David Simon with the POTUS regarding the War on Drugs

A Note To Everyone from My friend and yours, the creator of The Wire, Treme and Generation Kill, The Corner and Homicide, David Simon:

Good afternoon --

I'm a reporter who covered the police beat in Baltimore. Today, I make television shows. And last Friday, my phone rang. Someone on the other end told me that the President of the United States wants to have a conversation about criminal justice policy in America.

In his effort to try to reconsider some of the sentencing excesses and the levels of incarceration that have become so problematic in America, the President wanted to discuss these issues with me -- particularly because a lot of them were rooted in a television show that we did several years ago called "The Wire." In that show, we were trying to explore what the drug war has become in America and what it was costing us as a society.

So I went to Washington earlier this week and sat down with the President. We shared our experiences, our perspectives on the drug war, and the changes we hope to see.

See what the President had to say:

Secretly, in my heart of hearts, I don’t want to be in the entertainment industry. Having been a reporter, everything after that tends to feel less rooted to reality. So the President’s call was not only astonishing, but seemed to be an incredible opportunity.
It was a candid conversation. And ultimately, a hopeful one.

I hope you'll watch and share this with everyone who cares about improving our criminal justice system.

Because I can tell you that the President certainly does.

Thanks,


David Simon


WATCH: The President Interviews the Creator of "The Wire" About the War on Drugs

"What is it that you saw, you learned, you heard, that made you think about the drug trade and its impact on the inner cities that compelled you to then want to tell these stories?" 

A beat reporter in Baltimore and a state senator from Chicago: two men who saw the disproportionate impact of America’s war on drugs firsthand early in their careers.
That experience would shape the way they viewed criminal justice in America and the reforms they hope to make a reality for communities that the drug trade – and the way we currently enforce our drug laws – can tear apart.
This week, that former reporter – David Simon, the creator of HBO’s The Wire – and that former young senator -- President Barack Obama -- sat down to talk honestly about the challenges law enforcement face and the consequences communities bear from the war on drugs. Listen to what they had to say:  
The limited resources that police departments must commit to street-level drug enforcement. The growing incarceration rate that disproportionately affects African-American and Latino communities. The generation of young men who are forced to grow up without a father. The President and David delved into what those challenges mean for Americans across the country – and their hopes for a future that delivers a smarter, fairer, and more just system for all: 

President Obama: If we can start down this path to a more productive way of thinking about drugs and its intersection with law enforcement, 20 years from now we can say to ourselves, well, maybe we got a little smarter. And we didn’t get here overnight; we're not going to get out of it overnight. But the fact that we've got people talking about it in a smarter way gets me a little encouraged.
David Simon: From your mouth to God’s ear.