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.

Heroin has never been shown to promote violent behavior - its users initially go into a passive stupor and eventually don't even get high; they just need the drug to avoid the awful pain of withdrawal. In the United States, the only way they can get that drug is to rob and steal, sell their bodies, sell drugs themselves, or engage in other criminal activities that pose risks to themselves and the community at large.

In England, in contrast, junkies have long been able to get heroin by prescription. That means it's cheap and its quality is controlled. Thus, British addicts are able to hold down low-level jobs, support themselves and even pay taxes. Neither British nor American junkies are high achievers - but I'd much rather meet the British version in a dark alley.

The War Against People Who Use Drugs has converted druggies who would be harmless mush-brains in Britain into dangerous criminals in the United States. The British system also reduces addiction by taking the profit motive away from pushers. What's the point of recruiting a new user if the victim can eventually get his fix from the government?

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.

I think Shnelvar has the better part of the argument. The Bruce wing of the Republican Party has definitely held down government spending, at least at the state level. But tight budgets haven't stopped Big Government from waging the War Against People Who Use Drugs. Indeed, Big Government has outflanked the taxpayer revolt by seizing cash and property of citizens - often when they haven't even been convicted of a crime. 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."

As federal Judge John Kane noted in a review of Masters' book in The Post, property seizures "not only enable police departments to pay the salaries of additional staff, they also buy them guns and high-tech surveillance equipment.

"In making (law enforcement agencies) 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," this respected federal judge concluded.

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.

Bob Ewegen is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963. E-mail him bewegen@denverpost.com .