Sheriff Bill Masters

I’ve mentioned Bill Masters before. He’s author of Drug War Addiction: Notes from the Front Lines of America’s #1 Policy Disaster. Now, he has a new book out: “The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenge the Drug War. (which is available as a premium, by the way, for donating to Stop The Drug War.org)
Walter in Denver has an extensive post about the amazing Bill Masters, based on the excellent Westword profile.

But Masters insists that the drug war is primarily focused on locking up American citizens — and, in the process, squandering resources and manpower that could be better devoted to homeland-security interests.

“A quarter of the FBI case filings in the year before 9/11 were drug cases,” he says. “Who was looking after the terrorists? Nobody. We have 10,000 DEA agents. Is it more important to prevent the next terrorist attack or to bust Cheech for having a bong? In the year before 9/11, we arrested almost 750,000 people for possession of marijuana — and one foreign terrorist.”

He shakes his head in disgust. “You’d think real conservatives would be looking at what works, what’s the best result you can get for the money,” he says.