Richard Lawrence Miller's book Drug Warriors & Their Prey: From Police Power To Police State (Praeger Publishers, 1996) is a valuable addition to the arsenal of activists against both the drug war and the civil forfeiture laws that war has spawned. The book describes the process by which minorities in a society are systematically destroyed, and the parallels between the war on drugs and the holocaust in Nazi Germany. Nor is this mere hyperbole.
Miller is also the author of Nazi Justiz:
Law of the Holocaust (Praeger Publishers, 1995), an investigation of
Nazi jurisprudence. He is more than qualified to describe the parallels
between the Nazi legal system and the elements of Nazi law
which are being introduced into our legal system under the war on drugs.
Both books have the same structure. They are divided
into chapters covering the stages of destruction: identification,
ostracism, confiscation, concentration, and annihilation. Each has
extensive footnotes. Drug Warriors & Their Prey provides
more than 1200 footnotes documenting the legal decisions, legislation,
and horror stories he describes.
I first read Drug Warriors when a friend loaned
it to me. Once I'd finished it, I ordered a copy from a local bookstore.
This
book will go onto my permanent reference shelf.
Before a group can be targeted for destruction, they must be identified. The first chapter of Drug Warriors describes the means by which drug users are ferreted out. Nazis used pseudo-scientific criteria to identify Jews. The drug warriors rely on "status crime" statutes which use blood and excreta to identify drug users, rather than behavior--in large part because neither physical appearance nor behavior can reliably identify drug users.
"The law does not care if tests used to detect
illicit drug users fail to demonstrate that users are impaired. The
law does not
care if users behave in ordinary ways.
A statute creating a status crime targets ordinary people. That is
its purpose. If
illicit drug users acted in ways that distinguished
them from nonusers, a status crime statute would be unnecessary." (p. 9)
This chapter also documents the use of "status immunity" for drug warriors
(allowing them to manufacture, deal and use drugs in
pursuit of undercover victories), use of a medical paradigm to justify
coercive "treatment" of drug users, and the widespread use of propaganda
to justify increasingly draconian attacks on drug users.
Chapter 2 describes the process of ostracism:
"Having seen how a group of ordinary people
is identified so it can be destroyed, we are ready to consider another
element
of the destruction process: ostracism.
The hate propaganda we examined in the previous chapter not only serves
to identify
victims. Its defamations promote public
loathing of victims, nurturing an atmosphere where acts of ostracism become
natural. Ostracism seeks to prevent the targeted
group from surviving in normal society. Ostracism can come from private
individuals, such as employers who fire competent
drug users. Ostracism can also come from government, through means
such as laws directing physicians to violate
professional confidentiality by reporting patients' illicit drug use to
state
authorities. Restricting access to employment
and health care are just two of many ways to impede survival." (. 35)
This chapter details the many ways in which drug warriors seek to deprive
drug users of their legal rights. The loss by drug users
of rights to otherwise legal behaviors (housing near schools, to fishing
or hunting licenses, to drivers' licenses and so forth) are
documented, along with propaganda and legislation aimed at coercing
employers and landlords into ostracizing drug users. The
gravest threat is the erosion of drug users' constitutional rights
to free speech, to obtain counsel and to trials, and against
unreasonable search & seizure, excessive fines and self-incrimination--these
affect all of us.
The purpose of all this?
"There are three ways to survive: gainful
employment, welfare, or crime. By losing the possibility of employment,
drug
users must resort to welfare or crime.
Yet drug warriors seek even to cut off welfare, as through evictions from
public
housing in Missouri. Drug warriors want
to leave drug users with one option for survival: crime. The
public will then
accept merciless attacks on drug users, because
there will be a high correlation between drug use and predatory
criminality. But the correlation will
have nothing to do with pharmaceutical chemistry. Instead it will
be caused by the
setting--the laws--in which drug use is forced
to occur. In order to encourage destruction of drug users, drug warriors
encourage an increase in predatory crime."
(p. 88)
The chapter on confiscation is most relevant to F.E.A.R.
supporters. Miller describes the two previous U.S. experiences with
mass confiscation of private property: the liberation of slaves
following the Civil War, and the property left behind when
Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. He discusses
the techniques of seizure, the original intent of seizure
laws from the earliest days of the republic, and the way in which drug
warriors have twisted those laws (and passed new ones) to
evade limits on police power.
He describes the difference between remedial and
punitive seizures, punishment versus revenue, punishment of the innocent,
and the use of civil forfeiture to promote criminal convictions (as
by ensuring the defendent cannot afford legal counsel, or by using forfeiture
as leverage to force plea bargains). An important aspect of all this
is the corruption of police departments and police
agencies by the "bounty" system that rewards aggressive seizures (justified
or not) with a share of the spoils, as well as the lack of accountability
they enjoy. It is documented in appalling detail by 370 footnotes.
Chapters 4 and 5, covering concentration and annihilation
respectively, are considerably shorter. The war on drug users has
not
progressed--yet--beyond the use of prison to concentrate non-violent
drug users, and the transformation of medical care providers
into de facto drug police (through reporting requirements) to dissuade
drug users from seeking medical care. Nonetheless, the
example of the Holocaust is not to be taken lightly. Not even
the most ardent Nazi knew in 1933 that the ultimate result of their
policies would be wholesale murder of innocent Jews.
In his Coda to the book, Miller writes:
"...We comfortably
tolerate an unspecified but noticeable level of unemployment. Ditto
poverty, automobile accidents,
insufficient health care, reduced public transit
availability...even burglary and car theft....
"Nonetheless, drug
warriors have established and maintained a national consensus that America
must become free of
drug use. By accepting an impossible
goal and by accepting the idea that it must be achieved through police
power, citizens
relinquish more and more rights and revenue
to police upon demand by drug war leaders. Continued acquiescence
to these
escalating demands should create a police
state.
"I believe authoritarians
are manufacturing and manipulating public fears about drug use in order
to create a police state
where a much broader agenda of social control
can be implemented...After all, what is the vision of a Drug-Free America?
Millions in prison or slave labor, and only
enthusiastic supporters of government policy allowed to hold jobs, attend
school,
have children, drive cars, own property.
This is the combined vision of utopia held forth by Nancy Reagan, Ronald
Reagan,
George Bush, William Bennett, Daryl Gates,
and thousands of other drug warriors." (p. 190-191)
Drug Warriors & Their Prey is a valuable reference work.
My one criticism of the book falls into the "embarassment of riches"
category. The book is so full of horror stories that finding
one again after you've put the book down can be difficult. The index
is
only four pages long, far too short for a book with 1200 citations.
While Miller provides citations demonstrating that several of the
asset forfeiture provisions in current law were termed Crimes Against
Humanity at the Nuremburg trials following World War II,
the index makes no direct reference to any of them.
Nonetheless, I recommend this book to everyone who
is concerned about the abuse of civil forfeiture laws by federal, state
and
local governments. Anyone interested in more detailed comparison
of drug law to Nazi law would be wise to read his previous
book (Nazi Justiz) as well.