Birthday Wishes for the DEA: Hope it's your last
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review associate editor Bill Steigerwald recently issued a spot-on anniversary vilification of one of the most vile and abusive bureaucracies the United States federal government has ever birthed. (Note to the Bureau of Indian Affairs: Don't worry, you're still right up there, too.)
Spawned appropriately enough during the Nixon administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — which earlier this month entered its 35th year of confiscating freedom, justice, health, property, happiness, commerce and culture — has "become a typically bloated, self-preserving federal bureaucracy whose power, budget and continuing existence bear no relation to its performance," Steigerwald writes.
He generously gifts the agency (and readers) with what will most certainly go down as one of 2008's best lines about the war on drugs: "If the DEA were a heroin addict, it would have overdosed on its own incompetence by age 6."
Steigerwald also notes that today's DEA budget and burgeoning paramilitary goon squad are mainlining greater than six times the dosage of American tax dollars a year than in 1974, and "(y)et today illegal drugs are as plentiful and cheap as ever." Intellectual honesty nevertheless demands Steigerwald acknowledge that "(i)f you consider locking up mostly pot smokers and other perpetrators of victimless crimes a valid measure of success in the war on drugs" — which the dopey prohibitionist Kool-Aid quaffers certainly do — then "the DEA and its fellow state and local drug warriors deserve high praise."
High praise, indeed. So don't be too hard on the DEA, Steigerwald ultimately avers. They were, after all — like so many of their predecessor oppressors in the annals of police-state ruthlessness — juss followin' orders. True blame for the all the high crimes and misdemeanors against liberty, compassion and decency committed by the DEA rests with "35 years (of) Congress and seven presidents (who) haven't had the brains or the political courage to decriminalize marijuana or at least work to humanize America's drug policy."
Spawned appropriately enough during the Nixon administration, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — which earlier this month entered its 35th year of confiscating freedom, justice, health, property, happiness, commerce and culture — has "become a typically bloated, self-preserving federal bureaucracy whose power, budget and continuing existence bear no relation to its performance," Steigerwald writes.
He generously gifts the agency (and readers) with what will most certainly go down as one of 2008's best lines about the war on drugs: "If the DEA were a heroin addict, it would have overdosed on its own incompetence by age 6."
Steigerwald also notes that today's DEA budget and burgeoning paramilitary goon squad are mainlining greater than six times the dosage of American tax dollars a year than in 1974, and "(y)et today illegal drugs are as plentiful and cheap as ever." Intellectual honesty nevertheless demands Steigerwald acknowledge that "(i)f you consider locking up mostly pot smokers and other perpetrators of victimless crimes a valid measure of success in the war on drugs" — which the dopey prohibitionist Kool-Aid quaffers certainly do — then "the DEA and its fellow state and local drug warriors deserve high praise."
High praise, indeed. So don't be too hard on the DEA, Steigerwald ultimately avers. They were, after all — like so many of their predecessor oppressors in the annals of police-state ruthlessness — juss followin' orders. True blame for the all the high crimes and misdemeanors against liberty, compassion and decency committed by the DEA rests with "35 years (of) Congress and seven presidents (who) haven't had the brains or the political courage to decriminalize marijuana or at least work to humanize America's drug policy."
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