"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.
5% of proceeds from the sale of the above product will go toward getting Brian a decent haircut for once. Honestly. 9% will go toward shoes. 50% will go toward miscellaneous. 9% of the remainder will go toward relaxation, which could encompass anything from a spin around town to an outdoor barbecue at Brian's brother's house in Stanardsville (both gas and the ice-cream cake that Brian usually supplies).
You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.
A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.
The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)
If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.
PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.
Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)
Selected Bibliography
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
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