Azia: Hey guys, it is Monday, March 7. I am Azia Celestino, and Channel One News starts right now.
First up today, former first lady Nancy Reagan passed away yesterday. She was
94 years old and suffered heart failure. But her story started not in politics,rather, in Hollywood.
She arrived in Hollywood as actress Nancy Davis. That is where she met her future husband, actor Ronald Reagan. After appearing in 11 films, she became a full-time mom.Soon after that she became first lady of California, then first lady of the United States in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president.
And as they settled into the White House,Mrs. Reagan launched an ambitious renovation of the White House.She then moved onto her signature policy issue, the war on drugs. Her "just say no" campaign swept across the country and into schools. She even became the first first lady to address the United Nations General Assembly and found words for Ronald Reagan even when he couldn't.
After leaving the White House, she devoted her life to taking care of President Ronald Reagan, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease until he died in 2004. Historians say her last years were lonely as she grew frail and older, but she still managed to make some public appearances.
All right, up next: The SAT gets an upgrade.
Azia: The SAT, a standardized exam used for college admissions, just got an update. Maggie is here to tell us more.
Maggie: Yeah, the College Board hopes that this new test will better measure a student's readiness for college and career.
Like Nouri Hassan of New Jersey, you may have been among the first round of high school students who took the new SAT this weekend.
Nouri Hassan: It was a little more easier to understand than the old SAT. And the math — there was definitely a lot more data, a lot more tables, graphs.
Maggie: The new test is supposed to better reflect what students are learning inside the classroom, with the hopes of creating a level playing field for students who can't afford tutors.
Among the changes:The new test has fewer questions than the current test. It eliminates vocabulary words students rarely use. There is no penalty for guessing answers, and the essay portion is now optional.
Lee Weiss: This is not rocket science, preparing for the SAT.
Maggie: Lee Weiss is vice president of Kaplan Test Prep.
Weiss: The College Board has lost ground to ACT over the last few years. The SAT is the second most popular admissions test in the U.S. for college students, behind the ACT, so a lot of changes have been made perhaps to catch up to the ACT.
Maggie: But some critics say taking the new test is a gamble.
Man: Nobody wants to buy a product the first day it's out on the market because they don't know what could go wrong with it.
Maggie: With the old SAT, students would find out their scorein aboutfour weeks, but with the new test,results can take six to eight weeks because the score reports are that much more complex.
Azia: Thanks,Maggie.
Okay, after the break, we head to the frontlines of a decades-old war.
Azia: Earlier in the show, we covered the death of former first lady Nancy Reagan.One of her biggest missions was pushing anti-drug efforts across the country with her "just say no" campaign. It was all part of America's controversial war on drugs.
But lately many have been asking if this is a war we should still be fighting. We wanted to get a better understanding, so we sent Tom Hanson on a year-long investigation to learn more.
Tom: We are fighting back on every front against an enemy crossing into our country through tunnels, submarines, drones, even inside the human body. And the death toll is climbing.
Woman: Idon’t want to live my life this way. I’m gonna end up dead or in prison.
Tom: One of America's longest, most expensive wars ever — the war on drugs. To date, it has cost more than our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq or Vietnam. So after more than 40 years of fighting,I wanted to find out: are we winning this war?
My investigation took me around the world, down a rabbit hole to places few people go...
When you go on patrols like these, do you ever get nervous?
Vigilante: No.
Tom: …witnessing things I couldn't believe…
In the bumper we found 25 to30 pounds of crystal meth.
…an underground world of drugs and violence.
This is a house that was caught in the middle of a gun battle. You can see that it was sprayed with bullets.
People are just using out in the open. I have to admit it is pretty shocking.
When you see the scars on your arms, what do you think?
Man: I regret, but I use again, and I forget.
Tom: I found, like so many others, this war has a complex history. Recreational drug use really surfaced in the U.S. in the 1800s after the Civil War, and drugs like opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine were legal.
Ethan Nadelmann: In the 19th century, so long as most consumers of opiate drugs were middle-aged white women, nobody thought to make it illegal. Cocaine was widely used in the late 19th century. Coca-Cola had cocaine in it until the year 1900.
Tom: But because of rising addiction rates and a rising concern of crimes by minorities on drugs, the U.S. passed its first drug ban in 1914, which made it illegal to manufacture marijuana, cocaine, heroin and morphine. But what is considered the modern drug war didn't come about until the late 60s.
Nadelmann: The real beginnings of the modern American war on drugs was Richard Nixon.
President Richard Nixon: America's public enemy number one is drug abuse.
Nadelmann: It was a period where drug use was growing.You had a huge culture conflict between Nixon and the older generation and a sort of younger generation that was being more rebellious. So that's when you saw the dramatic escalation of the war on drugs.
Nixon: In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.
Tom: It was the height of the hippie movement. Free love and drugs ruled, and everyone wanted to appear tough on drugs.By 1973 the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, was created to monitor drug production all over the world.
And the concept of a drug-free world took hold — what has turned out to be an impossible task.
Tom: We have heard the mantra "a drug-free world" — is that actually possible?
SenatorChuck Grassley: No.
Tom: Would you care to elaborate on that?
Grassley: No.
Tom: Since 1971 the U.S. has spent more than a trillion dollars fighting the war on drugs, filling up half of our federal prison space with drug offenders. Yet nearly 1 in
10Americans admit to taking illegal drugs regularly. The drug trade itself is booming.
DEA agent: It's a supply-and-demand business. If we continue to demand the substance, somebody is going to supply it.
Tom: In fact, the illegal drug business is a global industry that rivals the oil trade, reaching all parts of the world.
Nadelmann: If you dip your hand down almost anywhere from Australia, New Zealand, to Europe, to the Middle East, you'll find drug markets.
DEAagent: We go after the biggest and the baddest of the drug dealers in the world. Not just in America — any place in the world, we're coming for you if you're dealing hard narcotics.
Tom: But many are asking what this war is good for, saying fighting for a drug-free world is a losing battle.
Nadelmann: The waron drugs cannot be won. There's no way to win a war against a global commodities market.
Tom: A recent report by some of the world’s brightest minds — 21 Nobel Prize winners — has called for an end to the war on drugs, saying it has caused more problems than it has solved: an unfair jail system in America, an industry run by violent gangs who operate in the shadows, stronger terror groups and no major impact on addiction or drug abuse. Is it time for us to surrender?
Nadelmann: The war on drugs has got to end. It's crazy to keep spending all this money locking people up, throwing money down the drain on approaches that don't work.
Tom: At what point would you call off the war on drugs?
Grassley: I don't think you can call off the war, anymore than you would call off the war on poverty. You're not going to get everybody out of poverty; you’re not going to get everybody out of drugs. But you keep fighting the war anyway.
Tom: Over the next few weeks, we will take you to the frontlines…
Half an ounce of meth — that is going to land these people some felony charges.
…to meet the soldiers…
We are about to check out the spot where one of their members died.
…and the victims…
Man: This is my brother. He was kidnapped on July 5, 2012.
Tom: …of the war on drugs.Tom Hanson, Channel One News.
Azia: To hear from Tom and our producer,Demetrius, about what it was like to research this series and travel to different parts of the globe to get the story,just head to ChannelOne.com.
All right, guys, the series continues tomorrow, and that is when we will see you right back here.
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