The government seems willing to pay anything for prisons, prosecutors, military , & drug agents, but nothing for education , housing, medical care or food. Is the purpose of police, courts & prisons to promote a safer society or to punish sin? The status quo of criminal justice answers that basic question with emphasis on protection of traditional morals through massive punishment of drug users. Denunciation of drugs & to lesser degrees pornography, prostitution, adultery, and homosexuality have dominated national rhetoric. Such crimes against morality far exceed each of the other two categories, crimes of property & crimes against persons, as the dominant cause of incarceration today. This state intervention into private life is moving us closer to a totalitarian government.
These drug warriors are the biggest losers in history they think by merely locking up millions of drug users that they will stop the worldwide narcotics trade. This is as dumb as thinking that the bootlegging empire of Al Capone could have been destroyed by arresting drunks on Skid Row.
Why the Bill of Rights exists. It exists because American colonists were so outraged by British police conduct that they overthrew the government. The revolution was a shoot-out with the police. Patriots did not risk their property and their lives for misty ideals. Patriots acted to save themselves from destruction by their own government. A few years later when proponents of a strong national government got the U.S. Constitution adopted, the public immediately demanded a Bill of Rights to ensure that the new regime could never engage in abuses that were standard British procedure.
There is a reason why patriots of the 1700s prized civil liberties so highly. That reason is illustrated by what happened in Germany when the Nazi government repealed civil liberties. A regime that wishes to eliminate guarantees protecting property and lives is a regime that is up to no good. If a regime must attack citizens' property and lives to achieve its goals, the regime merits replacement. Civil liberties are a trip wire alarm against evil.
Evil can appear suddenly, as when Nazis started their regime with wholesale repeat of civil liberties. Or evil can appear so gradually that it seems as normal as smog. Loss of American civil liberties in the name of drugs has been so incremental that some persons can scarcely believe how far drug warriors have moved us toward a totalitarian regime, with assent from judges "so enamored of jurisprudence that they did not even notice that a travesty of justice was being put over."
Drug Warriors & Their Prey : From Police Power to Police State
Richard Lawrence Miller
There isn't going to be any change for the better until the whole narcotics business is taken out of the hands of the crooked and often violent cops who are administering it now. The Drug Czar is a fool in my opinion, and so he's hardly the man to suggest any substantial improvements in this bitterly neglected territory. He wants tougher judges and stiffer sentences, and he particularly wants no interference from doctors, psychiatrists , or any other scientific experts that define drug addiction as the disease it is. I believe that the drug warriors will eventually go down in history as the stumbling morons that they are. Some call them wicked but I call them stupid fucks but then on second thought ignorance is the worst of all evil's so perhaps they are both.