Drug Wars begins

It was 1997 and I had achieved some big hits, best sellers and had carved a real niche for myself with the crime prevention community. But I was still not addressing my loss and pain and doing something about the death of my son. I was kind of functioning as a person again but still there was something terribly wrong with me. Then I had a change.

I woke up one day with the intention to produce a film about the dangers of drinking and driving. I knew that there were a large number of films on the subject but I had a different angle in mind.

So my first action was to begin my research for the new film. When I begin a film, my first order of business is to find out what people want to know. The best way to find out is to talk to people. If you talk to a few people, you mostly have opinions. If you talk to hundreds, you have research.

I wanted to know what people thought of the subject and what their perceptions were. I know I had my own axe to grind and it wasn't about that.

I remember talking to a waitress at a popular locally owned sandwich shop. She asked me what I was doing and I told her that I was working on a film about drugs. Then her whole demeanor changed. She went from a pleasant, attentive server to a shrew. She bristled as she told me that she would rather her son smoke marijuana than eat processed sugar. I told her "OK, I'll write that one down." I did.

Mostly what I saw and understood from the guy or gal on the street was that they really didn't think it affected them and they really didn't care one way or the other. (I later learned that this form of societal denial was normal and most people who had a family member with a problem, didn't understand what was happening and just sort of turned their back on the person or ignore the problem.)

I set up an interview with Dr. Jack Stump, an emergency room physician. My intention was to talk with him about the dangers of drinking and driving. I knew he would have a lot of first hand knowledge about accidents involving drunk drivers. I knew that alcohol was the biggest drug problem and was surprised with what he told me.

He told me the biggest problem he was seeing, as an emergency room physician, involved Methamphetamine and the damage and pain it was causing people. I always thought that methamphetamine was some kind of speed because I knew what amphetamines were. I learned that Meth was nothing like the speed of the sixties and seventies. I set up another interview with him with the camera turned on. This was the first interview I did for the Drug Wars Series.

I went on to do more than 50 hours of filmed interviews with everyone who knew anything about the subject. I interviewed drug counselors, physicians, pharmacists, drug enforcement officers, and addicts. I got the whole picture about meth. I heard a hundred stories and none were good. None had a happy ending unless it ended with, "and then I got off drugs."

As I learned about Methamphetamine and how it affects the users, the signs and how users act, it occurred to me that one of my sons had displayed many of the symptoms talked about. I asked him if he was using meth and he told me he was. All of a sudden, it wasn't me just making another film it was me trying to save another child - mine. The stakes just became urgent and immeasurable. It was now a case of life and death for this film. If I made it right I believed that if could save the life of my son. I didn't want to think of the alternative. So the steaks were high and I put everything I had into the film. I quit everything else in my life and poured everything I had into it.

In September of 1997, I released Drug Wars - Crank County - a film about methamphetamine from every perspective. It was a compilation of stories of people who were involved. Nothing made up nothing stages, all facts told by everyone who had anything to do with meth. I took the first copy and gave to my son and told him that he should watch it. He watched it and even though it took him a little while, but the end result is that today he is clean. He now has some health issues that may be related to meth use. I'll never know for sure but at the very least I didn't have to burry him.

Following this release, I initiated a marketing effort to law enforcement agencies and added a new component - drug treatment centers. The response was overwhelming.

My sales pitch was simple: "When you see this film, you will want to show it to everyone who will sit down long enough to watch it. High Schools, Churches, YMCA, PTA, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and anyone who will sit down to watch it."

I also took the finished film to a friend of mine, Kingsley Kelly who was then the General Manager and Vice President of Freedom Communications in Medford Oregon and he agreed to run it on December 31 at 8:00 PM - Another prime time debut of a Monson film. The weeks that followed I received over a hundred calls, comments and emails from people expressing gratitude for putting the film on the air.

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