In early January we did our second roadblock. This time it involved more that 15 television stations. Over 500,000 people in the Eugene broadcast area got the message of Drug Wars - One Family’s Battle . At the same time, in Jackson County Drug Wars – The High Times was airing on all the television stations in Medford and teaching more than 150,000 other people about the dangers of teen drinking.  (The numbers of viewers was calculated by Southern Oregon University Marketing Department.)

All in all, I would say that the night was a big success. Since it had never been about money with me, the loss was acceptable and besides I knew that these films had made a difference. (I later learned the intake numbers at several of the drug treatment centers in Eugene had doubled for several weeks following the broadcast.)

After the broadcast, I was beat. I had been working non stop for almost a year with little time off to rest and take care of myself. I took a week off and just reflected on the event.

I had done for the second time what many said I could never do. Daunting? Absolutely. Worth it? Absolutely. I had taught hundreds of thousands of people about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. I was very pleased until I started getting the bills and figuring how much it cost me to put on these broadcasts. I had miscalculated my loss and when all the dust had settled I was down by over $50,000. It was a sobering thought and one that motivated me to quit and do no more broadcasts.

The year prior to the broadcasts I had joined a group. Family Addictions Community Team was called FACT and it was a group of people from different organizations in the community. Health, law enforcement, social services, education and drug treatment people were part of the group and we all met each month and discussed drugs and what was going on in our relative field. I represented the media. The group was very supportive, helped sponsor the broadcasts and they also assisted me in my research.

I went to the FACT meeting in February to announce that I had lost a lot of money and was going to stop doing the broadcasts. The group usually sat around a tables set up in a big square. Part of the procedure was to go around the table and each person would talk about what was going on in their world. The participants on the other side of the table started the discussion and one of my friends Robin Turgeson, a county Health Department nurse, got up and described a baby that had been born at the Rogue Valley Medical Center a few days prior. The baby was born with birth defects and had part of her brain missing and was in a lot of pain because her mom had been on drugs during her pregnancy. After the baby was born the mom took off and left for Reno , NV .

As Robin was talking – and she had no idea that I was going to quit – the rage in me grew as she described the life of pain the little baby was going to live, if she lived. My rage had turned to hate toward this uncaring mother. “The dirty bitch, I thought. How could she do that?” Robin then told us that the mom was 13 years old. “Oh my,” I thought. My rage transformed into pain because now there were two babies in this story and both had to have been hurting.  

For the next few minutes, while others talked about what was going on and discussed the baby, I was thinking about the results of the broadcast I had just done. I thought about how successfully I had been in taking good messages to vast audiences. Then I thought, “How could I ignore this horrible condition? How could I not do another broadcast?”

When it was my turn to talk, I was nearly in tears. I stood up and looked at Robin and said, “Thanks a lot Robin. I came here to announce my quitting the broadcasts and now I can’t. How could I ignore this?” I spent the rest of the meeting thinking about what to do and how I was going to do it.

When I got back to my office, I called my staff into our meeting room. “We are going to make a film about drug babies,” I said. “It’s a huge problem.” I had to stop and gather up myself. “And this time we will do a roadblock for the entire state of Oregon .” I watched the group and they were dumbstruck. “So let’s get busy,” I said and walked out of the room.

I have always paid for the productions myself and then recouped my investments through the sales of the films and broadcast rights. At that time, I was a little short of cash because of the recent broadcast losses. So the next thing I did was to look for some sponsors to help me pay for the film production. I called Blue Cross and they were open to talk about it and then a couple of hospitals said they would help and the county health department also said they would kick in. There was a great deal of support offered and I was encouraged.

I released Rural Crime Prevention in the summer. For years officers had been requesting something that they could use in their rural area to teach crime prevention principles to rural residents. Initial interest was strong and we distributed many of them to rural areas.  Most of the US is in rural areas.

Drug Wars – Kickin’ Butts was finally finished and I needed to raise money to release it and begin promotion to get the sales going. We got lucky, the American Lung Association really liked it and ordered several copies and gave us a bunch of names to contact. Then the American Cancer Society picked it up and so did a lot of smoking cessation programs and hospitals and we were off to the races with it and we really needed the cash flow.

My passion was with the babies and I started to research the problem. I was amazed at the lack of information available about drug babies. I talked to one of the hospitals in Portland and they didn’t want to have anything to do with the film because they didn’t want to stigmatize drug babies. The administrator said he wouldn’t let me do any interviews because he felt in the best interests of the babies to just let them be. I was really short with him and told him that my intention was to prevent them from even being born as drug babies. A funny thing happened, nobody wanted to talk about it. Nobody knew the number of drug babies born each year in the US . And it didn’t seem that anyone cared. No one had done any research about it that I could find.

Then I got lucky I found about a place in Kent Washington called the Pediatric Interim Care Center (PICC). Barbara Drennen was so excited that I wanted to do a film and do something about the problem of drug babies. I spent hours there looking at the babies and talking with the moms and dads. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life. Seeing a little two week old baby get a dose of Methadone or whatever it was and then watching them get high is something to see.

I remember interviewing one couple and the mom as she told her story with tears in her eyes, you couldn’t see me but I was there bawling. It was a powerful story and I loved the fact that they were trying to get their lives straight. I loved those kids. They would have been the same age as my son Matt would have been.

After two days at PICC, I went to visit Dr. Sterling K. Clarren, MD at the Children’s Hospital in Seattle . He spent several hours with me to describe in great detail what substance abuse does to the unborn. We also discussed ways to stop it. After all that was supposed to be my whole focus of the film.

The next day I went to visit Dr. Ann Pytkowicz Streissguth, PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle .  She gave me a compelling interview and described the damage alcohol does to a fetus. It’s called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Some of here stories were very powerful.

I had some powerful and crucial information that I had to share. I knew that I only had half the story though. I still needed to illustrate the ways we can prevent this. Just showing the problem rarely solves anything. I could save that for the news. They almost always just show the problems.

Little did I know but the four days I spent in Washington would affect me for the rest of my life. The images still haunt me today.

On the drive back to Medford , I had a lot of time to think. It occurred to me that I really had enough material for two films. That is when Drug Wars – Last Call was conceived. All the information that Dr. Streissguth had given me could make a film of its own. When I got back, I immediately started to work. I had Drug Wars - Last Call done in less than 30 days.

Cash flow was a little better and I had the previous broadcast almost paid off and we were doing well with Drug Wars – Kickin’ Butts so I was able to release Drug Wars - Last Call quickly and my staff suggested that since it was so powerful and the message was so important that we get it on the air immediately. We broadcast it on only one station in August of 2001. We found several sponsors to offset the cost.

In the meantime I was also contacting television stations in the state of Oregon and getting them on board for the upcoming January broadcast of Drug Wars – Who Will Cry for Our Children. I was all over the place looking for sponsors to cover the $125,000 cost to get it on the air. I had nearly commitments for over $50,000 with a few months to go. I felt confident that I could get it done. I was a dynamo. I didn’t need rest. I didn’t need to rest. I was powered by my passion to save the babies.

I went on another field trip to find the answers to the problem with drug babies. How could I find something that could solve this problem? I knew that the answer lied with more than just my efforts or the efforts of a few. We all have to get involved and become part of the lives of our children and even getting involved in the lives of other people’s children. I had another five days on the road as I found one person after the other who was reaching out to make a difference in the life of a young person. I found police officers, city administrators, social workers and just average people who were making a difference. I also found the Search Institute, a source of information about Developmental Assets and how critical they are in helping us prevent substance abuse.

I was in the final part of the film making process in early September and planning on making my big push. I had every television station in Oregon on board except one station and I knew that they would go along with it once they learned that the other forty stations were trying to save Oregon babies. I wouldn’t want to be them if they didn’t go along.

I remember sitting across the table from eight executives at a different station - the president and general manager, couple of vice presidents, program director, managers and promotions people. I looked them over and then looked to my left where no one was sitting then to the right where no one was sitting then back at the President and I said, “Eight on one.” I paused then said, “That hardly seems fair.” Then I smiled and said, “You better get some more guys.” They all laughed and that station was on board.

I was up by 5:30 everyday and my normal morning was spent watching CNBC. On 9/11/2001, I watched the disaster at the World Trade Center unfold. Just before the first tower went down, I remember wondering how they were going to put out the fire. It didn’t take long for me to figure out what was going to happen next.

I knew that the world had just changed. I knew that the babies would have to wait.

I went to work at the usual time and started fielding all the phone calls from my friends and relatives who were asking me what was going to happen next. I didn’t know but I did know that we, the United States have been through other tragedies and we lived through them and we would make it through this one too. That is what I told them. At work, I called another staff meeting and told them that things were going to get bad because what we did was kind of supplemental to everything else our customers do and I predicted that we were in for some hard times. I put them on notice that when things slowed down that we may have to cut back on hours and they should be careful with their obligations.

I finished Drug Wars – Who Will Cry for Our Children. Almost all of the state-wide sponsors I had lined up backed out. Their reasoning: they didn’t know what was going to happen. I told them that I did. I told them that there were going to be about 100,000 drug affected babies born this year and I could at least save a few. I was forced to cancel the state-wide broadcast.

I had collected some of the local sponsor’s contributions so I decided to continue with the local roadblock broadcast.

Home Programs History Resources Site Map Contact Us