A Bloated Vestige of the Past, the DEA Struggles for Relevancy

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According to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) website, when the agency was established in 1973, it had 1,470 special agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Today it boasts over 5,000 special agents (which doesn’t include what must be tens of thousands of support staff) and a budget of $2.03 billion. That’s a sizable organization and one with a long reach into the various branches of government and the military.

Yet today there is an article in the Huffington Post in which the author seems befuddled by the recent efforts of the DEA to place the rather benign herbal supplement Kratom into Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act along with heroin, cocaine and crack. The author correctly notes the softening trend nationwide toward marijuana prohibition, and wonders why the DEA would be taking such a Draconian stance against an herb that has little potential for abuse and that many people use for help with various medical ailments.

The obvious answer to the Kratom conundrum is found in the first paragraph. The DEA has become a huge, bloated bureaucracy over the past 43 years that is now fighting for its survival. The change in attitude toward marijuana and drug prohibition in general has the agency running scared, and it is now grasping at straws to try and retain its relevance. We saw this just recently when it refused to take marijuana off the Schedule 1 list despite the mountains of data and research attesting to the drug’s relative safety and proven medical benefits.

The question is, what do you do with a large government agency that history has passed by and is now doing more harm than good (if it ever did do any good)? In Washington, you plug your ears and sing “Na, na, na” for as long as you’re able so that you can hopefully hand-off your expensive White Elephant to the next administration. Not long ago, Obama appointed a new head of the DEA who is only a slightly less maniacal drug warrior than his predecessor, indicating that this president isn’t going to walk into the political minefield associated with downsizing the Pentagon of the drug war.

Not surprisingly, there has been no indication from either Trump or Clinton that their administrations will take a more reasoned approach to drug prohibition than Obama. So the prognosis is that our government will spend more billions of tax dollars and keep increasing the prison population for base political reasons. And people are upset that an athlete won’t stand during the pledge of allegiance.

Reefer Madness: DEA head Leonhart lies like its 1954

It’s a given that if you are appointed the head of a U.S. government agency, part of your job is dispensing propaganda, whether it’s the NSA or CIA or the Department of Energy. As the Grand Pooba of your tribe, you must continually make the argument that your group is absolutely necessary (meaning the current level of funding is absolutely necessary) to keep the country from going to hell in a hand basket. However, there’s one agency where self-justification has been taken to deep-space extremes, and that’s the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Apparently, the criteria for becoming the head of the DEA has been a pathological hatred of illegal chemical substances that may somehow, some way enter the blood systems of innocent Americans. “Pathological” meaning that you will not allow any scientific research, data, opinion, logic or common sense weaken your fanatical opposition to illegal drugs. Current DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart has proven to be an exemplary DEA leader based on the above criteria. Recently, she was highly critical of President Obama for saying that marijuana was no more harmful than alcohol (which is only partially true. Marijuana is less harmful to a user’s body than alcohol and tobacco and is not physically addictive). Asked by a congressman whether marijuana was as bad as heroin or crack, she refused to answer the question. She’s also very opposed to using hemp in products, even though industrial hemp contains virtually no THC.

Apparently, Leonhart believes it is okay to lie in service to her country (and to keep her job). Yes, other agency heads lie, but Leonhart goes beyond mere self-serving deception and takes lying to another level, with the goal being to perpetuate ignorance among the American people. It’s like insisting we should continue the Cold War after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The research and facts about marijuana are out there for anyone to see, yet Leonhart still wants to pretend it’s 1954 instead of 2014.

Leonhart also made the comment that Obama’s remarks on marijuana were disrespectful to those agents who had died fighting in the war on drugs. As I recall, no one asked the American people if they wanted to start a war on drugs. Nixon kicked off the whole thing and it’s been passed on to following administrations that have been too fearful of the political damage shutting it down would cause. The war on drugs has always been a political war measuring a candidates “tough-on-crime” level and was never seriously considered as winnable.

Obama smoked pot and snorted cocaine as a young man and went on to become president of the United States. Thankfully, more and more people are seeing through the reefer madness propaganda still perpetuated by Leonhart and a shrinking minority of deluded political pundits. I’m actually surprised and grateful I’m seeing this happen in my lifetime.

Eight former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs want the federal government to immediately sue states that legalize marijuana to nullify the legislation