A DEA Official who was in Gatlinburg criticized the press for its coverage of The War on Civil Liberties err Some Drugs:

Administrator Karen Tandy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said that aggressively pursuing the drug war has led to a reduction in drug use and availability, but she complained that the media doesn’t report the issue fairly.

“Good news doesn’t sell,” Tandy said. “You won’t read about it in the press.”

On measuring the Drug War’s success:

Tandy said that drug seizures are “on track this year to hit $1 billion” and predicted that amount will eventually climb to $3 billion a year.

“And that’s more money, by the way, that will be going back to you,” she told the assembly of hundreds of law enforcement officers in a reference to state and federal laws that allow funds seized during drug busts to be returned to the agencies that confiscate them.

Actually, the DEA’s budget (which excludes local law enforcement budgets) is $2.14 billion. Let’s see $2.14B less $1B is still a positive number, so there’s still no money that will be going back to me. And your measure of success is the street value of what you confiscate? Does that include the houses, cars and property seized without due process of law in violation of the Constitution? What about the killing of innocent people in the name of war on drugs? People are not secure in their homes because of no knock warrants and search warrants issued based on the frequently false testimony of criminals. Property is taken and lives are destroyed over a few minuscule amounts of drugs. Is it worth that price to confiscate an infinitesimally small fraction of a percent of the drug supply in this country?

Pete has more.

Posted in uncategorized on May 10th, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |