When Reading Becomes A Crime: The War on
Drugs Goes After Books
Richard Glen Boire,
JD
Should the
purchase of certain books be considered evidence of criminal activity? The DEA thinks so,
and so does a Colorado judge who ordered the owners of the Tattered Cover bookstore in
Denver, Colorado to turn over the name and customer information of a person who purchased
books containing information on manufacturing illegal drugs. The store is appealing the
judge’s order.
The incident
grew out of a raid conducted earlier this year by Colorado anti-drug agents. The agents
searched a mobile home and discovered what they believe to be a methamphetamine
laboratory. Also discovered in the home was an invoice from Tattered Cover bookstore for
two books, Advanced Techniques of Clandestine Psychedelic and Amphetamine Manufacture,
as well as The Construction and Operation of Clandestine Drug Laboratories.
The invoices did not list the purchaser’s
name or address.
Police are
demanding that the Tattered Cover bookstore turn over the name and address of the
purchaser so that they can link that person to the alleged illegal lab. The case is
currently in court after Joyce Meskis, the owner of the Tattered Cover refused the
cops’ demand on the grounds that turning over customer information violates the
customer’s privacy as well as the First Amendment.
Meskis has a
good point. While once upon a time the War on Drugs many have been a war on pills,
powders, and “evil” plants, today it is far more than that. It is now, more than
ever, a battle over the mind –
a war
over what sort of consciousness is approved and what sort is considered criminal. Going
after books takes things to yet another surreal level, evoking images out of Ray
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where firemen raced around the city burning
offensive books.
Are we really
ready to make reading certain books evidence of crime?
In the mid-16th
century, Pope Paul IV published the Index Librorum Prohibitorum a list of forbidden
books enforced by the Roman government. Any person caught reading or keeping a prohibited
book committed a “grievous sin” and was punished according to the bishop's
discretion. When the Index was (finally) abandoned in 1966, it listed over 4,000
forbidden books, including works by such people as Galileo, Kant, Pascal, Spinoza and John
Locke. [1]
Although it is
not well-known, the government actually has a history of surveilling the reading habits of
Americans. The FBI’s “Library Awareness Program” sought to “recruit
librarians as counter intelligence ‘assets’ to monitor suspicious library users
and report their reading habits to the FBI.”[2] When the American Library Association
(ALA) learned of this, its Intellectual Freedom Committee issued an advisory statement
warning that libraries are not “extensions of the long arm of the law or of the gaze
of Big Brother…” [3] Another ALA memo chastised the FBI for its efforts to
“convert library circulation records into “suspect lists”…” [4]
The program was eventually ended, or so the FBI says.
But in the War
on Drugs there’s evidently no such thing as a fair fight. The government’s
demand that that Tattered Cover turn over the name and address of its customer evidences
the fact that anti-drug agents are now employing scorch and burn tactics – to the
Constitution – all in a misguided mission to rid the world of mind altering drugs
–or should I say nonpharmaceutical drugs, nor those socially approved drugs
such as alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and prime-time TV.
By trying to force the Tattered Cover bookstore to reveal its customer
information, the government is now signaling that not even the First Amendment is
sacrosanct in the War on Drugs.
This is not the
first time that the US government has considered reading books evidence of a drug crime.
Three years ago, in the summer of 1997, the DEA whipped up a subpoena and served it on
Ronin Publishing Company, a company whose extensive catalog includes books about marijuana
and other drugs. The subpoena stalked purchasers of a certain book, ordering Ronin to turn
over”[t]he names and addresses of any and all residents of the State of Arizona who
have purchased or otherwise obtained copies of the book Marijuana Hydroponics: High
Tech Water Culture.” To its credit, Ronin Publishing told the government to go to
hell. Eventually, the DEA backed down after an Assistant US Attorney conceded that the
subpoena was “unduly burdensome.”
The actions
against Ronin Publishing in 1997 and against the Tattered Cover bookstore today, are an
alarming expose on the Frankentienian monster named the War on Drugs—a monster that
is running roughshod over the Constitution and may soon be coming to a book store near
you.
Reading books
should not be a crime, nor should the books you read be considered evidence of
crime. The very purpose of the First Amendment was to protect unpopular speech and
expression. The government action against the Tattered Cover bookstore is an attempt to
make an end-run around the First Amendment by threatening to investigate people based on
the books they purchase. The government is saying “We may not be able to censor
books, but we will investigate you if you buy the ones we don’t like.” If this
occurred on a topic other than “drugs,” the public would be up in arms and the
misbehaving government agency would be placed under investigation. But, given the
successful vilification of users of unauthorized drugs (by the government and its partner
mass-media), few people rise in protest.
If, as most
people believe, government censorship of books belongs in the Dark Ages, going after
people based on the books they purchase ought to similarly be regarded as an archaic
fascistic attempt to control information. But, given that the government’s War on
Drugs is a modern day crusade, it’s really no surprise that the US Government is
resorting to similar techniques as previously used by the Catholic Church’s Holy
Inquisition.
Just say no to
the modern auto da fe.
Notes
1. For a
fascinating survey of suppressed literature, see the multi-volume set Banned Books,
published by Facts on File, which covers literature suppressed on religious, social,
sexual, and political grounds.
2. Foerstel,
H., Library Surveillance: The FBI’s Library Awareness Program, (1991)
p. 2.
3. ALA Office
for Intellectual Freedom, “ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee Advises Librarians on
FBI ‘Library Awareness’ Program,” October 1987, p.3.
4. “Memo
to Members,” American Libraries,
July-August 1970, p. 658; see also, U.S. Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary,
FBI Counterintelligence Visits to Libraries: Hearings
before the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the
Judiciary,
100th Cong., 2d
sess., June 20 and July 13, 1988 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1989, pp. 77-78.)
Author Richard
Glen Boire is the director of the nonprofit Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics in
Davis, California.
About the Center
for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics
The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, law and policy
center working in the public interest to protect fundamental civil liberties. The Center
seeks to foster cognitive liberty – the basic human right to unrestrained independent
thinking, including the right to control one’s own mental processes and to experience
the full spectrum of possible thought. Web site: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org
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