, my hair curls, my skin gets good and dark, I lose those ten pounds, and I start to look like a real, you know, How long does it last?
I've never done a year, but two months last two months.
Three months last three.
Does it really?
Yeah.
I'm sure you come back with a whole different attitude.
I'm fresh and ready for a fight.
How long does it last?
I've never done a year, but two months last two months.
Three months last three.
Does it really?
Yeah.
Once I'm past the two month line, it's a real change.
I'm excited.
I'm going to be renting my sister-in-law's riverboat, one of the biggest riverboats in all of Peruvian Amazonia.
About 120 feet long and 30 feet wide with three decks.
I'm going to do some plant collecting out there and some fossil collecting and some artifact collecting and play with my kids.
I think I'll have a good time.
I know.
I wish I could go.
All right, here we go.
I promised them a phone action this hour, so it's here.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Where are you, please?
Yeah, I'm in California.
This is Shadow Raven.
And I was wondering, somebody called earlier, and they were talking about hallucinogens, how they're getting stronger.
I've heard just a little bit about something called Snowflake.
And from what I heard about it, It's pretty darn strong.
I was wondering if you knew anything about it.
Yeah, I never heard of it.
Peter?
Not... I mean, I want to say no and yes.
No, in that it's not a common name, but best of my knowledge, that's essentially the name for bath tub PCP.
Oh.
Yeah, I mean, if people start to include PCP or ketamine, you know, these are... I don't know, I mean, why anyone would take A horse, you know, something to put a horse to sleep.
Yeah.
And look for enlightenment in that.
Well, there is no enlightenment in that.
It just can't be, as opposed to communing with the natural world by eating a mushroom or two, given it's the right set, the right setting, that you're mentally prepared, that you're with the right person.
And I don't know that you actually get enlightenment from any of them, but I think you can glimpse That you can then, without the influence of any substance, work towards.
And I think glimpsing something that you can then work towards is a very healthy thing for expanding your presence here on the planet in a gentle and meaningful way.
Alright.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hi.
Hi, this is Jason.
Jason, I can barely hear you.
Sorry, this is Jason from Minneapolis.
I can still barely hear you.
You're going to have to yell at us right into the phone, Jason.
So if you have a question, go ahead.
This is Jason from Minneapolis.
I got that.
Go ahead.
My question is, I've been smoking pot since the seventh grade.
And basically when I was smoking it, I couldn't remember my dreams.
And then I got a job and they tested you for drugs.
Yes.
I quit smoking.
Right.
And now I can actually remember them.
Good.
So, I don't know, Peter, does that mean that short-term memory loss associated with marijuana smoking extends itself to dreams as well?
No, but I think, excuse me, no, and if we had time I'd debate you on short-term memory loss.
I think what's learned under the influence of cannabis is recalled under the influence of cannabis better.
So I would debate that point.
I do think anybody who's been smoking since 7th grade ought to take a break.
What the heck?
You know what I mean?
First.
And secondly, I think if you go to bed under the influence of anything and put yourself in a very deep sleep, you're going to have a difficult time recalling your dreams.
So I think it's probably simply a product of your sleep is not quite as... it's not being enforced as deeply.
I mean, that's just a supposition on my part, but by all means, take a break.
Stay clean for a couple of years.
You know, why not?
All right.
Interesting advice.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hello.
Hello, Art Bell?
Yes, sir.
Yes, this is Bob from Ashland, Oregon.
Hi, Bob.
Hi.
I wanted to tell you, I worked in the studio business 20 years, and you are my idol.
You are my idol.
Thank you.
You're a great guy.
Peter Gorman, my wife and I had our 20th anniversary, and we had the greatest time at the 96th Cannabis Cup.
Thanks for coming.
It was absolutely wonderful.
We've smoked for about 25 years, raised a family, had jobs, just regular normal people.
We've enjoyed your magazine and everything about it.
We love it.
of it. The question to you, sir, would be what kind of red tape would we have to go
through to try to get a CBC here in Southern Oregon?
Okay, this, Bob, right?
Yes, sir.
Yeah, okay. Bob is asking, CBC, for those who don't know, is a cannabis buyers club.
And that basically in California, it's become a popular term, what it means is people are willing to risk going to jail to grow marijuana to be made available to people who need it medically.
Right.
And San Francisco's got the largest, but throughout California and in New York and in fact throughout the country, some growers are willing to make part of their harvest available free or inexpensively.
To people who need it for illnesses.
All anyone needs to do is be willing to go to jail for 20 years.
It's a horrible thing.
What would someone need to do to get one open?
The reality is, if you opened one, the minute you begin to distribute, the minute you begin to plant marijuana for distribution, you are subject to federal conspiracy laws.
You're subject to intent to distribute.
And you know, in some states, that'll get you life imprisonment.
On the federal level, if they decide to nail you with it, They'll probably threaten you with it if they know it's for a legitimate buyer's club, and then say, well, on the other hand, if you give us all the property you and everyone you know has, we won't put you in jail for the rest of your life.
And, of course, you're going to end up giving up your property.
I hate to say it, but I don't recommend opening one.
And that's the price.
You've got to be willing to pay that price.
That's a very high price.
Now, again, there was a 60 Minutes, I'm sure it was, story a short time ago about Vancouver.
And apparently there's a gigantic storefront operation in Vancouver, B.C.
selling marijuana just as openly as you please.
And they went around and interviewed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and others about this store in downtown Vancouver.
I ought to interview the guy one of these days, as a matter of fact.
Fascinating guy, Mark Emery.
Oh, you know him?
Oh, sure.
Okay, and they're not touching them up there, and the attitude of most of the cops is, look, I have better things to do with my time.
If they want to do this down in the U.S.
and they want to bust people and put a bunch of users and sellers into jail, fine, let them do it down there, but we're not going to do it up here.
And so far, that's the attitude.
Now, do you think that's going to hold, or do you think the Canadian government Federal government is going to step in and squash this guy like a bug.
A couple of minor points.
One, fellows Mark Emery and he was also somebody who flaunted their book selling laws.
There's not quite freedom of speech up there in that a magazine like High Times was illegal until three years ago or so.
Really?
He nonetheless would buy 500 of them every month and make sure they got distributed.
So he is somebody who is willing to put it on the line.
Now, he was arrested two years ago at his store after a front page story in the Wall Street Journal selling seeds and saying, I'm making a mint and I'm not being touched because I pay taxes.
Well, that was an embarrassment.
I mean, if you're going to embarrass the police, you're going to pay the price, even if they're being nice to you.
Right.
So they confiscated all of his books, all of his records and all of his supplies and Maybe I would guess a quarter or a half million dollars, and he now still faces criminal trial at some point, up to 20 years in jail.
Nonetheless, he reopened, and he reopened, among other things, a lovely cannabis cafe.
He doesn't sell marijuana in the cafe.
He does have the means to smoke it in the cafe, and there probably are people nearby on the street who will make it available to you.
And in the cafe, he permits smoking, but he's not actually selling marijuana.
He sells seeds and some hydroponic equipment.
He's got three or four stores up there.
That would be enough for them to get him if they wanted to.
And he was busted two weeks ago?
Two weeks ago.
The police did not take any cannabis, but they did take, again, they took a great deal of grow lights and books.
Oh, I guess he had just shown up on one too many programs again, and a couple of front-page stories about his operation, and somebody gave the order, and, you know, the Royal Mounties came in and said, well, we're going to confiscate all your stuff.
But they only arrested people on previous warrants, and that was one or two people in a public demonstration against the police action.
They did not arrest Mark for trafficking this time around.
What's your view about the Canadian attitude toward all of this versus the U.S.
attitude now?
Well, with few exceptions, the only country, I mean, you know, if we want to talk about some of Southeast Asia, Malaysia, for instance, where there are a lot of them, cut your head off.
Most of the countries around the world that I've visited really don't care.
I mean, in almost every country there is a tradition of cannabis use among at least certain peoples.
Um, you know, you think of India, and you think of, you know, Hindu sects, and Sharas, and Suresh.
This is part of the culture.
So, if it weren't for the United States, it wouldn't be considered a problem anywhere.
And the Canadians, I think, fall into a category where there might not be traditional use, but it was never a problem.
They don't view it as a problem, and it's a problem only because You know, there's the occasional elbow from the U.S.
saying, come on, come on, don't embarrass us here.
Well, I was living in Alaska, Peter, actually broadcasting on KENI, my affiliate now in Anchorage, when the news wire went ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and at five dings, I believe, and it was a bulletin, and the Alaskan Supreme Court had just legalized small amounts of marijuana for personal use, I think up to two ounces, And they legalized the growing of small amounts of marijuana for personal use.
Now, that lasted for a while until the big drug war years came along, and then a bunch of people from Washington went up to Alaska and convinced, with probably tremendous pressures that we can barely understand, the Alaskan legislature to turn it all around.
And they, again, made marijuana illegal.
Right.
But for quite a period of time, marijuana was quite legal to grow and to use, and very few people that I know of, in fact none, died, nor went crazy, nor raped, or pillaged, nor plundered.
So it was a pretty good experiment while it lasted.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hi.
Hey, Art and Peter.
This is Alon in Houston.
Houston, all right.
Yes.
I relented Vietnam death.
I have, if I may, two quick opinions.
One on Vietnam, one on marijuana, and one question.
In Vietnam, we intervened in a civil war because of a popular belief that communism was a monolithic giant.
I believe any empire will break up eventually if it gets too big.
Watch for Microsoft to do that.
And on the drugs, I do believe along with you that we should legalize the drugs and then try to control them and educate people about their use.
I disagree though that Do you know of any, Peter?
is not a drug because by definition I believe any substance that alters the body chemistry
is technically a drug even tea or coffee you know but anyway here's my question is anyone
raising endangered frogs in tropical greenhouses stateside?
Do you know of any Peter? I know a couple of clandestine operations but not their locations.
Please.
In fact, the frog that I was involved with, the Phyllobates bicolor, was collected by a French firm and has reproduced very well over there.
So somebody in France is actively working on, not the Epibates, which you read about last week, but the Phyllobates in France.
And I imagine that the pharmaceutical company working with Epibates is also I'm guessing here.
But to ensure supply, it's very expensive to send Peter Gorman out and say, can you get 10 of these?
So I imagine it's less expensive to say, let's pay once, bring 20 back, we'll try to mate them.
And although I didn't read that they're doing that, I presume they are.
For most of the species in the world, frogs or otherwise, no, most species in the world that go extinct are going extinct from loss of habitat.
Which means it becomes very difficult to raise them in captivity with any great success.
And ultraviolet appears to be doing a job on frogs.
As a matter of fact, a lot of frog eggs are simply dying.
They're amazed at how many are dying because of the increased ultraviolet.
Right.
All right.
First time caller line, you are on the air with Peter Gorman.
Where are you, please?
I'm in Wisconsin.
My name is Dan.
Okay, Dan, you're going to have to speak up good and loud.
Sure.
I had a question first for you, Art.
You said that you agreed with the legalization of marijuana?
Either decriminalization or legalization, yes.
I think it should be separated from the heart of drugs.
I've held that position for about ten years.
Well, tell me, do you listen to your own commercials?
I do.
You have the drug Free America on.
No, that's being run by your local station.
Oh, it is?
Yeah.
Okay, well, in that case, I just want to tell you that it's really kind of hilarious to listen to that on your show.
I can imagine.
Well, that's the way it goes.
I'd like to hear some facts from Peter about Drug Free America, Partnership for Drug Free America, where they get funded, and things like that.
All right.
A couple of people investigated some years ago.
First Time Callers, Area 702-727-1222.
Who wrote in The Nation, probably seven years ago now, and I don't want to swear the same sponsors are the same sponsors, but at the time, pharmaceutical houses, tobacco companies, and alcohol companies were among the primary sponsors.
These are drug producers, so, you know, it's One drug dealer looking at cornering the market.
And I'll tell you, although I know it well, I probably can't even say it in the air, but if I were a cartel member, I know where I would invest my money to keep my profits up.
I've never heard that connected with them, but listen, I'm not anti-education.
I wish we had legit education for everybody about these substances.
I don't believe You know, drugs are for everybody.
Just the same way I don't believe caffeine or chocolate is for everybody.
It just isn't.
Some people can't handle chocolate.
They're going to get obese and die.
And some people are going to misuse heroin and die.
Some people are going to smoke marijuana at 5 o'clock in the morning and not learn a damn thing at school or have a lousy day in the job.
Hey, it's not for everybody.
All right.
All right, Peter.
I just don't like them all going to jail for their use of these things.
I hear that.
All right.
Peter Gorman is my guest, editor-in-chief of High Times Magazine.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12th, 1998.
This is a cover of the song, Coast to Coast.
Coast to Coast is a cover of the song, Coast to Coast.
It's a cover of the song, Coast to Coast.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from January 12, 1998.
I'm going to have to get Mr. Norman back online.
We just had sort of a telephone accident here.
Now we take you back to the night of January 12, 1998 on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Well, alright, uh, just in the nick of time...
I believe that we have Peter Gorman back on the line.
Sorry about that, Peter.
That was my error.
Are you there?
Yes, I am.
Good.
We just came out of the commercial break, so we didn't lose anything.
We're going to go back to the phone lines.
Can I do one thing that I forgot to do?
Of course.
Real brief.
I forgot to mention that when you asked before, what am I going to be doing down in the jungle, one of the key things regarding the frogs Some of the Matsus Indians, the jungle, and the loss of jungle is going to be documented by terrific documentary filmmaker Larry LaValle.
He's been with me twice down there.
He's walked across essentially 150 miles of jungle with me, and he was with me the first time we ever collected the Phylum of Dusa Frog, and I've got him back!
I've got him making a film this time around, so I feel terrific about it, and it's certainly one of the things that we'll be doing.
Boy, you're going to have fun.
We're going to have a gas.
All right, Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Good morning.
Good morning, Art.
This is David from Sacramento.
Hi, Peter.
I was wondering if you're aware of what's going on with the marijuana clubs in Northern California politically with the feds.
Well, what's happened recently was, you know, when the law went into effect, There's been a lot of confusion out there in terms of what's a legitimate club, what's not a legitimate club, how do we monitor these clubs, if it's legal to be a caregiver for someone, is it still legal to be a caregiver for fifty people or a hundred people that you don't know.
And so recently, recently the Feds have said, recently the Feds have filed a civil suit Close down the buyers clubs, but they are not going to actively arrest people.
So currently, I think things are status quo with some bluster from the feds, and I won't be surprised if some of the clubs do actually get closed down just to test the waters on that.
On the other hand, I'd be very surprised if they come under too much fire or if they all come under some fire, because I think the people of California spoke And I don't know that the federal government wants to get into a state versus federal law argument.
Alright, um, East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Good morning, where are you please?
Yeah, uh, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Okay, you're on a cellular phone and you're not very legible.
Okay, uh, I'll try my best.
Uh, if you can understand me... Barely.
You're in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I got that.
Do you have a question?
No, that's not going to work.
He just lost his cellular connection too bad.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hello.
Hello.
Where are you, sir?
In Depot Bay, Oregon, a hundred miles south of Portland.
Okay, turn your radio off.
I got it.
Good.
Go right ahead.
This is Art Bell?
Yep.
Oh, hi, Art.
This is Doug, the National Militiaman from Depot Bay.
I thought I'd throw that in.
You know what I think?
Our problem isn't really drugs as much as it is crime.
And either legalize it or cut down on crime if we can cut down on this crime.
That's what I think the problem is.
And I'm really sorry about your wife.
I feel bad about that.
My girlfriend, Otika, got burned on the face, so we're going to have enough time for that.
That's all I've got to say, and I really enjoy your show.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for the call.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hi.
Yes, Art Bell.
This is Carl from Fairbanks, Alaska.
Fairbanks.
Oh, way up there.
How cold is it?
That's about 5 below right now.
5 below, that's not bad.
No, no, it's not bad for this time of year.
I appreciate your show.
My grandma is 80 years old and she listens to you every night.
Every night, that is, and got me listening to you.
Hi, Grandma!
Alright, well I've got a guest, sir.
Do you have a question for my guest?
You bet.
I would like to know the laws here in Fairbanks, Alaska and Alaska.
You know, there's been a lot of marijuana growers get busted and there's been always in the paper, even yesterday, there's no arrest made.
Comment on that or, you know, we're supposed to have a re-vote on that because it didn't win by a majority of the vote.
Now you're saying there are a lot of people busted but not arrested?
Right.
They'll confiscate their equipment or whatever and even in the papers, yesterday paper, 60 plants, marijuana growing operation, no arrest made.
Really?
No kidding?
Here's the thing, I thought that because it's a little I was just going to let it slide, but the re-crim in Alaska, in fact, what happened was, when the Alaskans voted for decriminalization and personal possession legality in Alaska, that became part of the state constitution.
When Dan Quayle went to Alaska, and along with a lot of other federal bureaucrats, to get it re-criminalized, the legislature did that.
But it never did get changed in the Alaskan State Constitution.
So that it remains federally illegal to even have small amounts in Alaska.
It's now a crime that you can get it confiscated.
And for buying and selling, obviously, you can get arrested.
The personal possession is going to be another couple of years before a Supreme Court decision is reached which would either change the law in the Constitution Or stick with what they've got.
So you're in a gray area now, where you've got overlapping laws and ordinances.
So I'm not surprised that, for a small personal amount, people are losing their equipment and losing their products, but they're not getting arrested.
So people need to get together and reunite.
Absolutely.
And feel a lot like it was.
Absolutely.
All right, sir.
There you are.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, and take care.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Where are you, please?
This is Andy in Anderson.
Anderson, California.
Yeah, I read High Times a hundred years ago.
It feels that way, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
I read about some pipe down in South America somewhere where you blow into it and get high.
I was just wondering if it was just one of those little articles in the magazine.
Is this where somebody's on the other end?
Well, I guess it was a piece I did about 14 years ago about a substance called Nunu.
And the Yanomami would call it Yopo.
And it is a snuff generally made with some quite active leaves mixed with Wild tobacco, which is very potent.
Tobacco rustica.
Is this the stuff you blow up somebody's nose?
Yeah.
That's right.
You know what?
I'll tell you what.
I collected that for the American Museum of Natural History, and it's in permanent display over there in the beautiful new Hall of South American Peoples.
The equipment used to make it, as well as to use it, as well as the snuff itself.
It's a very potent substance for communing with the spirit world, for, let's say, breaching the dimensional barrier, if you happen to believe there are some.
And if you don't, it's a very powerful tool for communing with deep parts of yourself.
Do you believe that, Peter?
That there are multi-dimensions?
Well, I think there's life in everything.
And do I know how to talk to a flower?
No.
But do I believe a flower's got, you know, some spirit or, you know what I mean?
Is it living?
Yeah.
And if it's living, I think it's got spirit.
And so if it's got spirit, I should be able to communicate with it.
I happen to be kind of an earthbound human.
I've got a lot of good things going for me, but I don't normally know how to do that communication.
So I think some of these things, some substances, particularly natural substances, seem to aid you to relaxing whatever it is that we hold up
that helps us to be human and protect ourselves day to day, but also keep us from
interacting on other levels with some of these things.
I believe not only in different dimensions of a sort, but particularly in the potential
accessing of the spirits of other living things.
Okay.
Not so in New York, but in fact when I'm down in the jungle it seems very ordinary.
These are the Rockies.
You're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hi.
Hi there.
This is Jeff from Carbondale, Illinois.
Okay.
Hi.
Yeah, Art.
A long-time listener.
I love your show.
Thank you.
And I have a question for your guest.
Well, first, I have a comment about the Vancouver shop.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Listen, I'd rather not give out web addresses on the air, unless I've checked them out first, because I've had a couple of bad experiences with XXX stuff.
So, I'm sure yours is fine.
Not a problem.
I'll just let you know that there is a website for that place on the internet.
I'm sure there is.
And I also have a question for you guys about the legalization of marijuana.
Do you think sometime within the near future, at the millennium coming up, That we'll have legalization.
After the millennium, Peter?
My feeling is, similar to getting action on AIDS, similar to ending the Vietnam War, you need a critical mass.
Politicians follow, they don't lead as a rule, and I think they're going to have to be led by the nose, and we're going to finally have to say, there are so many grandmas and moms and dads on the line, on those front lines, that the politicians say we'll risk more votes not going for it than we do by maintaining the status quo.
Whether we're close enough to that, whether we've educated enough people, I just don't know.
I mean, it seems like it's around the corner, but on the other hand, the corner seems sometimes like far, far away.
He's to the Rockies.
You're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Good morning.
Good morning, Peter.
Where are you, sir?
I'm in Massachusetts.
All right.
Frenchy in Massachusetts.
Okay.
uh... peter i'd like to know uh...
what massachusetts and is on the legalization of for marijuana and uh...
on the uh...
if somebody has uh... and uh... second question would be if somebody is
clinically depressed and uh... gets uh...
uh... described uh...
prozac uh... do you think uh... this could help the person like
that thank you Well, you're not a doctor, right?
No, no, no.
I'm not going to.
Trust me.
I do.
On the initial point, Massachusetts, like everywhere else in the country, with the exception of California and Arizona, cannabis remains illegal for any and all uses, including medical.
On the other hand, Massachusetts has a very active activist group called MassCan.
They put on a big Boston rally that draws about 60,000 people every fall, and they are a terrific bunch of educators.
So, while it remains illegal, if you wanted to hook up and you're in Massachusetts, MassCan is a knockout organization.
And somewhere in high times, you'd find on a legalized page, a re-legalized page, you'd find an address.
To contact them.
On the other thing, if a doctor prescribes something and he's your doctor and you trust him, I'm not going to comment.
Does High Times review prescription drugs like Prozac and others like that?
We've done stories, but we don't review them in that we're not scientific or we're not part of the scientific literature out there.
On the other hand, For instance, if a drug, a pharmaceutical company, were to suddenly say, we think 44% of all the children in America are out of hand and depressed, so we're going to make chewable children's varieties, then we would certainly comment on that as a newsworthy story.
I mean, without naming names, there are a couple of these substances, pharmaceuticals, which are being marketed very heavily to children.
And whereas three years ago, all of our kids seemed fairly normal, now, and in the next couple of years, we're going to find out that they all should be on medication for life, which is going to make some pharmaceutical company a lot of money.
Yep.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Hello, where are you please?
Hi, this is Howard Collier from KHBH Honolulu.
Honolulu?
Yeah, yeah.
And then there is this A&E program called, I think it's the Curse of the Cocaine Mummies.
This German Toxologist looked into these mummies and found traces of tobacco, cocaine, and hashish in their hairs.
This was verified by Rosalie David of the Manchester Museum, keeper of Egyptology.
Is this a good thing to know for your show, since it mixes drugs with Egyptology?
I'm not surprised.
I suppose as long as there have been people walking the face of the earth, they have found things to eat that seem to change the way they feel.
Fair comment, Peter?
Fair comment.
Whether or not specifically coca or cannabis was available to Egyptians, I don't know.
Well, maybe that's proof.
Who knows?
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Good morning.
Where are you, please?
This is John from Houston.
Hi, John.
A couple questions about the magazine.
One, it's kind of strange after all these years the magazine's been around that a lot of your big supermarket chains won't carry it.
No.
Yeah, I mean, of course you're not going to find it next to Better Home and Gardens and stuff, but it's not even... It's not even next to Better Home and Gardens, I can promise.
I can imagine why a lot of supermarkets wouldn't want to carry it.
But my other question was, this might be hogwash, but I heard that That Big Brother has a way of tracking who subscribes to your magazine, and if that's true, and does that have anything to do with why you delivered in a big brown envelope?
Alright, no, that's a really, actually a really good question.
I think a lot of people worry that if they have a subscription, they're on a list somewhere.
Are they?
No.
They're on our... Your list?
Our list.
Our list has never been accessed, but I could speak until I'm blue in the face.
And a lot of people still wouldn't believe that.
But no, we do have free speech in this country, and it would be headlines if a governmental organization said, we want your subscriber list.
I mean, even the media that don't like us wouldn't stand for that.
As far as why do we deliver it in a round bag, if somebody prefers it in a see-through, that's fine.
But on the other hand, we know that in some communities, people would get singled out Or it would become the talk of the town or a postman would point it out.
And in other communities, you know, which might not be what somebody likes.
And in other communities, the postman would simply keep it.
So and get a free sub that way.
So we think a plain wrapper is the simplest way to go.
It is adult material.
It's not meant for kids.
And, you know, most other adult material of any type is going to be sent in a brown bag and we just follow that route.
All right, that's a good answer.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Peter Gorman.
Good morning.
Hi.
Where are you?
San Diego.
Oh, good.
All right.
Should I turn my radio down?
You should turn it off.
Turn it off?
Okay.
I have a couple questions for Mr. Gorman.
Okay.
The first is, I've read some books about Indian tribes in South America that drink a type of tea.
I'm not sure how to pronounce it because I've only read it in books.
Alaska.
Yeah, I wonder if he's ever...
Heard of that when you've done it or experienced it?
Boy, I've certainly heard of it.
What do you know about it?
I've done it a number of times.
Give them, like, an empathic, shape-shifting experience?
Ayahuasca, made by the right person, at the right time, in the right place, is, on the one hand, it's a purgative, a physical purgative, so it's a curative.
On another hand, it is the shortest distance between here and any other planes.
That you need to access is low key in that you are not feeling out of control.
You never forget who you are.
You can open your eyes and say, hey, I'm just sitting here on somebody's platform.
On the other hand, it allows very easy, you know, beginners can do, as I was surprised the first time I did it, do some astral projection.
And really go places with directive, like, I want to go see a friend, I'm going to know what he's wearing, when he's wearing, or she's wearing, write a notebook in the morning, and then when you get back to town, tell him, call your friend, and you'll be surprised how often, like, huh?
Wait, you were there doing that, wearing that?
That's what I wrote down, I saw you!
So, now that would be for the beginner, but for people in a place like the jungle, where distances are great, And it might be days and days to access one friend or relative.
Something like that is become a natural medicine for, well, I've got to talk to my sister and, you know, she lives 600 miles away.
Let me go visit her and see how she's doing.
All right.
On that note, my friend, we are utterly and completely out of time.
if you wish to contact uh... peter gorman his personal voicemail is area
code two one two three eight seven
zero seven six nine
uh... there is another number of toll-free number if you'd like to uh...
inquire about going down to peru with peter it's one eight eight eight
seven seven seven It's 1-888-777-5981.
Is that correct, Peter?
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, listen.
Gee, what a pleasure, uh, to have had you on the program.
I wish we had more time.
Uh, the hours just went like that.
Thanks for having me, Art.
Take care, my friend.
Thanks a lot.
And enjoy your year off.
Oh, you bet.
You're off that lucky duck.
All right, folks, that's it.
In some markets, back with an hour of open lines.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time on Premier Radio Networks.
Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from January 12, 1998.
This is a presentation of the Coast to Coast AM concert.
I've got to tell you I've been racking my brain, hoping to find a way out.
I've had enough of this continual rain.
Changes are coming, no doubt.
It's been a too long time with no peace of mind.
And I'm ready for the time to get back You seem to want from me what I cannot give
you I feel so lonesome at times.
I have a dream about a man...
We hear Radio Networks presents Art Bell's Somewhere in Time.
Tonight's program originally aired January 12, 1998.
Good morning, everybody.
It's been a too long time with no peace of mind And I'm ready for the times to get better
Yeah, me too.
Okay, so you've got Streamlink for full access to coast2coastam.com You've downloaded the Apple iPhone app to take it all with
you on the go go and you get the daily Coast Zone email newsletter
delivered right to your But aren't you forgetting something?
Yes, you are!
It's the one and only After Dark magazine.
Coast to Coast AM puts out a monthly four-color magazine that readers have been enjoying for more than 15 years.
And each month you can read very personal editorials from me, George Norrie, interviews which covers areas that you don't hear on the air, articles from guests which are not on the internet, and relevant news stories that don't always get covered by the mainstream.
Subscribe now and cover all of your Coast to Coast AM media bases.
Call our new number at 1-888-261-6392.
That's 1-888-261-6392.
It's $39.95 for 12 monthly issues.
You can also subscribe online at www.coasttocoastam.com.
one triple eight two six one six three nine two it's thirty nine ninety five
for twelve monthly issues you can also subscribe online at coast to coast a m
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The audio subscription service of Coast to Coast AM has a new name.
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Visit coast2coastam.com to sign up today.
Now we take you back to the night of January 12, 1998 on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
www.coast2coastam.com For the last four or now five days, I have been nearly catatonic with the flu.
After reporting on the flu so widely, and there is a pandemic of the flu going on now, in many or even most parts of the country, perhaps excepting the Northeast, hospitals are at capacity.
It is said 500 people in Los Angeles have died of this flu.
As a matter of fact, KNBC Channel 4 went and interviewed somebody who got very outraged at the county.
You know, the county health people got outraged at that figure, but it is being reported that 500 have died by the wire services in Southern California, and people are dying.
This is a very serious flu, and I came down with it and had a temperature very High temperature on and off.
I took aspirin and I kept trying to knock it down.
You know, your body's natural reaction is to have a temperature and it means it's fighting a virus or something.
And so you don't want to knock it down completely, but you also don't want it to get out of control.
So I was a very, very sick person for a few days.
Now that let up on me.
I must tell you it has lessened and I'm a little bit better and that's why I'm with you this morning.
However, earlier yesterday my wife got sick and I am so sorry because for her this sort of illness is life-threatening.
She is an asthmatic and she's in the middle of a very serious asthma attack right now as a result of the flu and has a temperature as well.
So, from the frying pan into the fire.
I was the frying pan and she is the fire.
And we're monitoring this very carefully.
Take care out there.
This is a very serious flu.
Some are saying it is an Australian flu.
Some are saying it's a type A flu.
Most are saying it's flu-like symptoms and I don't think they know what the hell it is, frankly.
But I can tell you it is very, very serious and for several days I couldn't and didn't eat.
I did not sleep except pitfully for an hour or so and then I'd wake up and be sick again and just sort of sit there and all I could do is, you know, drink liquids and pray.
So I'm surprised I'm here but I'm happy I'm here and if you have an extra prayer or two you might say it for my wife because she's very ill.
And so we will sort of take the week as it comes, but this flu is what, you know, I'm calling it a flu.
I don't really know that's true.
Whatever it is, is very serious.
Take care, folks.
Here's a fact I just received.
Art, I'm a small-town cop in California.
And in fact, I'm on duty now listening to your show while on patrol and as such have not been able to quite follow everything that's been said or is being said.
The way I understand it is your current guest, editor of High Times, is advocating the legalization of marijuana and all drugs.
It amuses me, as a longtime street cop, hearing people wanting to legalize drugs.
They obviously have not encountered someone who's been up for two or three days on speed or crank or some sort of methamphetamine.
The majority of people have no idea how dangerous people under the influence of these drugs can be.
Regarding the issue of the legalization of marijuana and the California initiative, the voters of California did vote for it.
However, it goes against federal law.
You can just imagine the chaos which would ensue if state laws could go against federal laws.
As far as explaining it to your children, the simple fact that it is illegal is a more than adequate explanation.
The fact that you disagree with a certain law does not give one license to break it.
It's legal now for physicians to prescribe marijuana for medicinal reasons.
However, they will not do so for fear of losing their license to prescribe drugs.
I think if people are sincere about medicinal use of marijuana, that is the area that needs changing.
Dan in California, and Dan, I agree with you.
I think that marijuana is the area that should be worked on, and I have severe reservations about the legalization of other drugs.
But that was the position of Peter Gorman and that's just fine.
There are many who share his view.
It is an ongoing argument in this country of ours.
And from a doctor that I respect, Art, with regard to pain and drugs for same, I hear you and hear here for you You know how I feel about this from past discussions as far as I am concerned.
If your patient requires it, you prescribe it and defend your legal position if it becomes necessary.
We as MDs are supposed to help our patients.
At least that's what my oath, my brain, and my heart tell me.
Sorry, Ramona is suffering.
I hope the attack resolves quickly.
And I agree, Doctor, with you, of course.
And then one other item.
Yes, I do note.
Art, did you see CNN's report on Monday regarding the freak snowstorm in the Middle East?
Reportedly up to one foot of snow fell in Jordan and amounts in Israel that have not been seen since the beginning of the decade.
Not to mention the freezing rain problems in central Canada and the northeastern states of the US, and at 1.3 million people here without power in the province of Quebec.
There is no question the quickening is well underway.
I could not agree more, and there are other things to be said about freak snowstorms in Israel.
I will not say them now.
East of the Rockies, you are on the air.
Good morning.
Yes, hi Art.
Anyway, this camp in Oklahoma City, and I emailed you with this months ago, but I don't know if you ever saw it since you get so much email.
There is a treatment that they're working on, several places are using it, for asthma, supposedly with real good results.
It's something like 80% helium and 20% oxygen that's supposed to Knock an asthma attack, you know, almost to nothing in a very short amount of time.
Do you remember getting that email?
I do.
And I thank you.
I've had a million people send me email on possible cures for asthma.
Okay.
She is a very serious asthmatic patient and she's got it as well under control as it can be.
However, when something like this comes along, asthmatics know It immediately attacks your respiratory system, and if you have your asthma under control otherwise, believe me, when something like this comes along, you're in the fight of your life.
Right.
That's why I wanted to make sure that you at least knew of it, because, yeah, we're all rooting for her out there.
Oh, one quick question.
How many people can get a ring on any one line at a time?
Well, on any one line, Only one person.
Huh.
Well, actually, that's not quite true.
I have wildcard lines, so there would be several people there.
But generally, on other lines, like this toll-free line, the one you're on right now, just one at a time.
Huh, because back when you were doing predictions?
Yes.
There were a few times there where I got a ring, but then it got picked up with someone else.
Maybe the lines were kind of fouled up that night.
Huh.
I wouldn't know what to tell you.
I was using redial and getting alternate busy signals.
I was just kind of curious.
Anyway, like I said, we're all pulling for you out there.
Okay, I thank you for the call.
You've been our prayers.
Take care.
Yep.
Well, she can use them.
You know, when it rains, it pours.
Waiting for the times to get better, huh?
I see that Iraq is vowing to block U.N.
weapons inspectors led by an American, it says, is a spy.
But said other U.N.
inspection teams can continue their work.
It's an ex-Marine here, Captain Scott Ritter, who is being questioned.
And so, we're eventually going to get to the point where, no doubt, the UN is going to leave.
And, uh, we're going to attack Iraq.
I think we're just biding our time.
I don't know the resolution of the, uh, I haven't been keeping track, but a gunman did enter the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and he took hostages, holding for a time, I guess, trading.
And I don't know the status of that story.
Back to open lines, and let's go to the first-time caller line.
You're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Arbil.
Yes, sir.
My name is Seth, and I'm from Utah.
Utah?
Orem, Utah.
Yeah, and I... Okay, Seth, I've got a question for you.
Yeah.
What station are you listening to?
I believe it's 570.
570, because...
We got word that they moved us from K-A-L-L to 570.
Right.
And I guess that just occurred tonight, or this morning.
Yes.
I actually lived in Arizona three months ago and I couldn't find, I used to listen to you all the time, couldn't find out where you were until two days ago.
And so I've just been ecstatic, you know, finding You on the other station.
So, how well do you hear 570 in Aurum?
Very well.
It's actually much better than the other station that you just mentioned.
K-A-L-L.
Yeah.
Alright, well then they upgraded us in Salt Lake.
Cool.
Yeah.
The question I had was, back in September, you had a call, and I remember I was laying in bed, when you had a guy, you had the Area 51 line.
Oh yes.
And I was wondering a little bit if you had ever heard what happened to that.
I don't know whether it was your station that went down or exactly what occurred after that.
Oh no, that's hanging in the air as one of the great eternal questions of all time.
We still don't know what took that satellite down.
We have made very serious inquiries of GE Americom and they say the satellite lost earth link.
It is the only time I have ever heard of that happening with a total of one quarter of the transponders on the satellite going dead.
Really weird stuff.
That's kind of interesting.
One of my roommates worked at El Toro in California.
Yes.
It's a marine base and I was talking to him about that and he said it's very possible that, he worked with aircraft mechanics and so forth, but he said that it's very possible that something very, you know, strange could happen because we were talking the other night about how you had a, I forgot who your A guest was on, but he was talking about a mothership, um, that he predicted that, you know, we'd see during the daylight.
Oh, uh, Sean David Morton.
There we go.
And, uh, we were talking about that and my roommate said that they actually, he's actually seen plans for, it's a, it's a, I guess a marine type ship or something, but it actually can levitate and move backwards.
That is actually, could be mistaken for a very large aircraft.
I think he also may have said the 49ers were going to win the Super Bowl, though.
I don't think so.
You know, I just thought it was very interesting, and I was very curious on what happened to that guy, but since, you know, it's still up in the air.
All right, well, I've got to scoot.
It's always going to be up in the air.
I don't think we're ever going to get a complete answer on that.
But I appreciate the call and the inquiry, so it's still not stopped up in the air.
I think that was Sean, wasn't it, who said the 49ers would win, or somebody... I have a lot of people making predictions, so I don't... maybe I'm wrong.
But somebody made a big prediction, the 49ers would win.
Well, wrong-o, the pack cut through them as I suggested they would, like a hot knife through butter.
A wild card line, you are on the air, good morning.
Good morning, Art.
Oh, by the way, go pack.
You got it.
You got it.
Anyway, about the Edna eruption, or possible eruption.
Uh, not possible.
I'll tell you what, uh, it is erupting.
Yeah, I did.
I saw it on your webpage.
I saw the BB News.
Where those, where those cool photographs are.
Right.
You can go up there and actually see the live cam.
And I would imagine, uh, beginning at about this time of the morning, uh, we're going to begin getting live shots of, uh, Edna.
Yeah, the reason why I call is because there's a webpage called Eye on the World, and it has... Is that going to be Lori Toys?
No.
Maybe it is, sir, but it's... If you just search and you go to Eye on the World, and then it has earthquakes and different categories, but anyway, if you go to the volcano page, there's a listing for current volcanic activity, and not only is that thing erupting, but In Indonesia, it's called... I don't know if I have the pronunciation right.
They just updated it today.
It was Marapi, Indonesia.
The volcano there.
Yep.
Yeah, they just gave a warning to the residents.
I know.
Evacuation.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You're way ahead of me.
Oh, well, that's quite all right.
I appreciate your bringing that to us.
No, that's exactly right.
I reported on that several hours ago.
Oh, sorry.
No, don't be sorry.
I'm glad you suggested it.
We just had full moon yesterday on the 12th.
Right.
And so we are now in a window.
Expect more seismic activity and volcanic activity.
I'll tell you, it's going to be an interesting year, sir.
Oh, it's starting off to be one.
Yep.
Okay.
Thanks.
See you later.
East of the Rockies, you are on the air.
Good morning.
Hi, Art.
It's Vince in Chicago.
Hey, Vince.
You know, about the war on drugs, you know, I think it's really a shame.
It seems like the war on drugs is just resulting in a big police state, and we got a massive prison industry that's just growing.
You sound like Peter Gorman.
It's all true.
We do.
Yeah, you know, I didn't think I was going to like Peter Gorman, because I'm not for drugs or anything, but I tell you, He had a fairly even attitude, I thought.
Yeah, it is frightening that there's a lot of people getting rich off of this drug industry.
And I think it's being managed to maximize profits for somebody out there.
And I don't know who these people are that are making all the money, but I'll tell you, the war on drugs, we're not winning it.
We never will.
And I just think we're creating a police state and this huge prison industry with all these minor Petty drug criminals.
I know Vince, I don't disagree with you.
I just don't know that I am prepared to suggest the legalization of all drugs is a good idea.
Here's a quick fax.
Well Art, congratulations on the Packer win.
I was at the game pulling for the Niners, but yes, we were outplayed.
I really knew it was all over at halftime when they started playing alright and it's coming on and we gotta get right back to where we started from.
Love is good, and love can be strong.
I knew you had it... at that point.
Look, there's no way... There's no way anybody's gonna stop him.
You're listening to Art Bell, somewhere in time.
Touchdown, three-man! Look, there's no way... Boy, Lombardi would have loved it. There's no way anybody's gonna stop
him.
You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time. Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12th,
1998.
Come with me, yeah with me, and if you could I'd take you home with me.
🎵Malato Cuerpo Alegria Macarena🎵 The boy whose name is Itorino.
I'm sure that my boyfriend, the boy whose name is Vitorino I don't want him, to spam him, even though he is so high
I'm sure that my boyfriend, the boy whose name is Vitorino I don't want him, to spam him, even though he is so high
I don't want him, to spam him, even though he is so high I don't want him, to spam him, even though he is so high
Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from January 12, 1998.
Welcome to the program, those of you who join at this hour.
Anything is possible tonight, anything at all.
Who knows?
But then again, that's kind of the way I like it.
Now we take you back to the night of January 12, 1998 on Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Alright, uh, Art, the hostage situation in Japan is now resolved.
A 41-year-old in custody, nobody hurt, he was a disgruntled leftist who claimed other countries We're stealing Japan's money.
That's Dale in Port Angeles, Washington.
Thank you, Dale.
Really, other countries stealing Japan's money.
Well, if that sort of thing was a reason for taking hostages, the New York Stock Exchange would have been out of... Boy, think how many years people have been disgruntled in this country about Japan's lopsided trading practices with the U.S.
There'd be no trading here if we'd done as he did there.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning to you.
Yes, it is.
Where are you?
KCMO Listener from the Flatlands, Kansas City.
Yes, sir.
You know, with your book, The Quickening, it's quite an interesting book.
I might add, all these folks like Victor, why don't they go ahead and start spilling their beans now?
Well, in Victor's case, he did.
I mean, he got the footage out, and he still... Well, there's more people than Victor.
Yeah, it's true.
Well, look, I imagine others are going to come forward.
Well, I wish they really would.
You know, I think it's about time.
I'm not trying to say, you know, just because it's the year of the tiger.
Well, you know the big show we did?
Look, one of the problems is that a lot of people like this signed oaths, and if they come forward, they're going to go to jail.
Yes, I realize that.
There's safety in numbers.
But there's folks in lower forms of law enforcement that break oaths every day and get away with it.
And, you know, it just steadily climbs up the ladder.
But, you know, I just wish some of these people would really, you know, once they get on your program, kind of open up and go for it.
Well, I could not agree more.
Thank you very much, Robert.
Oh, Dean, I thought went pretty far the other day, as far as you could expect anybody to go.
I thought he really laid it out, and I guess I'm on his list, and one day I'm going to have a packet of documents arrive, and then it'll be my dilemma, won't it?
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, my name is Ralph.
I'm from San Francisco.
Uh-huh.
Do you wish to take a moment to cry?
Oh, no.
Not at all.
I like football, but I'm not that big a football fan.
You know, and realistically, the 49ers really... I mean, Packers played good, but the coaching, a lot of coaching decisions cost them that game, though, too.
Okay.
We'll blame it on the coaches, that's all.
Well, no, you know.
But anyway, I just thought I'd I've never been listening to your show for a lot of months.
The young coach there, he's got a lot to learn.
Well, yeah, you know, it's the way it goes.
Next year is always another year.
I know a friend of mine at work that I work with told me all about your show, and while he doesn't have a computer and I do, I've logged on and looked at your website numerous amount of times, but I found it interesting about, I don't know how many months ago, maybe five months ago, you had a person on a A guest that talked about the Mono Lake and the possible eruption of Mono Lake.
Oh yes.
And yesterday, well actually on Saturday, on San Francisco here on Channel 2, which is K... Oh darn, I forgot the name of the channel now.
Channel 2.
Yeah.
Sorry.
They had a whole thing on it at night about possible volcanic eruptions on Mono Lake and everything.
They're the only ones that have done this in the Bay Area.
Talked about it in the... This is just, like I said, Saturday, and I found it kind of interesting here.
You did it like about...
Six, seven months ago, and now finally the local media, just one channel, is talking about how they went up there and it looks like possible eruptions and all the catastrophic things that could happen about what happened in 1980 up in, you know, near Seattle and Washington and all that, and I really found it kind of interesting that... I know, we lead the media, sir, in those areas.
So I just found that, I just thought I'd let you know that they finally got around to talking about that around here.
I understand.
I appreciate the call and the information.
I am not surprised.
We generally lead the media by a long way.
And most things that I bring up and talk about, people send me email or mail and say I'm crazy as a loon.
And for a few months it looks as though I am, and then suddenly, whoosh.
It's like my book, The Quickening, which, by the way, you can get nationally now in any bookstore.
Bear in mind now, when you read the quickening now, the economic chapters, the environmental chapters, the chapters on the weather, bear in mind I wrote that one year ago now.
Wrote it one year ago.
And as you read it, a lot of it is going to be like reading current headlines.
Now does that mean I'm a prophet?
No.
I hope it doesn't mean that anyway.
I hope it doesn't.
It just means that I saw it coming.
That's all.
Wild Card Line, you are on the air.
Good morning.
Yes, Art Bell?
That's me.
Art, this is Jim calling from the Pacific Northwest in Aberdeen.
Yes, sir.
The reason I'm calling is I was on your show once before the night you had Sue Kovach on the air.
Yes.
And I wanted to tell you About a case that I investigated here on the subject of UFOs.
Okay, are you an officer of the law?
Yes, I am.
I had a feeling.
Go right ahead.
November 26, 1979 at 1050 p.m.
here in Grace Harbor County, we had an object come down.
It was seen over a distance of 40 miles.
It stopped traffic in both directions on the highway.
I was able to go back and speak to witnesses, probably Oh, six or seven years after the fact, and I located two dozen witnesses.
There's two parts to this event.
The object crashed, and the local newspaper headline the next day said, UFO crashes in Elk River.
And it went on for three days.
There was a search and all that.
I ended up sending in my FOIA requests and approached NORAD, other organizations, and basically they state that it never happened.
Uh-huh.
And I just wanted to throw that out there as another example of how we're not told the truth.
And I am the gentleman that spoke to you and mentioned that I was a state section director for MUFON as well as being a law enforcement officer.
Well, I don't doubt it for a second.
I don't doubt it.
We tend to rewrite history as a general rule.
Usually we wait an appropriate amount of time before we begin Revising.
However, in the case of UFOs, we do immediate revision.
Absolutely.
There was a crash retrieval case, too.
There was also residents that... I've even had people who are in logging companies now, who were loggers back then and executives now, who claim to have almost gotten into fistfights with soldiers on the logging roads, not because They cared one bit about UFOs, but they wanted to go into the area to work, and they were denied access.
Uh-huh.
I sincerely appreciate your report and believe every word of it.
Thank you very much.
Really typical.
I get so much information from law officers regarding this topic.
As a matter of fact, I've got a couple.
I've just been biding my time to read you, and I will.
The next day or so.
Tomorrow night in the first hour of the program, Frances Emma Barwood is going to be on.
You're not going to want to miss that.
She's running for office and I'm not going to steal her thunder tonight until you will let her sort of announce it for you tomorrow.
So Frances Emma Barwood from Arizona tomorrow night, followed by Gerald Celente.
Gerald Celente is a very, very interesting fellow.
He's from the Trends Research Institute, and a couple of weeks ago, Linda Moulton Howe interviewed him on environmental questions.
And he is, without question, an environmentalist and one who watches trends, real trends.
As a matter of fact, he has a book called Trends 2000.
So, we're going to be interviewing Gerald Cilenti tomorrow in the second hour of the program, following Frances Emma Barwood.
It's going to be a very, very interesting program tomorrow night.
Do not miss it.
On the first time caller line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
This is Paul from St.
Pete, Florida.
Hi, Paul.
Well, that's cool.
I got all of you.
Two things.
I was stationed in Sicily, right in Sigonella, right there by Mount Edna.
Yes, sir.
For years.
I mean, actually, at this time of the year, the volcano is always active.
It was active in the early 90s.
It was a period of activity.
Right.
Um, actually, yeah, I was involved in the, uh, when it erupted in 92.
Uh, we ran, I was in a squadron, uh, HC4, and we ran, uh, like, not rescue, well, it was kind of rescue, but it was like, what we did was, uh, we took, like, huge cement blocks, and, uh, we dropped them in the path.
Really?
Of the, uh, lava.
Trying to, trying to, uh, divert the lava away.
Right.
And, uh, a couple of us actually, you know, we drove up to, uh, Zephriana.
It was like at the top of the hill.
And, uh, we actually got to see the lava moving towards, like, the town and stuff.
And it was really wild to see, because, like, actually one time it hit the tree.
It hit a tree.
Like, a tree was in the path.
And the tree just, like, exploded.
Yeah.
That's exactly what they do.
They kind of explode.
Now, let me tell all of you a little story.
Thank you very much.
We had... And I say had, as in past tense.
I just got a call from Keith Rowland, my webmaster, and he said, alright, you're not going to believe it, but it looks as though the website that I found, which has a live cam looking at Aetna, has shut off all foreign, or at least U.S.
Internet people.
They have actually removed our access From the US, and it looks as though we did it.
Probably bringing their server to its knees over there, so they literally locked us out.
Can you believe it?
Fortunately, before that occurred, we recovered quite a number of photographs of Aetna yesterday, during the day, and then into the evening and nighttime hours.
And we've got the photographic proof on the website.
So even though they apparently have, within the last hour, locked all U.S.
Internet people out because of us.
Sorry about that.
We did preserve the photographs in question and they are on my website now.
So I strongly suggest you go take a look.
It's at www.artbell.com.
And you can look at Aetna yesterday during the day and then into the evening hours and you will see, as you get into the nighttime hours, vertical displays of lava blown into the air.
Three streams of lava coming down three separate sides of Aetna.
And we caught all of that before they removed access.
So even though you cannot directly go to the site any longer, Because we caused them trouble.
You can still see the photographs.
They are on the website.
Go take a look.
You know, it's nothing like your own eyes.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Will, WTY, Madison, Wisconsin.
Hello, Will.
It's been some time since I've heard from you.
Oh, I've been down in Egypt and Russia and Europe and... I see.
Researching origins of tribes, but I won't get into that.
We've been having some real big meetings.
The average people coming to meetings in northern Minnesota.
Meetings of what?
Trying to get the wolf off the endangered and threatened list.
Just like the people down south want the alligator off the endangered and threatened list.
You want to go hunt wolves?
Will?
You want to go hunt wolves?
We want to bring their population down by trapping them.
Like they used to in the old days.
Oh, but that's so cool.
I mean, if you're going to do something with a wolf, why not just shoot it, kill it, put it... Hey, Art, you try and find a wolf in the nighttime and shoot it.
Well, that's what they make night vision for.
Oh, Art, you know, you're a very intelligent man, but you try with night vision and try and find a wolf in September.
Well, if he's there, you'll see him with night vision.
Through the trees?
Yep.
Well, not behind a tree, obviously, but if you... And, and... Listen, it's like Coyote.
Coyotes are very wily, believe me.
You know, you don't want to put a bullet in a tree.
I mean, don't you love trees?
Aren't you a tree hugger, Art?
No.
You aren't?
No.
And that Victor, he's a scam artist.
Alright, well now you've jumped subjects on me, Will, which you always do.
Wolves to Victor.
Wolves to Victor.
Now, you know, the way they used to trap wolves is, in my opinion, cruel as hell.
And you're going to have to convince me of the harm that wolves are doing before I say it's a good idea.
And then, if it is, and if they need to be thinned, then they ought to be killed humanely.
Not left to try and chew their leg off before somebody can get to them the next day?
I'm not in favor of that.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi, Art.
You should have been expecting this call.
Brett from Denver.
Hello, Brett from Denver.
How are you doing?
Oh, pretty good.
And yourself?
All right.
Do you have any idea what Green Bay is going to do to Denver?
Well, I know what Denver is going to do to Green Bay.
Oh, come on.
Get real.
I'm looking at 2120 Broncos.
In your dreams.
Broncos have the heart and they've also got the spirit this time.
Really?
They want it for John.
Well, look.
Um, spirit and heart, yeah, I know.
And I know John wants it, and I know John would like it before he retires.
They've also got one other man, though.
But it's just not to be.
They've also got one other man that Green Bay can't stop, Mr. Davis.
Well, yeah, you know, Davis is great, but he's not as great as Levins.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I've got to give Green Bay a lot of credit.
It's going to be a close game, a lot better than what the line's saying.
I think the lines are right.
I'll tell you this, you know what the headline in the Las Vegas paper was earlier today, yesterday now?
No, I haven't.
The sportsbooks, you know we have legal betting here, they took the biggest bath, are you there?
Yeah.
They took the biggest bath in all history on these two games this last weekend.
I mean they really took a bath, they lost a lot of money.
You're getting a call.
Why is somebody... No, that's okay.
Go ahead.
Why is somebody calling you at... I have no idea.
What is it?
Coming up on 4 o'clock in the morning there?
I have no idea.
Coming up on 4.
Weird.
Anyway, they took a bath.
Lost a lot of money.
Poor sports folks.
I'm going to tell you right now that Denver's going to pull one more rabbit out of the hat.
Like you said, the quickening is coming.
That would be a rabbit.
That would be an elephant.
Well, you've said the quickening is coming, and everybody has said it's going to be a cold day in Hades before the Broncos win the Super Bowl.
Well, guess what?
It may be a cold day in Hades.
Well, it may be, but you call me up.
You be sure to call me up after the 25th, all right?
I will.
All right, we'll see you later.
He's to the Rockies.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Good morning, Art.
This is Tim in Illinois.
Hi, Tim.
How are you doing this morning?
Well, uh... I'm good.
Well, you know, I'm here.
I hope you and Ramona get to feeling better soon.
Well, I'm better enough to do the program, that's for sure.
Good.
Hey, listen, Art.
I tried to get through to you the other night when you had Bob O'Dean on there.
Robert O'Dean, yes.
He, you know, you ask him, well I don't really want to be overly critical, and I know how you operate, but you ask him.
As critical as you want, I don't care.
You ask him like half a dozen times for specifics on what was told to the CIA director.
Yep.
And he never would, he never did give it to you.
He was always evasive.
Don't you feel a little disheartened by that?
No, Robert had a sense of his own butt.
Uh, and maybe he figured that if he were to say it, uh, he'd lose his butt, if you follow me.
And, um, so it's his choice.
Uh, it was my duty to ask and, uh, his option to not answer.
Yeah, well, you know, you tried.
You asked him several times.
I just, you know, wanted one instance, one specific.
I know.
Listen, my show's over.
I'm out of time.
I gotta go.
So you get the honors.
You know how to do that?
So long, America, from coast to coast.
And points well beyond all you Canucks up there.
See you later, too.
I'm Art Bell.
This has been Coast to Coast AM.
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