Drug War Addiction by Sheriff Bill Masters

"An early pioneer... Bill has let the genie out of the bottle... He has an awful lot of courage for stating this... If you have a drug problem you should go to the doctor, not to jail."

-- Sheriff Bob Braudis, Pitkin County, Colorado

Sheriff Bill Masters fought the "Drug War." He was good at it. He even won an award from the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Through his real-world experiences as a law officer, Masters concluded drug prohibition must be repealed. He discovered the drug war is itself an addiction, more damaging to the fabric of American society than drugs could ever be." Scholars and policy leaders such as Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, and Governor Gary Johnson agree: the drug war does more harm than good and corrupts law enforcement, politics, and community values. Masters has served as sheriff of San Miguel County (Telluride), Colorado, since 1979, and he is the nation's first Libertarian sheriff. He argues police should spend their time getting violent criminals off the streets. He also seeks cultural renewal in our nation by returning to the principles of personal responsibility, simple laws, and limited government.

In this book, Sheriff Bill Masters explains why we need to kick our nation's drug war addiction.

Chapter Summaries
Introduction "Have you checked out... the endless loss of individual rights in the name of the drug war? When reformers point to the flaws and problems of the drug war, the warriors' answer is to do more of it. More money. More guns. More authoritarian control. Isn't that the response of all addicts?"

1. 'Collateral' Damage in the War on Drugs "[W]hen innocent children, mothers, and fathers are killed in the drug war, a lot of people shrug their shoulders and accept those deaths as the costs of waging the war."

2. Getting Our Priorities Straight "What kind of peace officer, what kind of society would allow a peace officer to use one minute of time, spend one dollar, or use any jail cell for a marijuana smoker, when vicious child murderers are on the loose?"

3. Drug Dealer Whack-A-Mole
"'When a bust goes down, the price goes up.' That was Rick the Stick's 'business' motto."

4. Police Integrity: A Post-Mortem "Our police departments suffer corruption as a direct result of drug prohibition. The most obvious problem is that police officers can make big money dealing drugs, protecting drug dealers, or simply looking the other way. But drug prohibition also creates problems that aren't so obvious."

5. The Military and Foreign Intervention "Zeke [Hernandez] was an 18-year-old high school student who stumbled upon a group of camouflaged and armed U.S. Marines assigned to Joint Task Force Six drug interdiction team. The Marines shot and killed young Zeke, mistaking him for a drug runner."

6. Drug Warriors Tilting at Windmills "Violence in drug sales is caused by prohibition, not by the drugs themselves. Similarly, during alcohol prohibition, violent gangsters ran illegal alcohol."

7. Drug Wars and Gun Wars "Conservatives who care about the right to bear arms should also care about repealing drug prohibition. Besides the fact that prohibition drives the violence that's behind the sentiment to ban guns, drug prohibition and gun prohibition are rooted in the exact same social philosophy. Instead of regulating violent behavior, prohibitionists want to regulate inanimate objects. Historically, gun control is intimately linked to drug prohibition, as when alcohol prohibition led to the gangster violence, which became a pretext for passage of the 1934 National Firearms Act, the first federal gun legislation to apply to the general population. Liberals who are sensitive to the injustices of drug prohibition should also be wary of gun restrictions."

8. A Spiritual Matter "Drug addiction is the ultimate consequence of the notion that happiness is divorced from action and from a person's character. When a person feels so empty inside, all those drugs are supposed to fill the void. Ultimately, abusing drugs is like drinking sand when you're dying of thirst."

9. Simple Laws: Pathway to Freedom "Have you taken up your duty, not just to guard the Second Amendment, but are you truly the shield, the protector, of the beautiful but fragile lady we call liberty? ...Pass only the laws that are really necessary. Keep them few in number, and make them easy enough for a child to read and understand. If we took this simple advice to heart, we would find new respect for, and honor in, our government and its institutions."

Appendix A: A Biography of Sheriff Bill Masters (by Nancy Lofholm)
Appendix B: A Brief History of the Drug War (by Stephen Raher)
To read more about Sheriff Bill Masters, see his web page at www.libertybill.net.