Apr 14, 2006

Secret Gold Tooth Seizure Sought

by Liberty and Power

Federal Prosecutors in Washington state have, in my opinion, sunk to a new low. They tried to use asset forfeiture procedures to secretly seize the gold tooth crowns out of the mouths of two drug suspects. The crowns are permanently bonded to the teeth and would have had to have been ripped out by a dentist. Mind you, the two men, Flenard T. Neal Jr. and Donald Jamar Lewis, have not yet been convicted of any crime.

Fortunately, their attorneys were able to have the procedure halted. One of the lawyers, Zenon Peter Olbertz, said “It's shocking that this kind of action by the federal government could be sought and accomplished in secret, without anyone being notified.” He went on to say, “it reminds me of the secret detentions" in cases related to terrorism.

There is a very good but frightening book by Richard Lawrence Miller titled Drug Warriors and Their Prey, which argues that the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs is step by step transforming our justice system into one that will closely resemble the one in place in Nazi Germany. And, he is familiar with that system because his previous book Nazi Justiz dealt with that topic.

When I read a story like the one above I get the depressing thought that Miller may be one of the most prescient writers of our time.

Hat tip to Jeff Schaler

Cross posted on The Trebach Report

More Comments:

Keith Halderman - 4/16/2006

The social democratic aspect of the Nazis is another parallel with the war on people you
use certain kinds of drugs. That war is most definitely an artifact of the progressive era in all its social democratic glory. The differences between the Nazis and the drug warriors are differences of degree not differences of kind. The paternalist (the fatherland) philosophy of control by the state and the ruthless pursuit of that control are common to both.

Anthony Gregory - 4/14/2006

Also, what a lot of people don't recognize is the social-democratic aspect of the Nazi regime. And it was all about punishing and discouraging vice and promoting health, with its war on cancer, anti-tobacco policies, etc. Then there's the imperial foreign interventions that American drug policy has spawned.

Anthony Gregory - 4/14/2006

People are suspicious of the comparison between America's war on drugs and the repression of Nazi Germany. While I would never compare the 1943 German state to the current American state, I do see many parallels to early Nazi Germany in the drug war. Certainly the demonization, persecution and detention of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is a pretty stark similarity.