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Drug War Addiction is available from the publisher at 1.800.374.4049 ($10.95).

Drug War Addiction
Notes from the Front Lines of America's #1 Policy Disaster

Written by Sheriff Bill Masters, Drug War Addiction (136 pages) was published in 2001 by Accurate Press (St. Louis, Missouri). The cover image is available in high resolution. The photograph used for the cover was taken by David Shinn.

Sheriff Bob Braudis (Pitkin County, Colorado), said, "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 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 Through his real-world experiences as a law officer, Masters concluded drug prohibition must be repealed.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.

Masters has served as sheriff of San Miguel County (County Seat: Telluride), Colorado, since 1980, 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)

The Cato Institute

On March 13, 2002, Sheriff Masters spoke about Drug War Addiction at The Cato Institute in Washington, DC. Cato has made a video and audio file of the event available on the internet. Former Federal Prosecutor William Otis offers criticism.

Review by Judge John L. Kane

John L. Kane, Senior U. S. District Court Judge in Denver, reviewed Drug War Addiction for the Sunday, February 24, 2002, edition of the Denver Post, page 3EE.

Sheriff levels blast at Drug War

Years ago, the sheriff of a Colorado mountain county was approached by an informant. A load of meth was entering the state from California.

The tip was good: The informant knew who was picking up the load, what type of car would be used, the date it was due to arrive and where it was going. The dealers lived in a neighboring county. The sheriff filed his report with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and passed the tip on to the sheriff in the county where the dealers lived.

Imagine his surprise when, more than a year later, the very sheriff he had warned was arrested along with key members of his staff for running the meth-dealing ring.

Was that the defining moment for Bill Masters, sheriff of San Miguel County -- the idealistic officer who received the informant's tip and dutifully passed it on? He served on the front line of the War on Drugs even before he was appointed sheriff in 1979 [actually 1980]. He is the recipient of an award for outstanding achievement from the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Masters had made numerous drug-related arrests and led countless more investigations. Today, he is one of this county's leading opponents of the drug war. In "Drug War Addiction," Masters tells us what knocked him off the war horse.

The son of a Marine who served in the South Pacific during World War II, Masters grew up in Los Angeles. After enlisting in the Coast Guard, he became a law enforcement officer. First elected as a Republican and then as a Libertarian who won 80 percent of the vote, he is now in his fifth term as sheriff of San Miguel County.

When Sheriff Masters takes us along with him on police training, investigations and arrests, he clearly knows whereof he speaks. It is his unique vantage point that makes "Drug War Addiction" such a valuable addition to the growing dialogue on the far-reaching effects of out country's most recent experiment with Prohibition. Indeed, according to Masters, America is addicted to its domestic war.

"The first way the drug war has become an addiction," he writes, "is obvious: law enforcement agencies are addicted to the money." Not only does that enable police departments to pay the salaries of additional staff, it also buys them guns and high-tech surveillance equipment. As famed economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman has pointed out, local agencies benefit not just from this multibillion-dollar bonanza, but from the forfeiture of assets of suspected drug dealers.

In making them a beneficiary of its largesse, the drug war at the same time diverts law enforcement from pursuing its primary mission and appointed task of protecting the public against violent crime.

In regard to forfeiture, it isn't even necessary to charge or convict a suspect in order to seize his property; in fact, it's far simpler to threaten prosecution and take property in lieu of giving the suspect his day in court. Herein lies Master's second powerful point; the extent to which police departments are corrupted by drug prohibition.

It is often said that familiarity breeds contempt. It is equally true that familiarity breeds corruption. While it is impossible to know with the precision the extent to which law enforcement has been corrupted by the drug war because many infractions amount to just looking the other way or taking "a little cream off the top" from known dealers. The General Accounting Office has found that between 1993 and 1997, on average, half of all FBI - led - investgations into police misconduct were related to drug offenses. These investigation go all the way up to theft, perjury and murder.

The human face Masters puts on the corruption of law enforcement is his most indelible contribution. "Drug War Addiction" refreshes the national dialogue with poignant examples that bring the devastation and apparent futility of the War on Drugs all too painfully close to our doors. Masters writes from the battle zone. Both supporters of the drug war and those who believe it is a failure will benefit from this brave warrior's message.

DRCNet Interview

The Week Online with DRCNet (Issue #220), January 18, 2002, a publication of the Drug Reform Coordination Network, published an interview with Sheriff Masters. The interview was reprinted in LP News.

Q: You've been sheriff for 22 years. What prompted you to write this book now?

Sheriff Bill Masters: I've been speaking my mind on this and other issues for awhile now, even though I bought into the drug war when I became a cop. I thought it was my duty to enforce the drug laws. I had a policeman mentality, which is not bad, except when the laws you're enforcing become oppressive. But I'm basically a Barry Goldwater-style conservative, and I think people should control their own bodies. After awhile, I saw that we spend more and more money and arrest more and more people and have more and more drugs. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this policy is not working. People need to look at this rationally and ask if this is effective. Do we have a healthier society because of drug prohibition? Drug dealers are certainly wealthy because of it. The reason drugs have expanded so much is there is a profit to be made in drug dealing. We need to eliminate that profit motive. At any rate, some libertarian friends of mine looked at some of my speeches and told me I needed to write a book. I played around with writing some novels, but kept going back to the abundance of laws that try to control human behavior. So I tied to write about libertarian ideas and about the drug war. I passed it around to some literary critics in the area, and they said no one would ever publish it. But we got publishers bidding on it. We might even sell a few.

Q: What kind of reaction are you getting from the law enforcement community? What about the feds?

Masters: Definitely a mixed bag. A few sheriffs and others come out and say "Bill, you're absolutely right." But those are people who are very secure in their positions. They have strong community support because they are stand-up people. Others feel they have to be strong drug warriors, they say the community demands it. But I tell them that maybe they're misjudging their public. They don't want to hear that, but you have to lie to yourself if you think you can arrest yourself out of this problem. But I did that for years, I played the hard guy, I used it to get elected. As for the DEA, they haven't said anything. They've given me assistance every time I called them, they haven't given me a hard time, they've acted professionally around me.

Q: Colorado drug laws are still on the books. You presumably have to enforce those laws. What, given your views on drug prohibition, do you do differently?

Masters: First off, police officers have tremendous amounts of discretion, and we consciously choose our priorities. If there's a crime against a person, that's top priority and everything else stops. Same thing with traffic problems, we take them seriously, too. But we have to take the drug issue seriously, too; we don't want people thinking they can come here and be meth heads. About 10% of our arrests are for drugs. As for raids, I've learned I was doing a disservice to my community. We've got to be more careful in the way we go out and apprehend drug users. Cops tend to go after drug people and execute drug warrants as if they are up against bank robbers, but more often than not, there aren't any guns. Yet here we were in full SWAT mode running around with no-knock warrants, endangering innocent parties in the home, children, roommates. When you look at the number of police killings, both the number of officers being killed and the number of people officers are killing have decreased, except when it comes to drug raids. Innocent people are being killed in drug raids because the informant is wrong, they hit the wrong house, the cops were too hyped-up and worried about their own protection. Our entire judicial district has taken a different stand: Now they are reluctant to give no-knock warrants because there were too many people killed, too many officers injured. Another example is the roadblocks in neighboring counties aimed at catching people coming and leaving the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I don't do the roadblocks, it's a tactic I don't like using under any circumstances, except maybe if a desperado was on the loose. I don't even use checkpoints for drunk driving. I think it's un-American. And those checkpoints found very few drugs and made a lot of people angry. But a few years ago, I would have been out doing the same thing.

Q: What are the most important negative impacts of drug prohibition on law enforcement?

Masters: Corruption. The corruption not just of law enforcement but the entire criminal justice system, and not just in the sense of being bought off, but in that it seems the bottom line is you treat people differently depending on who they are. If you're the president's wife and have a drug problem, you get a clinic named after you. If you're poor or black or Hispanic, you languish in jail. It goes all the way from who gets stopped, to who gets prosecuted, to who goes to prison and who goes to rehab. It hasn't really hit the kids in suburbia or the kids of the rich. That is a tarnish on all of our badges. Then there is plain old corruption. There are a lot of people addicted to drug money and some of them are in law enforcement. The whole damn department in the county next door is involved in a meth ring, and I see those officers as victims of the system as well. One of them was a great officer, very friendly, he was busted, he [hanged] himself in jail last week awaiting transfer to the federal pen. One more victim of the whole American drug war culture. Yeah, he was a crooked cop, but he wouldn't have been if we didn't have this system.

Q: Do you make a distinction between drug use and abuse?

Masters: Absolutely. One of the problems with our existing laws is we make no distinction. The laws portray people who possess any drugs as criminals. But with legal drugs, such as alcohol, we set limits; we have a system with alcohol that maintains individual responsibility. That seems more sensible than making anyone who uses drugs or possesses drugs a criminal.

Q: Do you not fear an explosion of drug use if drugs were more easily available?

Masters: I always ask people who say that "Are you going to start taking them?" People who want drugs in America can go out and get them right now. This existing situation is the worst possible, the whole thing is driven underground and it's completely out of any sort of government or social control. We have to bring it above ground, away from the criminal element, and have an organized system to distribute it to adults that we will hold responsible for actions. That's what we do with alcohol and you don't see guys in trench coats down at the schoolyard trying to sell alcohol. I think we would have some people who have no self- control and that would be a problem, but we have that problem today.

Q: What would an ideal drug policy consist of? Opponents of reform always conjure up images of crack in vending machines.

Masters: No, that's what we have now. I want to see a regulated system of distribution done through the medical and pharmacological community for those people -- serious heroin or meth users -- who need the stuff, and that system needs to offer addicts some sort of rehabilitation. We've done this before; it worked well in the 1920s, before the federal government prevented doctors from prescribing morphine to addicts. Beyond that, marijuana should just be legalized, except you shouldn't be blowing dope in your car, or consume it in public. Same as alcohol. We don't allow people to walk around our town drinking liquor. I don't want my kids exposed to this stuff. That's why you have bars or your own home. I would concentrate law enforcement resources on things like driving under the influence, you have to keep that aspect of it. You can't be harming others.

Rocky Mountain News

Deborah Frazier wrote a December 10, 2001, article for the Rocky Mountain News titled, "Sheriff: U.S. drug policy a failure."

San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters is taking his war against drugs on the road.

"America's drug policy is a failure. We need to admit that and switch to a system of careful control," Masters said.

Masters, a Republican turned Libertarian, was elected in 1979 [actually appointed in 1980] in a county that includes Telluride.

"The plan is not to have heroin stores everywhere, but a system where people can clearly see all the drugs and know they don't need them," he said.

"The police and the politicians need to admit they've failed."

That's also the message in his book, Drug War Addiction: Notes From the Front Lines of America's No. 1 Policy Disaster, published by Accurate Press of St. Louis and due out this month.

The drug war, which reportedly costs every citizen $200 a year, has failed to curb gang warfare, drug-related murders and robberies, although half the inmates in federal prison are serving terms for drug offenses, he said.

"We are a drug culture. It's encouraged by ads for Prozac, Ritalin and Viagra," said Masters, who tries to avoid all drugs, but occasionally takes ibuprofen.

"I know that when I take something, it affects me."

Some drugs should be available, he said.

"Take medical marijuana. You have to be deathly ill from chemotherapy, suffering from cancer and lying on the bathroom floor vomiting and crying," he said.

"How can we be so cruel?"

For all the millions of dollars spent and thousands of people jailed, the same percentage of the population -- 1 percent -- is addicted to heroin and morphine today as were in 1900, Masters said.

"If people like drug killings, meth labs, overdoses, police corruption and drug-related crimes, then we have the perfect drug policy," he said.

"Thirty years ago, we had a little tiny drug problem.

"Now the quantity and quality are better, and it's all over the place." At his talks on the subject in western Colorado, the public has been supportive, Masters said.

"I've had people in their 80s drive hundreds of miles to my office after they heard me speak just to tell me they agree," Masters said.

Colorado Springs Gazette

Barry Bortnick wrote an article for the December 10, 2001, edition of The Gazette titled, "Sheriff scoffs at drug war."

Longtime San Miguel County Sheriff Bill Masters used to be a hard-charging warrior in the fight against drugs. He even got an award from the Drug Enforcement Agency for a job well done.

But now the state's only Libertarian lawman rides to his own tune. He turns down federal grants for drug enforcement programs and contends the nation would be better off if narcotics were legal.

It's a view Masters says state leaders, government officials and other sheriffs agree with, even though few take that stand in public.

"Privately, many public officials say I am right, but they can't say that publicly because the community won't support them," Masters said.

Masters outlined his anti-drug war argument during a lecture Wednesday at the University of Colorado and in a telephone interview to promote his upcoming book, "Drug War Addiction: Notes from the Front Lines of America's #1 Policy Disaster."

The sheriff, who has held office for more than 20 years and plans to seek re-election in 2002, remains one of the few Colorado lawmen to take such a public stand.

Most state leaders put Masters out in left field.

"Our society cannot afford to trivialize or ignore the serious problem of drugs or that children are at risk every day," Gov. Bill Owens said when asked about Masters' views. "Making drugs legal would make dangerous substances even more widely available to our young people. That is a chance we cannot take."

El Paso County Sheriff John Anderson considers Masters a friend but disagrees with his stance on drugs.

"I don't support the idea of medical marijuana and think drugs are harmful to society," Anderson said. "I have seen the devastating effect drugs (have on) people and families."

Anderson said Colorado's 60 other sheriffs consider Masters a good cop.

"He is respected for being a hard-working guy," Anderson said. "This is the only issue we disagree on."

Despite his views, Masters does not turn a blind eye to drug crime in Telluride. There were more than 40 drug-related arrests in San Miguel County last year, representing about 10 percent of the area's total criminal cases.

Still, Masters said he can't justify spending billions of dollars year after year in a failed campaign. Better, he says, to use a fraction of the money on clinics that would hand out "maintenance dosages" to the seriously addicted and help others kick the habit altogether.

John Suthers, an ex-El Paso County District Attorney, newly confirmed by Congress as Colorado's new U.S. Attorney, disputed Masters' drug stance.

"San Miguel County is not Ground Zero on the war on drugs," Suthers said. "But if you look in the eye of a mother whose daughter has died of an Ecstasy overdose, it is a whole different perspective.

"(Masters) took an oath of office to enforce the laws of the U.S. and Colorado. If you don't like it, become a critic, not a law enforcement officer."

But Masters is not a lone wolf howling against the wind. Sheriff Bob Braudis of Pitkin County said he and Masters are just ahead of their time.

"The thinking man's solution is legalization," said Braudis, who has served four terms in office. "If we were to legalize it, the narco-traffickers would be out of business overnight and we'd save billions.

"Eventually, others will agree, but it may not happen in my professional lifetime."

"People all over Colorado think the drug war is ineffective," Masters said.

"I don't know if that translates into political success, but I know people will respect honesty and the honest answer is this is not working."

The Sept. 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington only enhanced Masters' beliefs that too much time, effort and money is wasted on dopers.

He pointed out that 750,000 Americans were arrested for possessing marijuana in the same year terrorists brought down the World Trade Center.

Things might have been different on Sept. 11 had the federal government diverted the $17.8 billion it spends each year on the drug war toward terrorist threats, Masters said.

"Secretary of State Colin Powell was not in Pakistan on Sept. 11," he said. "He was in Peru discussing drug control."

The endless and costly drug war makes no sense to Masters. Instead, he says, it turns dealers into daring entrepreneurs who inflate the cost of their inexpensive products to compensate for the risks of trafficking."It seems clear to me that our tactics have failed and we have made a bunch of punks who could not run a garden hose fantastically wealthy," Masters said.

Boulder Weekly

Wayne Laugesen wrote a news story for the Boulder Weekly on November 29, 2001, titled, "Gunning and Drugging for freedom."

Bill Masters is a cop with a gun, a badge and sometimes a donut. Unlike some western sheriffs, however, Masters isn't on a redneck crusade to sniff out harmless drug users and jail them in return for federal drug war funds. Masters, the sheriff of San Miguel County-home of star-studded Telluride-refuses to accept federal grants and arrests only those drug abusers he happens to encounter. He's bringing his message to Boulder Dec. 5, when he'll speak at the University of Colorado.

"We have a duty to uphold the law," Masters says from his office in Telluride. "But I tell my deputies that we have some 30,000 laws on the books in Colorado, and we have to prioritize them. We focus most on those crimes that endanger or harm people or their property."

Rather than fight in the drug war, he actively fights to end it and hopes to see the day street drugs are legalized. In addition to accepting public speaking engagements in order to rail against the drug war, Masters wrote the book Drug War Addiction: Notes from the Front Lines of America's #1 Policy Disaster.

"The drug war has created a situation in which it's profitable to sell drugs," Masters says. "The only reason drugs are so valuable is because they're illegal."

Law enforcement agencies in Boulder County and in most parts of the United States receive federal and state funds for cracking down on drug use and distribution. By doing so, says Masters, sheriffs and police chiefs sell out their communities and become federal marionettes.

"I refuse grants because the people of San Miguel County didn't elect the federal government as sheriff," Masters says. "They elected me (for the last 22 years) as sheriff, and they don't want me influenced and manipulated by outside money."

Although he loathes the drug war, and refuses to actively look for drug offenders, Masters isn't pro drug. He says it probably appears he's pro drug to those who don't understand that he merely favors liberty and personal responsibility. The drug war, Masters explains, is a way to grow government and turn over more responsibility to government at the expense of personal liberty.

"We can't have liberty without responsibility," Master says. "We have abdicated our responsibilities to government. We want the government to solve everything for us. If you use drugs or alcohol and engage in abhorrent behavior, we've been conditioned to believe that you're the victim of the bartender, or the tobacco grower, or your mother. We want government to deal with you. We want government to provide health care, and child care, and the education of our children. Everyone goes to work to pay taxes so the government can raise their children in public schools. Yet it's a faithless, godless government-as it should be-and it's not capable of raising children. Kids should be raised by parents."

If government does a poor job of educating children, says Masters, it does a much poorer job trying to reduce and eliminate drug abuse.

"I was listening to some state corrections officer bragging about the fact that only 4 percent of the state's 16,000 inmates tested positive for drugs," Masters says. "That's 800 people in our prison system who are using drugs. If we can't even control drug use in prisons, where people are being watched and guarded 24 hours a day, what in the world makes us think we can control drug use in a free society? A certain percentage of the population will abuse substances, no matter what you do, even if they have to go around sniffing fumes out of gas tanks on cars."

Case in point: Kitty Dukakis. The wife of former presidential candidate Michael Dukakis decided to drink hair spray while on a nationwide tour to speak to groups of fellow "recovering" drug addicts. The war on drugs has transpired into a war on minorities and the poor, Masters says. He alludes to former First Lady Betty Ford, an alcoholic and drug addict who's treated like a hero.

"If you're the president's wife and you have a drug problem, you get a clinic named after you," Master says. "If you're poor, black or Hispanic, you languish in jail. That's a tarnish on the badges of all law enforcement officers. Cops need to stand up and say, 'Hey, Mr. Legislator, this doesn't work.' I have to enforce the law, but I don't have to keep my mouth shut."

But many cops, says Masters, are simply dishonest, favoring the welfare of the state over that of the people.

"Some police officers want you to abdicate your personal responsibility to protect yourself," Masters says. "They say, 'We'll protect you. Dial 911.' They are lying. The truth is, we can't get there in time. If you're being murdered or raped, we probably won't get there until it's over. We'll pick up the pieces and try to find the perpetrator. But if you don't want to be a victim, you have to take that responsibility yourself."

Masters insists he doesn't care for guns. Yet like Boulder County Sheriff George Epp, Masters routinely issues concealed carry permits to residents of his county.

Masters is often invited to speak to groups of victims advocacy professionals. When they ask about restraining orders, he pulls one out and pokes it with bullet holes.

"I say if your ex is really crazy, and they usually are, you have to learn to protect yourself," Masters says. "That may mean going to the safehouse. But if you want to stay in your own home, and if you want to go to work every day, then you need to be able to protect yourself. A restraining order won't protect you from a violent predator or your ex who's insane. Criminals don't care about gun laws and restraining orders. They are criminals.

"I suspect if we armed one million women in this country, and trained them to use their weapons safely, it would go from 'Hey, bitch' to 'Let me get the door for you'-overnight."

Bob Ewegen Covers the 2002 LP Convention

Bob Ewegen wrote a column for the Denver Post on June 1, 2002, titled, "Libertarians Challenge the Drug War."

The recent Libertarian Party convention in this storied old mining town was another signal that America's failed War Against People Who Use Drugs has opened both the Repubocrat and Demolican parties to Libertarian raids on their more thoughtful members.

A conversation between veteran anti-tax activist Douglas Bruce and Tom Preble, a former Colorado Voices columnist, gave rival perspectives on how best to trim Big Government's sails.

Bruce is a registered Republican, not a Libertarian. But his 1992 Taxpayer's Bill of Rights has done much to put state government on a diet. Preble represents that strain of Libertarians who primarily resent Big Government's big assaults on civil liberties - especially as embodied in its War Against People Who Use Drugs.

Tom is no druggie. He knows that people who use drugs will sooner or later end up with cat litter for brains. That's true even if the drug is alcohol or marijuana and devastatingly true if the drug is cocaine, meth, or other super-brutal drugs. But Tom also knows that the worst effects of drug use result from our punitive and counterproductive prohibition policies...

The conversation between Preble and Bruce focused on tactics, not philosophy. Bruce urged Libertarians to make repeal of the federal income tax their main cause. Preble argued for legalizing marijuana as a more salable platform to thinking citizens.

That puts Preble in the same camp as Ralph Shnelvar, the LP's eloquent gubernatorial candidate, who is focusing on reining in the abuses of the War Against People Who Use Drugs and strong support for Second Amendment rights...

Big Government is as addicted to money as it is to power, and this unholy alliance mutates into what Bill Masters, the elected Libertarian sheriff of San Miguel County, describes in the title of his new book, "Drug War Addiction."

The urbane and witty Masters was a very visible figure at the Leadville convention. To quote from his book: "The first way the drug war has become an addiction is obvious: Law enforcement agencies are addicted to the money..."

To learn more about this insidious erosion of freedom in America, read Masters' "Drug War Addiction: Notes From The Front Lines of America's #1 Policy Disaster," by Accurate Press (St. Louis). Ask for it at your local bookstore - and if it doesn't have it, amazon.com does.

The Bill of Rights you save could be your own.

DRCNet

The Drug Reform Coordination Network posted the following report on its Web page.

San Miguel (Colorado) County Sheriff Bill Masters, author of the just published "Drug War Addiction: Notes From the Front Lines of America's #1 Policy Disaster," told DRCNet that the toll must also include the thousands of police officers killed trying to enforce US drug policy in countries such as Colombia and Mexico, as well as the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. "Fortunately, the number of law officers killed in the US has dropped dramatically in the past 25 years," he said, "because of better tactics and better analysis of each law officer death. But the flip side is we don't do the same review on innocent people killed by police agents who raid the wrong house or shoot someone who committed no wrong," said Masters.

"The victims are not just police officers killed, but also innocent people killed and the police officers who have to live with the fact that they were put in a position to kill or be killed because of a failed policy," the long-time Colorado sheriff continued. "I really empathize with those officers who are put in that position by legislators and police administrators and who end up either getting hurt or hurting an innocent person..."

Sheriff Masters echoed [Joseph] McNamara's comments. "These police officers are being trained with military tactics," he said, "but is this sort of tactic really necessary? Police will argue that the evidence could be destroyed without the element of surprise, but I'm not sure if a few grams of cocaine are worth an officer's life. Certainly not my officers," he said. "I won't put them in that position. It's a disaster waiting to happen."

The Independent

The Independent, the newspaper of Fort Lewis College in Durango, published the following interview with Sheriff Masters on September 28, 2001. Spencer Bath conducted the interview.

Indy: How long have you been involved in law enforcement?

I've been in law enforcement here in San Miguel County for 27 years now. I started out as a deputy marshal for the town of Telluride and then eventually became sheriff in 1980, and I have been the sheriff since then. I was a Libertarian back when the party formed in 1974 [the LP was officially formed in 1971], and then I switched and became a Republican when a position was open in the sheriffs office. I am a conservative. If I wasn't a Libertarian I'd be a conservative. I believe in limited government, that people should stay out of individual lives when it comes to what's going on in their bedroom, or in their homes, and certainly what they choose to put into their bodies. It's their right. It's a God given right, and I don't think anybody should be interfering with that. But I also hold people accountable for their actions. If people hurt others, or damage property, I don't want to hear any excuses, like, "I was drunk," or "I was stoned," that doesn't mean anything to me. I think if we approach [law enforcement] that way we would have a lot saner society.

Indy: Do your deputy sheriffs share some of the same opinions regarding drug enforcement?

Masters: It's interesting. Not all of them share my views on that; most officers believe the law is the law, and [they should] uphold the law. So I tell my officers. Don't be guessing what I would be unhappy with if you choose to enforce the law. But at the same time we have our priorities, and I direct them to those priorities; and they are crimes against people, secondly crimes against property, and crimes that may disturb the peace of the community. But the regulatory crimes, which many people call victimless crimes, or what I call a regulatory crime because [it is an attempt] to regulate a particular activity that there is no person complaining about... normally, it's two people consenting to do something: "I will give you marijuana for money," and we don't necessarily have a complaint that one or the other is violating the law. To me, those are laws that regulate peoples' behavior and I look on those as being low priorities for us to enforce. There are 30,000 laws in the state of Colorado, and there are only 12 deputies, so we have to triage the laws somehow. It's pretty ridiculous to [have this many] laws, and more and more it's just a vain attempt to control people's behavior, and we can't control that. Usually forces way beyond the law change peoples' behavior, and it has nothing to do with the law.

Indy: Do you find people involved in illicit drugs moving to Telluride because they sense some sort of tolerance there?

Masters: I certainly hope not, and that is one of the dangers of being a Libertarian sheriff, and that's what I tell my deputies, 'don't turn your back on this,' because I don't want people to show up because they think we tolerate this kind of behavior any more than we tolerate drunkenness, or drunk driving. We don't tolerate it. I don't want people coming here for that, but at the same time we're not going to be breaking down doors trying to bust people for marijuana. If you want to come here for the purpose of using drugs, my guess is you're going to run afoul of the law some other way. It's like a drunk moving to California for cheap wine. That person's got other problems that will come to the attention of the police.

Indy: Do your constituents support your views on the drug war?

Masters: I found a mixed bag. I found people that knew me for a long time and probably would have voted for me no matter what, and I found a tremendous number of young people that really appreciated the stance [that the drug war] isn't working, we don't want to be enslaved by an excess of taxes, we want opportunity. I wish the young people would stand up more for their rights as citizens. I don't know why young people don't stand up and say, "I won't vote for anybody that denies me the basic rights of citizenship." I think young people fail to recognize how powerful they are. If you listen to the politicians, there are a number of them who will use the lack of a [military] war, and they will make up some other war to get re-elected. The drug war is a great example of when we don't have an enemy. We did the same thing with the war on poverty, and that was another fiasco that we are still suffering from. Anytime a politician describes some kind of program like that, well you'd better look out.

Indy: Are you generally accepted by the law enforcement community despite your beliefs?

Masters: I guess the other sheriffs look at me as an oddity, but I am, I make no bones about it, but still, we are all cops and we all share a certain bond. They understand that I have a very strong difference of opinion, I am a civil libertarian, and I stand strongly for civil rights, but I've never been denied assistance from any law enforcement officer that I've ever called on. I also believe that a surprising number of officers, when they sit down and think about it, or after they get out of the business and look back at their career, have told me, "Bill, you're right. We have wasted so much time going after the wrong people, we've wasted our time going after these dope smokers when basically they were just young kids having a good time, and they weren't the criminals. We should have been going after the murderers, and the child molesters, and all these other people running around." Our whole country had better places to spend that $50 billion we spend yearly on the drug war. It's pretty evident to me that we have other priorities that we are ignoring.

Indy: Do you get any pressure from federal drug enforcement agencies?

Masters: I've never felt any pressure from a federal agency to change my viewpoints or do something different from what I'm doing. I've gotten into arguments with some of them but never have they not acted as professionals.

Indy: Many officers get defensive when you bring up the failures of the drug war, why?

Masters: If they are making their money off of [the drug war], if that is their livelihood, you might get some resistance. I think most officers feel they need to take a public face that says, "We are going to uphold the law." But in private many of them have the same viewpoints that I do, in that we have to change tactics. They all admit that it is not working, because drugs are everywhere, and so many of them say, "We need to have some other method of dealing with this because the law enforcement agencies are alienating too many people." We arrest 750,000 people every year for marijuana. More and more, [officers] are saying this is ridiculous, and we need to ignore that. We have too many other duties, too many other important things to do than worry about someone who wants to get stoned. My guess is it will change, and we will look back on these days like prohibition, and ask, "What were we thinking?"

Indy: How do you see laws changing?

Masters: Certainly [through] the states' rights movement on certain issues like medical marijuana. Personally, I don't understand how smoking something could be good for someone. I don't believe it, but if I was really sick and I thought that would help me, then it's my choice. I need to be able to make that choice. But when you see states beginning to defy these laws, whether you like it or not, the public is demanding the change. And usually when it comes to these kinds of things, the last people to change are the legislators. Long before a legislature decides to repeal a law, the people have already gotten to the point where they completely ignore it. Prohibition is a great example, everybody was as drunk as skunks. They are usually the last ones to react. But it is also going to be a fight, as we come to the end of any war, it becomes more difficult and more dangerous for both sides, and I think we are in that point right now.

Indy: Do you have personal experience with police corruption due to illicit drugs?

Masters: Unfortunately I have. I've been very close to some of it. The recent case in Ouray County is probably the worst I've seen in quite some time, where a couple of officers were involved in methamphetamine dealing. A lot of them are going to do a lot of time in jail, because not only were they dealing dope, they were using their firearms, their police cars, to guard this dope. And here was a little, good-old-boy, dope dealing sheriff's office.

Indy: Is it all in the interest of money?

Masters: As Glenn Frey says in "Smugglers Blues," "It's the lure of easy money/ It has a very strong appeal." You know it was the money, power, sex with women strung out on the dope, it was a terrible case of police corruption. And we don't get much press but it was right here in rural western Colorado. When I started this business it was a little bit of dope in the inner cities of America, and now it is everywhere; obviously we are doing something very, very wrong in fighting this battle and anybody that claims differently is a fool. I don't think there is anyone who knows that these [Ouray] officers were going in and executing search warrants and screwing the women who were there. Its unbelievable to me. It's a noble profession, and it needs to be maintained that way but the drugs have such a corrupting influence, just because of their illegality, and it has corrupted the entire system, all the way up and down the chain. Any vice-related thing, you're going to have those types of instances occurring; or where you have a perceived societal wrong that the police are trying to solve, it becomes ripe for corruption. It's upsetting that these types of things occur right here in rural Colorado. And to me that's more newsworthy because you can almost understand that it happens in big cities, but when it reaches out this far, you know that it has affected every corner of America.

Indy: How about excessive use of force?

Masters: Some of these issues with some of these police shootings, as with Mena in Denver, and in the officer's zeal to enforce the drug laws, the officer lies, and falsifies an affadavit in order to get in and bust these people, and it turns out to be the wrong address and this fellow gets killed by the SWAT team, because the officer is a zealot to the drug war. And the sad part about it is that I understand where that officer is coming from, because he thinks he is saving his community. He thinks he is justified.

Indy: Many liberals criticize the drug war, but they would simply replace criminalization with government mandated treatment, do you think it should be left to individuals to address their own problem entirely?

Masters: Well no matter what, an individual needs to take responsibility for his actions completely. It's your problem, and we don't want any grants, we don't want anyone paying for your treatment, because that's part of your treatment, that you accept responsibility and you have to pay for it. The taxpayers should get out of the [treatment] business. They need to say, "These people are going to pay for their treatment." People who are disabled by drugs or alcohol are at the point where they are incapable of carrying forth themselves and are a danger to themselves or to others. The government, or society, has to step in and discipline these people. Otherwise they're just going to be in the gutter, and communities aren't going to tolerate that. They can't have people in downtown Durango lying in the gutter, drunk. When they're incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, we should intervene. But just because someone possesses drugs, or has some with him, to say "He needs treatment," now I disagree with that. That person may not need treatment, and I don't think the government should demand that. And you look upon some of the liberals, they believe the government should get involved in every bit of your life, and we hear this all the time with domestic violence cases. People are animals, and when we visit a domestic violence scene, liberals say, "You have to intervene," mainly in the woman's life, and tell her, "Listen you're so stupid, you can't figure it out, you need to get away from this clown, and so were going to force you, we're going to make you testify against him." Then you have lost your right to say, "No, I'm going to handle it my own way." And [the liberals] would do the same thing to the person who is using drugs, and say, "You have lost your right to direct your life and we're going to put you in a treatment center." Once again, the people who are disabled or incapacitated by drugs or alcohol, we have to intervene, but everyone else should make the decision for themselves when they need treatment. Unfortunately the criminal justice system allows peoples' addictions to be used as an excuse for their behavior, and that's wrong.

Indy: How do you feel about asset forfeiture? Do you see law enforcement confiscating property in order to benefit their own department?

Masters: I've seized people's homes, and we act like a bunch of damn pirates; we sit around the table and split up the money, or the booty, and I think this asset forfeiture is fascist, like the Nazis coming down on people and seizing their property, especially when it does not involve a conviction, and sometimes the government uses the civil forfeiture laws because you only need a preponderance of the evidence; you don't need reasonable doubt. All you need is 51 percent of the proof, so, in civil law, it's easy to seize peoples' homes. I would say I'm against that except after there is a conviction and we can clearly tie those assets to a criminal activity. But once again, most of these [asset forfeitures] involve regulatory crimes. When it comes to someone who has amassed money consentually, or people gave them the money because they had the product they wanted, well I'm not sure that seizing people's homes is the best thing to do. And it all depends on a matter of degree; I think initially they thought, "Well, here are these huge Colombian drug dealers with these multi-million dollar homes, screw them, they're making their money off people's misery." But what has happened is we are now seizing poor people's homes, and poor people's cars, and these people don't have the money to fight that. The Colombians don't care, but the poor people who have a little bit of marijuana in their car, and they lose it, man I feel for those people. And so I think the whole process has gone too far.

LP News Review

Jonathan Trager wrote a review of Drug War Addiction for LP News, titled, "Kicking the addiction."

"When reformers point to the flaws and problems of the drug war, the warriors' answer is to do more of it.

"Isn't that the response of all addicts?"

So asks Bill Masters in his new book, Drug War Addiction. In this work, Masters charges that contemporary Drug Warriors are themselves addicted to waging an unwinnable war -- while ignoring its assault on the liberty, privacy, and safety of peaceful American citizens.

The book is actually a compilation of essays Masters has written on the Drug War over the years. Throughout, Masters offers readers some of the wisdom he has gained during his 22-year career as the sheriff of San Miguel County, Colorado, about what he calls "America's #1 Policy Disaster."

A one-time Drug Warrior -- he even received an award early in his career from the Drug Enforcement Administration for "outstanding achievements in the field of drug law enforcement" -- Masters explains in riveting detail his motivation for eventually becoming one of the war's most vocal opponents. For example, Masters views the militarization of local police forces as a dangerous result of enforcing drug prohibition.

Did you know that between 1995 and 1997, local police forces across America obtained from the military 3,800 M16 fully automatic assault rifles, 73 M79 grenade launchers, and 112 armored personnel carriers, largely for purposes of fighting the Drug War?

I didn't -- and I feel more than a little uncomfortable knowing that local police forces have the firepower of a small army. I mean, grenade launchers? Give me a break.

Masters is also dismayed that the Drug War has negatively affected how police officers -- whom he calls "peace officers" -- have come to be viewed by many Americans. Instead of being considered as friends and protectors, argues Masters, officers are frequently regarded with suspicion and fear.

"The rift drug prohibition has created between the police and the public is one of the saddest results of our policies," he writes. "Peace officers across the nation feel in their hearts that something is amiss, and I believe more and more of them are realizing just how insidious prohibition really is."

Masters also devotes a chapter to addressing objections readers might have to ending the Drug War, such as the argument that legalizing drugs would "send the wrong message" to America's youth. A self-described "spiritual man," Masters takes issue with social conservatives who attempt to equate the Drug War -- and the law in general -- with moral righteousness. "Morality isn't the same thing as the law," Masters writes. "The law touches on only limited aspects of morality: protecting people and their property from physical harm and preventing theft and fraud. Morality is broader than the law. When we try to make the law as big as morality, laws become profuse, ambiguous, unknowable, flaunted, and unenforceable."

Instead of trying to find "external solutions" to spiritual problems, he argues, Americans must try a new approach that addresses the root cause of drug abuse: The conviction that happiness is a state of mind divorced from a person's action and character.

My favorite part of the book was definitely the final chapter, "Simple Laws: Pathway to Freedom." Here, Masters discusses the "core belief of the Libertarian movement" -- personal responsibility.

"We must not abdicate our responsibility and surrender it to the government," he writes. "It is our responsibility to deal with such issues as health care, our retirement, raising and educating our children, the defense of our homes and families, our domestic relations, and our own alcohol or drug abuse. If we fail to take responsibility for our own lives, we can blame only ourselves when the government takes away our liberty to determine how those issues will be addressed."

Although Masters is humble about his writing ability, I was pleasantly surprised by his natural style. Each chapter had a simplicity and clarity that made the book a pleasure to read.

In addition, Masters' personal Drug War horror stories are intriguing, and there are interesting Drug War quotes from well-known personalities on every page, from former president Abraham Lincoln to popular musician Dave Matthews.

One improvement would have been to focus exclusively on the War on Drugs -- as opposed to issues such as gun control, which Masters tries to briefly address -- which would have helped keep his message more concentrated and powerful.

But at a mere 135 pages (including three appendices), this book is certainly a welcome addition to a growing cornucopia of anti-Drug War literature. Maybe, if enough people read thoughtful and well-written books such as this one, America will finally find the courage to kick its Drug War Addiction.

LP News

LP News published an article titled, "War on Drugs threatens America, says Colorado Sheriff Bill Masters."

The War on Drugs is a tragic waste of resources that makes Americans more vulnerable to vicious criminals and bloodthirsty terrorists -- while it simultaneously "tarnishes the badge" of law enforcement.

That was the blunt message delivered in the Keynote Address by Sheriff Bill Masters to delegates at the Libertarian National Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 5 [2002].

"We've tried it. It doesn't work," said Masters about the War on Drugs. "But we're not supposed to question a policy that funnels millions -- probably billions -- into the hands of punks, criminals, and terrorists."

In a speech repeatedly punctuated by applause, Masters, the chief law enforcement officer in San Miguel County, Colorado, charted his course from pro-Drug War zealot to high-profile dissident who dared question the "emperor's new clothes."

When he was first elected sheriff in Telluride 23 years ago, the small Rocky Mountain town was a "blue-collar community of hard-rock miners" where the chief law enforcement problems were "a few drunks and a few fights," said Masters.

One time, when he had to face down a gang of street toughs, townspeople rallied behind him because they considered themselves the "sheriff's back-up," he said.

However, as Telluride transformed itself into a popular ski resort, drugs like marijuana and cocaine started showing up in increasing quantities, and the sheriff enthusiastically jumped into the War on Drugs.

"I took the [drug] laws seriously," said Masters. "We started arresting more and more people for small amounts of marijuana. We arrested businessmen, high school kids, housewives, and the editor of the local newspaper."

The rapidly expanding sheriff's office arrested so many people that it had to rent jail space in a neighboring county to house all the prisoners, he said. During those years, Masters said he would "play the tough guy" to get more anti-drug funding from the city council -- and used the money to hire more officers and dispatchers, and buy more cars and other equipment.

"I was the tough guy on the easy [criminals] -- the dopers," he said. "Busting these people isn't rocket science. It's easy."

As the San Miguel County War on Drugs escalated, and a broader swathe of citizens were arrested, the relationship between the townspeople and the sheriff's office cooled, said Masters.

Citizens who once stood proudly "behind me now hung me in effigy," he said. However, two events finally caused Masters to reconsider his views on the War on Drugs.

The first was when a brutal serial killer kidnapped a local woman. Masters turned to the FBI to help, and visited the agency's training center in Virginia.

There, he was shocked to see a mere handful of FBI agents assigned to kidnapping cases, with papers piled high on their desks, he said. Meanwhile, hundreds of new DEA agents were being trained to fight the War on Drugs, so they could arrest people for smoking marijuana.

Later, back in Telluride, a newly arrested drug dealer told Masters, "Every time you bust someone [for drugs], my risk, my price, and my profits go up."

"He could have taught economics at high school," said Masters ruefully. And another dealer told Masters: "Sheriff, maybe you're trying to shove hay into the wrong end of the horse."

"Sometimes you need to hear that," said Masters.

At that point, Masters said, "I realized that our priorities were all wrong. I had failed my community by not analyzing the drug problem. I had directed our precious law enforcement resources in the wrong place."

After September 11, Masters said he had another revelation: That the War on Drugs makes America more vulnerable to such terrorist attacks.

"The year before September 11, the United States arrested 700,000 people for drugs ... and one suspected terrorist," he said. "I don't like those numbers."

And while the FBI said it lacked the resources to check out reports of suspicious foreigners taking "kamikaze flying lessons" at flight schools, it had the resources to arrest "three-quarters of a million Americans for possessing a harmless plant," he said.

The War on Drugs also threatens Americans in another way, said Masters: Through heavily armed, overzealous law enforcement. Solemnly reciting the names of innocent Americans who were accidentally killed by police during anti-drug operations, Masters said, "The list goes on and on -- old people, children, and businessmen -- shot and killed during drug raids by those sworn to protect us."

And finally, the War on Drugs also unfairly targets the poor and minorities, said Masters.

"Some people languish in jail for years on drug charges, while others will get a drug rehab clinic in California named after them," he said.

Instead of continuing a harmful policy that "tarnishes the badges" of law enforcement, Americans should follow the lead of Libertarians, and end the War on Drugs, concluded Masters.

"Upholding liberty must be the priority of laws in a free society," he said.

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