Overtime – Episode #387 (Originally aired 05/06/16)

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Mark.

Okay, all right, here we are.

Richard, did you rejoin us?

Oh, great.

Are pharmaceutical companies to blame for the increased prescription drug overdoses?

Sure, let's blame them.

Partly.

Yeah, I mean,

they're in it for the money, right?

I mean, that's...

Exactly.

That's what people don't.

Yeah, they're in it to save.

No, they're in it to put the money.

But it's, but it's more like our president and

the drug czar, Botticelli, right?

Their souls are good, I think.

I think they're good people who want to do a good job for the American people.

And over here, you have

these heads of pharmaceutical companies, and

they feel like

quarter over quarter, year over year, their their bottom line is like air that they need to breathe.

So if you have somebody who wants to do a good job for the country versus someone who wants to survive,

you're not going to be able to do it.

Wait, let's be, I think we should be clear.

The drug czar is an awful person.

It's an awful office that should not exist.

Right.

We have a drug policy and the entire legal infrastructure is set up to treat us as children.

It gives pharmaceutical companies more power.

It gives the FDA more power.

It makes it more difficult difficult to come out as an addict or having a substance abuse problem.

So the government is implicated here too.

And what we need to do, we've grown up on many issues, I think, in the country, and we're starting to on drugs.

But it's the carceral state that gets in the way of all of this type of stuff.

So whether or not Portugal legalized all drugs,

decriminalized all drugs, drug abuse rates plummeted, crime associated with drugs fell.

Addiction rates fell.

I've put a legalized jail.

Look, I understand.

Look, I'm not an advocate for jail.

I'm an advocate for treatment.

But, you know, whether or not the office is something.

I can't sit by and somebody say the drug czar is a good person.

That's a good question.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

No, no.

Whether or not the office is something that should even exist is not something that I'm an expert on, and I don't pretend to talk about it.

But I do think he's a good soul, and I do think

he's treatment set up.

You might have an opinion on that.

Well, wait a minute.

Not exactly from left fields.

He's a recovering addict.

Like you.

That's right.

So you know when you're in it and these are our people, you've got to vested interest in.

But this does affect your business.

What part of it?

Having a drug czar, having our policy the way it is in this country where we punish people instead of treat them.

It's actually probably good for your business.

The drug czar is good for my business?

Well, I'm just saying

if the government took over what you do, which they possibly should,

yeah, it might be a better system.

I'm not saying they could do it better than you, they should probably hire you.

Right.

But we have a terrible system in this country where we criminalize a lot of government who should beat out a lot of government programs.

Well, no, if we spend a lot of time on the bottom, I don't get the analogy there.

What I'm saying is, let me tell you this: if the government takes over both providing drugs as well as treating drugs, it's going to suck.

Well, they're not taking over.

That's what free markets are for, and they're very good at.

The government is providing drugs.

No, I'm saying if

you want the government to get involved in

No,

I'm with you this

decriminalization of drugs and socialized medicine.

Well, unfortunately.

Take the

absolute

of health.

Absolutely.

Why do you say no to that?

And take the agreement of what we spend punishing people and arresting people and prosecuting people and jailing people for drug crimes.

We spend it on treatment.

Socialized medicine does not innovate in medicine.

The reason we're putting English people

in the reason we're putting people in jails is because the jails are privatized.

And that's

true.

And that's true, too.

Of course they are.

What percentage of the American criminal population is?

Listen, I just had some guy come to my office

in a jail.

Okay.

Don't.

Wait, we are the world's biggest jailer nation.

Absolutely.

And it isn't because of private corporations.

90% of prisoners are in

state-owned prisons.

We're locking people up.

It isn't the profit motive.

Well, it absolutely is the profit motive.

The prison guard union is a very powerful union.

And it lobbies for things like three strikes you're out out because to them prisoners are customers.

So don't tell me that it's not the profit motive.

Don't say it's private prisons.

Well, it is partly private businesses.

Absolutely.

Brian Cranston.

I know him.

What can we expect to learn from your forthcoming memoir?

Ah.

You're writing a memoir.

I wrote a memoir, yeah.

It's called Life in Parts.

So I have to look back on my life because it's over soon, right?

No, no,

It was just, you know, it's

short stories that are autobiographical.

And

I had a very challenging childhood.

And in retrospect,

challenging.

Didn't have a father around.

There was a lot of alcoholism and drug abuse and

abandonment.

And, you know, you're left to your own devices at a very young age and you grow up too fast.

But that helps you as an actor.

It does, in a way.

It helps you.

It's something to draw on when you have to be emotional.

Yes.

Oh, my dad was mean.

He's drawing on it now.

I said he was a great lesbian.

Lesbian.

Lesbian.

Dan Savage, in the years you've been writing a sex advice column, have people's problems changed much?

No.

Thanks to abstinence education, I have a non-stop supply of sexually miseducated idiots who are getting themselves in trouble over the generalists.

And how can Donald Trump win the election after alienating Hispanics, a key demographic, and women?

Let's be honest.

Hispanics love him.

Didn't you see the Taco Bowl?

That was fantastic.

I love Hispanics.

I don't think this is funny because Donald Trump's campaign began with a big lie about the people who are coming here legally or illegally, accusing them of Mexico, of sending their rapists, sending the murderers.

Some of them may be nice people, but and that's just a big demagogic lie that was like a shot of adrenaline right into the worst of our body politic.

It just inflamed.

What do you mean it's a lie?

You're claiming illegal aliens don't commit murders and reduce it.

It is what he says.

No, at no higher rate, at a lesser rate.

It's a demagogic lie because you're you're likelier to be raped in this country for capital by people who are born in this country for a while.

First of all, it's not true, but second of all, even if

you're not still talking here.

Even if it were true,

these aren't people who we have to have here.

We already have our own rapists and murderers.

We don't need to be bringing in.

Wow, so you're saying that they are rapists and murderers?

So is that what you're saying?

But to point to

a racial minority, a marginalized community, vulnerable people, and accuse them of being the rapists.

He didn't.

He accused Mexico of not sending their best people, and they're not sending their best people.

We need a demographic.

They're sending by one.

That's a lie to begin with.

Absolutely not true.

That's not true.

So Donald Trump wants to build a wall to protect us from the people who aren't rapists.

He just said something that wasn't true.

They were handing out first aid kits and maps for how to get to America, the Mexican government, to the poorest areas in Mexico, and we found them and we had them.

Yes, they are not sending their neuroscientists.

We need more.

They're getting rid of their problems by sending them to the archivists.

Well, that's because you guys want your gardening done to the market.

No, you don't.

I cut my own.

I cut my own grasses.

But I'm not sure.

When's the last time you put it in the middle of the morning?

I want them competing with legalizing

with our landscapers and maids.

And

there are people who are here and are not documented.

People are documented for yourself.

I hope so, because I need some right now.

No,

no, it's not.

Let me just tell you,

I get about five to ten people a year calling me to get their kids or their loved ones off marijuana.

Out of how many?

Well, I get 90 a day.

So five or ten a year for population.

But I get 90 a day for prescription opiates,

which gives you the balance.

Yes, and this has been a canard for decades.

But I will say, and you're probably not going to be happy about this,

you know, we keep getting better as a society and the science shows now that

your brain stops developing between the ages of 23 and 25.

So if that's true, I'd like to see a 25-year-old age limit.

For pot?

Yeah.

Most doctors do.

I'm not invited back.

No, I'm always for the truth first and the facts first.

I never heard that one.

I'm glad I started late.

I wasn't 25, but I was 19.

That's a lot.

I mean, that's not 12.

I was 12.

You were 12 when you were 12.

Oh my gosh.

I was 36 the first time I smoked pot.

See?

You're good.

How did you start at 12?

I took it from my father.

Oh.

Oh, my God.

It's like the

motherfucker.

I took it from my dad.

I had to hook up.

Wow.

Yeah.

He can teach you to cry about it.

Anyway,

I've cried about it in therapy.

Nick, will you welcome longtime Republicans like Mary Matlin to your party?

Well, it's not my party.

I'm not a member of the Libertarian Party, but she, the Republican Project said.

You're so libertarian, you wouldn't even join the Libertarian Party.

I would not have that.

That's a nice party of party.

That's really libertarian.

What she said, actually.

She's in the fuck y'all party.

But she said that's the party that expresses what I think the government should do, which is, you know, a

kind of basic social safety net and defense, and that's about it.

And I think more Republicans, the ones who say that they're for limited government, they really are full of shit for the most part.

Okay.

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Audience, thank you, panel.

Thank you, crew.

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