The
DEA: Results Not Demonstrated - Or Are They?
By Stephen Young
posted at DrugWar.com
February 8, 2003
originally published
by DrugSense
Weekly
Talk about a demoralizing job review.
The spanking administered to the Drug
Enforcement Administration by the White
House Office of Management and Budget this week should have
smarted, even as it was delivered in the gray language of bureaucracy.
"DEA is unable to demonstrate its progress
in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the U.S. While
DEA has developed some strategic goals and objectives, these goals
lack specificity in targets and time frames," according to
the White House assessment. "DEA managers are not held accountable
for achieving results."
Even if you're already convinced the DEA
is a scam, it's nice to have some verification from the federal
government. See
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/pma/dea.pdf
(Adobe Acrobat required) for the actual document.
The assessment includes ratings on various
categories. The ratings are scored on a scale of zero to 100.
The DEA scored zero in the "Results/Accountability"
category. Zero. Nil. Nothing. The ultimate void of non-being.
Not even a token point for style or effort.
The assessment also includes one overall
rating. In this space, the DEA was categorized as "Results
Not Demonstrated."
The DEA was budgeted at about $1.5 billion
last year. Its budget has increased consistently since its inception.
Somehow this growth has been achieved without clear results or
accountability.
So, can we hope things will change now? The
champions of small government in the Bush administration wouldn't
just maintain a massive bureaucratic structure that has the power
to destroy citizens' lives without accountability, would it?
A housecleaning should be in order with heads
rolling and complacency challenged.
Strangely, Asa
Hutchinson, the most recent head of the DEA, isn't hightailing
out of Washington with his head hung in shame. No, he got a promotion
- a prestigious and powerful job with the Department
of Homeland Security. Hutchinson's right hand man, John W.
Brown, a career agent around since the time when the DEA was called
the Bureau
of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, is running the agency now.
If there's a shake-up, it's remarkably subdued.
Perhaps the agency will be forced to make
do with less? No, the budget is still set to go up by $13 million
in the year 2004. Granted, that's a small increase compared to
the glory days of the eighties.
But the eighties are long gone, and so is
the image of the DEA agent as swashbuckling hero. The agency's
most high profile acts lately have been the persecution
of medical marijuana providers and users.
By shutting
down locally-sanctioned medical marijuana clubs, the DEA is
not only hurting sick people and subverting the will of voters,
it is pushing patients back to the black market. Such actions
are not only cruel, they are counterproductive. Through this policy,
the DEA feeds the market it is supposedly trying to fight.
Of course, the DEA may claim to fight black
market drugs, but if the market really ever disappeared, the agency
would become redundant. As long as the black market grows, the
DEA can expect to grow.
And as long as the most popular illegal drug
(marijuana) remains demonized, the DEA has nothing to worry about.
But, if the general population ever suddenly realized that prohibiting
marijuana is a waste of lives and resources, that cannabis really
can help many people, the agency would be forced to downsize.
It seems as if the maintenance of absolute
prohibition is the main priority, and everything else, like the
Constitution and basic human decency, are inconveniences to be
overcome.
It's as if the agency is accountable to no
one. Oh, that's right, that's what the White House said just before
watching the DEA continue on its devastating path.
The DEA's results, far from being not demonstrated,
are becoming more painfully clear every day.
Stephen Young is an editor with DrugSense
Weekly, and the author of Maximizing Harm (www.maximizingharm.com).
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Read about the losers and winners in the
drug war at:
http://www.maximizingharm.com
