Overview

The war on drugs is a war on ordinary people. Using that premise, historian Richard Lawrence Miller analyzes America's drug war with passion seldom encountered in scholarly writing. Miller 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 alone convicted of one. 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 neighbors. Using voluminous examples of drug law enforcement victimizing 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.

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9780275950422

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Reviews

?Even those disturbed by the war on drugs will find Richard Miller's latest work shocking--like being in a capsizing boat. For those who don't like the term war on drugs this book gives the concept a fresh meaning. For those who argue, such as Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), that a war on drugs has never been fought, Miller pulls together a vast array of circumstances to make the case that war may be too polite a term to describe what is happening in our society....Drug Warriors and Their Prey is rich with insights into the growth of state power--how it grows, how arguments are framed for its expansion, and the careful identification of targets against which to exercise that power.?-Newsbriefs

?Drug Warriors and Their Prey is a rich with insights into the growth of state power-. Of all of these books, Millers is the most jarring, the most insightful, and the most important.?-Newsbrief ?Even those disturbed by the war on drugs will find Richard Miller's latest work shocking--like being in a capsizing boat. For those who don't like the term war on drugs this book gives the concept a fresh meaning. For those who argue, such as Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), that a war on drugs has never been fought, Miller pulls together a vast array of circumstances to make the case that war may be too polite a term to describe what is happening in our society....Drug Warriors and Their Prey is rich with insights into the growth of state power--how it grows, how arguments are framed for its expansion, and the careful identification of targets against which to exercise that power.?-Newsbriefs ?Miller succeeds in revealing a bureaucracy run dangerously amok in what he and a growing chorus of other respected voices believe is a quasi-religious and unwinnable war whose time is past.?-Kansas City Star ?Using chain-of-destruction analysis based on Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of European Jews, Miller argues that the drug war has moved from identification through ostracism and confiscation and that concentration and annihilation are currently 'in prototype stage.' Before readers conclude that Miller's belief that 'the war on drug users masks a war on democracy' is extreme, they may wish to consider the disturbing evidence he amasses. A powerful, passionate argument that the war on drugs serves only authoritarians' interests.?-Booklist Drug Warriors and Their Prey is a rich with insights into the growth of state power-. Of all of these books, Millers is the most jarring, the most insightful, and the most important. -Newsbrief Miller succeeds in revealing a bureaucracy run dangerously amok in what he and a growing chorus of other respected voices believe is a quasi-religious and unwinnable war whose time is past. -Kansas City Star Using chain-of-destruction analysis based on Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of European Jews, Miller argues that the drug war has moved from identification through ostracism and confiscation and that concentration and annihilation are currently 'in prototype stage.' Before readers conclude that Miller's belief that 'the war on drug users masks a war on democracy' is extreme, they may wish to consider the disturbing evidence he amasses. A powerful, passionate argument that the war on drugs serves only authoritarians' interests. -Booklist Even those disturbed by the war on drugs will find Richard Miller's latest work shocking--like being in a capsizing boat. For those who don't like the term war on drugs this book gives the concept a fresh meaning. For those who argue, such as Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-NY), that a war on drugs has never been fought, Miller pulls together a vast array of circumstances to make the case that war may be too polite a term to describe what is happening in our society....Drug Warriors and Their Prey is rich with insights into the growth of state power--how it grows, how arguments are framed for its expansion, and the careful identification of targets against which to exercise that power. -Newsbriefs

Author Information

RICHARD LAWRENCE MILLER is an independent scholar. He is the author of Heritage of Fear: Illusion and Reality in the Cold War (1988), Truman: The Rise to Power (1985), The Case for Legalizing Drugs (Praeger, 1991), and the recently published Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust (Praeger, 1995).

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