Drug Warriors and Their Prey
a must-read for the Holocaust Museum
“Drug Warriors and their Prey” is a depressing read for folks who believe in American freedom. Author Richard Miller demonstrates spot-on parallels between Nazi Germany and Drug War America. In Nazi Germany, the state identified an outlaw class that could be mistreated at will by the authorities, albeit usually with a thin veneer of ad hoc legal justifications for the abuse. Just so in Drug War America, the courts have worked with police to keep the Constitution and the Bill of Rights from interfering with the full-court harassment of the state’s enemies, who are not Jews this time but “drug users” — that is to say users of drugs that are considered immoral, since the use of drugs like alcohol and nicotine do not yet bring the wrath of the state down on one’s head. Indeed, anti-drug ads for the shamelessly mendacious Partnership for a Drug Free America were historically financed by companies like Anheuser Busch and Phillip Morris. These were then not really nonprofit ads, of course, but rather ads promoting the strengthening of a monopoly on the sale of psychoactive substances. Inspired by the winks of politicians and judges, American police forces are now free to wreck houses and lives in the search for substances of which politicians disapprove.
The full evil of today’s War on Drugs can only be seen, however, when we consider that psychoactive drugs have not just been used for hedonism in the past — despite the attempts of fascists like William Bennett to rewrite history to that effect — but drugs have inspired entire religions, as the use of psychedelic soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion, the coca leaf was a sort of divinity for the Peruvian Indians, and shrooms were used in the religious practices of the Maya.
I’m learning a lot from Miller, especially thanks to the infuriating examples that he provides of how law enforcement takes civil rights and civil liberties with a huge grain of salt in the age of the Drug War, at least in those cases where they don’t simply laugh off those quaint concepts altogether. He describes club-wielding swat team members who arrive on the scene already hyped up, as if coming from a nearby high-school pep rally, kick down, and/or axe, doors, quite unnecessarily and then proceed to destroy the suspect’s family room, as the cowering occupants start murmuring what they’re sure will be their final prayers. To add insult to this government-sanctioned injury, there is no compensation for a failed raid and the residents are often left with the bill for the wrongly inflicted damages. Sure, they might get a verbal apology, but then it’s just as likely that the departing he-men will urinate on what’s left of their house, like dogs marking their territory. Sometimes the cops leave behind triumphal graffiti such as “LAPD RULES!” (And yet I can’t seem to convince BLM fans that the Drug War is the driving force behind police brutality against minorities!)
This is why I have written to both the Holocaust Museum and to various Black leaders, urging them to denounce the Drug War root and branch. My lengthy letters on this subject to the DC Holocaust Museum have been thus far ignored. In the 1980s, I wrote to the Black mayor of Richmond urging him to end the Drug War which was killing Blacks every day due to the inner-city gunfire brought about by prohibition. To his credit, Mayor Roy West responded to my suggestion — and this in the age before email! — but I was already too late: he had already swallowed the full-press drug-war propaganda of the 1980s and was convinced that any level of violence — ANY LEVEL — was preferable to renouncing the war on godsend medicines — er, I mean the war on drugs, of course.
Miller explains how the Nixon administration met with 48 television producers to shape a message about drugs in America’s favorite shows, including “Dragnet,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Room 222,” “Mod Squad,” and “The FBI.” This strategy would have sounded familiar to Goebbels. As Miller observes, “In Germany, gratuitous anti-Semitic scenes were routine even in movies where the plot had nothing to do with that topic.”
I see this Nazi-style propaganda today in modern movies. I’ll be watching an engrossing suspense flick, only to suddenly get outraged by a throwaway line that slanders the drugs of which politicians disapprove. Like in the movie “Trader,” which at first promised to be a damning social commentary on greed and self-absorption. The trader was an all-American… until, that is, she increased her mental focus with drugs prescribed for ADHD. So let me get this straight: it would have been fine for her kids to use the stuff to improve their reading skills, but it’s a sin for her to use the drug in order to trade more accurately and quickly? How do ya figure that, exactly?
The slander came when the dealer/friend teased the trader over the phone for using “immoral” drugs, among which substances he included not just speed, but LSD and Ecstasy as well. That’s how low we’ve sunk in America: even drug dealers are convinced that it’s immoral to use drugs that improve mentation and could bring real peace and even provide self-insight. Moreover, the use of drugs like speed is actually COMMON SENSE for day trading, wherein one has to be alert 24/7. Sure, such use has to be done advisedly, lest one become a hated “junkie” — which the Drug Warrior would love, by the way, because it boosts the bottom line of the counselors and police — but then one has to be careful performing any risky activity. Horseback riding injures 100,000 Americans a year and is responsible for more traumatic brain injury than any other sport, but that does not mean that we have to outlaw horseback riding. We have to promote education!
I’ll have more to say about Miller’s fantastic book soon on this page — and there’s a lot to say, since Miller is one of the few Americans who seems to grasp the true dystopian enormity of the status quo. But for now, I’d like to share my review of his book that I posted on Archive.org today, a book that should have a lot of praise there but which I appear to be the first to have even rated. (Spoiler alert: I gave it a 5 out of 5).
My review on Archive.org
of “Drug Warriors and their Prey: From Police Power to Police State,” by Richard Lawrence Miller
This is the book that government does not want you to read: the same government that has been working hand-in-glove with TV and movie producers to convince you that drug users are scumbags. Miller draws eerie spot-on parallels between Nazi Germany and Drug War America. Yesterday the victims were the Jews, today the victims are drug users. They are victimized because of their status, not because of their behavior. Both must be stripped of rights, ostracized, thrown in prison, have their houses confiscated, and be denied the right to vote. Instead of ID’ing Jews with a star, today’s social pariah is ID’d via drug testing. Democracy might not survive the Drug War, which has already led to the election of Donald Trump thanks to the removal of millions of minorities from the voting rolls. So read this while the government will still let you. It’s already dangerous to challenge Drug War propaganda, but we’re not quite at the point where it’s actually illegal.