In the late twentieth century - with the Cold War losing its appeal and profitability
(and its chief villain, the USSR) - the world's superpower, the United States government - turned upon its own.
The federal government began to compete with the states to root out, imprison, slaughter and seize
property from recreational drug users and sellers within its midst.

The government had a real “drug problem.” Millions were using recreational chemicals, as if what they
put into their bodies was their own business. This was insupportable to an institution whose power increasingly
lay in its ability to dictate how people should live.

Of course, in order to bring a violent anti-drug crusade into our living rooms without arousing alarm,
the modern Inquisitors had to do exactly as their ancestors did. They first had to persuade us that:

Druggies are bad people who must be crushed at all cost

And the meanest thing of all is that [Catholic scholar] Canon Vacandard, and most of your modern…
apologists, raise over the bones of those hundreds of thousands of murdered men, women, and children
the smug and lying inscription that they were “dangerous to society.”
The best estimates say that some 70 million Americans have smoked marijuana, that at least 18 million
have smoked it in the last year.4 Millions have used other illegal recreational drugs. Perfectly ordinary
people, the vast majority of them. Do some lead high-risk lives? Sure; so do mountain climbers and adulterers.
Are some violent criminals? Sure; that's what happens when you legislate black markets.

Which is more dangerous? The drug or the war against it?

In a country where alcohol kills 150,000 per year and doctors kill hundreds of thousands - and where
cocaine and heroin kill fewer than 5,000 combined and marijuana has never killed a single soul,5 we casually
justify travesties like the one that hit Preston Mays on March 1, 1995, saying such people get what they deserve.
Bust them all; God will know his own.

On that day, Mays, a poultry farmer with a ninth-grade education and a minor criminal history,
was sitting in the living room of the home he rented to a woman acquaintance. The woman had called him to fix
a broken sink at the property. The renter left to run an errand, saying she would be right back.
Hours passed, but she didn't return. Suddenly, he says:

[At] about 10:30 the police ripped through the unlocked door with a huge battering ram.
About 20 helmeted, jackbooted, armor-plated, machine-gun wielding monsters came running, yelling, “Hands
over your heads mother-fuckers, just twitch and we'll blow your fucking brains out!” I felt like my heart had
stopped. I had no idea who I'd killed, I must have - right? That is all that came to my mind - what did I do?
What did I do?
They searched the house and found a pound of marijuana and two-and-a-half pounds of meth in a file
cabinet after ripping it open… My tenant had been arrested shortly after leaving the house and told them
her “boyfriend” (meaning me) “was still at the house and if there were any drugs there, they must be his
because I have all mine with me.”

The police later found six more pounds in the woman's truck. The federal government charged Mays
with eight different counts. They offered him a deal with “only” 13½ years in prison if he'd plead guilty. But,
“I wasn't guilty so I refused.” Refusing to cooperate - as you will see - is the worst confirmation of heresy.
“None of my clothing was in the house,” Mays recounts. “Nor did I have keys to the doors… proved beyond
a reasonable doubt that I had not shared that home. The lady I did live with at my farm 43 miles away testified too,
so did my farm neighbor who belongs to the Highway Patrol… My prints weren't on anything, but still
the good citizens of California that sat on that jury said I was guilty. Guilty because someone said that I was.”

He is now serving 24 years for possession with intent to distribute, 24 years for conspiracy and 10
years on charges related to guns found in the home. The woman with the drugs got 5½ years with a year off
for treatment, rewarded for informing on this evil drug kingpin.6

Creating a society of informers

If he was denounced, he was guilty. Impossible, you say…But it is a truism. Listen to…Canon [Vacandard]:
“If two witnesses, considered of good repute by the Inquisitors, agreed in accusing the prisoner his fate
was at once sealed; whether he confessed or not, he was at once declared a heretic.” Trial by the Inquisition
did not mean an examination to find out if a man was a heretic. If two secret witnesses said that he was, he was…
As with the vague charge of “heresy” - which meant virtually anything persecutors and accusers wanted
it to mean - it is unnecessary to have any actual evidence to get a drug conviction.
Just create a society of informers.

On July 27, 1990, tractor-trailer driver Anibal Almanzar-Reyes was stopped by the DEA. He was hauling
a truckload of onions. Just onions. No drugs. However, the friend who hired him to haul the load had told a
DEA informant there would be drugs in the truck that day. The men were arrested on drug charges. Facing
a long prison term, Almanzar-Reyes' friend turned on him, claimed the truck driver had knowledge of the drug-deal-that-didn't-happen, and offered to testify against him. An attorney, knowing his client had a previous
drug conviction, advised making a plea-bargain - and Almanzar-Reyes got 14 years for driving a truckload
of onions, while the friend who set him up earned a five year sentence for his cooperation.

Debbie Vineyard took a phone call from her husband's friend Rick, asking about a pair of cowboy boots.
Debbie said they'd send the boots. “I had no idea,” she said later, “that this person Rick had just been arrested
for drugs that he claimed to have received from my husband. Our phone conversation was recorded by the federal government…Rick evidently told the DEA that these cowboy boots were being sent with speed and heroin in them.
After I was picked up, they searched my home and found the cowboy boots. They were stuffed full...of the daily newspaper. But, none of this mattered. I was still charged with Conspiracy to Distribute Methamphetamine
(speed) and Aiding and Abetting.” Her 10-year federal sentence was later reduced to a “mere” five.

It seems that, today, a witness doesn't even have to be “of good repute” for his unsupported testimony
to be considered evidence enough to send someone to prison. He must simply be unprincipled - or desperate
- enough to rat out either the innocent or the guilty.

Continue to Prt 3