Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State

The war on drugs is a war on ordinary people. Using that premise, this book analyses America’s drug war. It presents numerous examples of drug law enforcement gone amok, as police and courts threaten the happiness, property and even lives of victims, some of whom are never charged with a drug crime, let aone convicted of one. Richard Lawrence Miller not only argues that criminal justice zealots are harming the democracy they are sworn to protect, but that authoritarians unfriendly to democracy are stoking public fear in order to convince citizens to relinquish traditional legal rights. Those are the very rights that thwart implementation of an agenda of social control through government power. Miller contends that an imaginary drug crisis has been manufactured by authoritarians in order to mask their war on democracy. He not only examines numerous civil rights sacrificed in the name of drugs, but demonstrates how their loss harms ordinary Americans in their everyday lives. Showing how the war on drug users fits into a destruction process that can lead to mass murder, Miller calls for an end to the war before it proceeds deeper into the destruction process. This is a book for anyone who wonders about the value of civil liberties, and for anyone who wonders why people seek to destroy their neighbours. Using many examples of drug law enforcement victimising blameless people, this book demonstrates how the loss of civil liberties in the name of drugs threatens law-abiding Americans at work and at home. Richard Lawrence Miller is the author of Heritage of Fear: Illusion and Reality in the Cold War , Truman: The Rise to Power , The Case for Legalizing Drugs and Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust .