I was called by a friend who told me that his wife’s brother had been involved with heroin and I should talk to her. I set up an interview for the following week.

After a brief interview with her and saw how articulate she was and how her story was so powerful, I set up a film interview with her. I filmed a two hour interview where she told me the story of her brother Eric and how he had experimented with drugs and eventually had a marijuana joint laced with heroin. That was his undoing. He was hooked. He tried 26 times to quit only to fail 26 times. On his 25 time he was clean for a period of time when he met a girl and fell in love with her and her little boy who became very fond of Eric. Sadly Eric relapsed and overdosed. Linda told how Eric’s death impacted the family and especially the little boy. As I drove away from the interview, I knew that here was another story that had to be told. I found myself weeping.

When I had a rough cut edited, with no graphics, just Linda with rough cuts between sentences no bells or whistles, I wanted to get some reactions and see if the story would be viewed by others as I saw it. I started showing it to people in the prevention business and the treatment world.

I took it to a meeting of a local drug counsel and played it for them. The audience was mesmerized and was glued to the screen during the presentation. When the film ended the audience was quiet and finally one of the drug treatment directors said, “Every drug addict should see this film.”

I knew this was another important film and it needed to get it out there. Finally late in 1998, I released Drug Wars - One Family's Battle . It is the true story of Eric, his life and death as a drug addict and how his bad choices affected the lives of his family and friends. 

That year we received several awards from the Southern Oregon Film and Video Association for both Drug Wars – Crank County and Drug Wars – One Family’s Battle . (Some people refer to Southern Oregon as Hollywood North because there are so many film companies and executives here.)

When I received the awards, I just took them and said thanks. It wasn’t what I was looking for. It was a fun evening and I met someone who would play a very important part in my life. Paddy Schweitzer was the epitome of all curmudgeons and I grew to love the old guy.

The Drug Wars – One Family’s Battle was a phenomenal hit with drug treatment and prevention centers, as well as with teachers, counselors and school resource officers, throughout the country. We sold thousands of them.

Most of my crime prevention clients didn’t seem too interested in the story for whatever reason.

The film was so powerful and the message so important that I wanted to get it on television in my community of Medford , Oregon . I took it to several of the television stations and they were all interested in putting it on the air. So I started to market the sponsorships to help pay the expenses of the broadcast. We got a lot of community support. All I had to do was to show the film and they stepped right up. We had about a hundred businesses support us on some level.

I started production of Drug Wars – Kickin’ Butts in 1999. I had the concept of a quitting smoking film showing someone who wanted to quit and film the process. I looked around and found a gal Dianne Vetter who told me that she wanted to quit and I told her that I would like to film her as she did so.  This film took a long time to film because we were doing it real time and the interaction with Dianne and her family was perfect.

I had no idea of how big a hit this film would be. It has been used by everyone in the business to help someone quit smoking.

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