DEA: A New Low
You may already think the DEA is a gang of sleazy shitbags who couldn’t possibly sink any lower. Unfortunately, they just did.
The DEA has come up with a new tactic in their neverending war on those dangerous cancer patients who smoke marijuana to reduce the nausea from chemotherapy. They’re targeting the landlords who own the properties where medical marijuana is dispensed.
A guilty landlord could have his/her property seized and/or face up to twenty years in prison. WTF??? Whatever happened to those “Property Rights” that conservatives are always blubbering about? For that matter, “States’ Rights” is another popular rightwing slogan. Here we have the federal government marching in and steamrolling over the states whose citizens have voted in favor of medical marijuana. And all we hear from the Far Right is thundering silence.
What do these DEA thugs see when they look in the mirror? And what do they tell their kids? “Daddy is a sadistic douchebag who persecutes sick people for a living. Aren’t you proud, son? Maybe you can be just like me when you grow up.”
I’m guessing that most people, whatever their religious views, believe in some sort of Karma — “you reap what you sow,” “what goes around comes around,” whatever you want to call it.
Perhaps the legislators, prosecutors and DEA agents who keep persecuting medical marijuana patients are secretly scared shitless of reaping what they’ve sown. I know I would be.
It’s gotta be somewhere in the back of their minds when they go in for their medical checkups. Maybe they’re shitting themselves with the crippling fear that the doctor will say “there’s a spot on this X-ray. We’ll need to run some more tests.”
After all, what goes around comes around.
September 27th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Despicable. Absolutely despicable. The only way anyone could do this would be either to be a sadist or a mindless stooge willing to carry out any order, enforce any law, without asking himself/herself what the law is meant to achieve or whether that is good, moral and reasonable.
Anyone who would enforce this rule should be permanently disqualified from holding any position where they have any power.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:14 am
I think you’re railing against the wrong people. As long as it is against the law, it’s their job to stop pot use. The people you should be lobbying are the critters in Congress. They’re the ones who made it illegal. They’re the ones who keep it illegal. They’re the only ones who can make it legal. Railing against the cops for enforcing the law is, well, why do it? They’re doing their jobs. Tell Congress to make it no longer their jobs and they’ll stop enforcing the law.
Just my two cents.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:19 am
And if you must rail against someone for the enforcement of the law until the law is changed, you need to speak to the president. He’s the one who sets policy for his administration. If he said to lay off, they’d lay off.
Honest, guys, the police aren’t pigs; they’re the good guys. They go where they’re pointed and do as they’re told. They don’t have the authority to not do the job they’re given.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:26 am
As for property rights, I’ve always been against automatic property confiscation. I don’t see how it’s constitutional. Also, the sort of states rights mentioned in the post went out with the post-Civil War amendments (13-15) and, arguably, went out with the ratification of the Constitution containing an interstate commerce clause that could be interpreted so widely that the federal government can prevent or punish a small family farm from planting a spare acre based upon the fact that if all the small family farmers did that, they could seriously effect interstate commerce. Heck, when you’ve got a SCOTUS ruling that the commerce clause can be used to forbid land owners to develop their own land because a rare species of fungus grows there…
September 28th, 2007 at 7:53 am
I’m with Craig. I don’t blame the DEA guys - I blame the sick stupid sleazy Bush administration, and all the crooked pols out there who pander to the reefer-madness crowd and the prison industrial complex and the police state. I don’t blame the DEA guys for this any more than I blame the soldiers for the failed disaster in Iraq. And property seizures have been happening for years - at the state, local and federal level, and more and more for non-violent, victimless crimes of usage as opposed to production. Disgusting - and dengerously conflicted in interest!
I’ll differ with Craig on this, though - give a persona a gun and a badge and it will corrupt their ethics. There are plenty of studies to back that up. And I have no problem emminant domain it it is fair and has the best public interest at heart.
JMJ
September 28th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I have to both agree and disagree. I do blame those who create cruel policies, but I also blame those who carry them out.
I go back to what was ingrained in me in the Marine Corps, as it would have been in any branch of the military, based on the aftermath of the Nuremberg trials. We were taught that “I was only following orders” is not a defense, that everyone has the moral and ethical obligation to evaluate the orders he/she receives and to refuse to carry out any that are wrong. If I had been given an order to do something like these DEA agents are doing, my only ethical choice would have been to resign my commission in protest.
A couple of additional points: first, this administration and its agencies have a long record of ignoring or violating any policies they don’t feel like obeying. So for them to piously shake their heads and say that they have to persecute sick people because it’s the law is deeply hypocritical.
Secondly, there are a lot of ways the DEA is supposed to be carrying out its duties, and nearly any other would do more to make us safe. What they’re doing here is safe and easy for them; it’s cowardly and chickenshit.
September 28th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Tom,
I know this will be deleted but so be it!
I would like to thank you for calling my Uncle, actually brother (to long to explain) but to me, more like a Father, a D.E.A THUG!!! His name was John Boyle. Head Photographer for the D.E.A. for 34 yrs who passed away last September. John Boyle was also a Vietnam (Combat Action) Veteran. Tom, thanks for calling him a THUG! JOHN, was the most CARING, GENTLE, CARING man you’d ever meet.
Tom, your a piece of shit! If my brother, steve0 won’t tell you, I will (about this piece of shit post)! You talk about shit you know nothing about because you “research” one, two, three weeks, months about and all of a sudden you’re a f…ing expert. If you’re so fucking good why don’t you ACTUALLY become an F…ing expert in ONE category that you ACTUALLY know.
And Tom, my Uncle died of Cancer he didn’t need a joint on the way out!.
Tom, if you ever want to visit him you can in the Arlington National Cemetery. He got a spot there for his distinguished service to our country which you know NOTHING about.
Sad to say but my Uncle, John Boyle, would have shook your hand, bought you a beer, and let you “smoke” a joint in front of him as long as it wasn’t in his house. But, oh no, TOM has to write about possibly one small fragment of the D.E.A. to try and become a “big” (small shot).
Tom, I’ll just end it like the middle….you’re a piece of shit!
September 28th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
There, I feel better. It’s been eating away at me all day. Tom, your not actually a piece of shit what you wrote was. Tom, you want change? Change the law. I don’t think you’ll see “families” in neighborhoods agreeing with you anytime soon. I WONDER WHY? Children ring a bell? Gotta be 18 yrs old to get cigs? Gotta be 21 to buy beer? Yeah, they can’t regulate those let’s go throw POT on the street. Oh, something else we can tax and frix or children up with. Have a great weekend y’all!
September 29th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I have a friend who’s a DEA guy too. Heckuva guy. He just does his job. He doesn’t always like it - but do any of us ALWAYS like what we’re asked to do at work? When I did corp collections, sometimes it made me feel like a lump of crap. But I did my job. I literally had grown men crying on the phone. Tragic stories. One guy lost everything and had to go back to Russia, penniless. But I still did my job.
JMJ
September 29th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Comparing any of this to the war crimes judged at Nuremberg also seems to be just ever so slightly overwrought, don’t you think?
Nor is this anything new. From the article linked in the post:
You see, we have legal ways of changing what we don’t like in this country and it isn’t spitting in the face of law enforcement officers. It’s called the political process. You educate the public to the costs to them of criminalization in prison overcrowding, the costs to users, especially medicinal use users, play on their natural desire to help those in distress, lay out for them the benefits of decriminalization and/or legalization, allay their fears of the likely outcomes of legalization. Move them to compassion for those who are suffering. ask them to write letters to their Congressmen and to the President. Write those who are running for office. Make this an issue in elections…
You change the law.
September 29th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
The only purpose I see in the drug laws is to provide jobs in prison. We waste so much time, energy and money in what is usually a victimless crime.
September 29th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Craig,
I didn’t compare this situation were comparable to those being tried at Nuremberg; what I said was that the principle is the same, and that Nuremberg was the genesis of that specific training in our military. The principle is, basically, that conscience is a requirement and when conscience conflicts with carrying out the mission, the only ethical thing to do is to give up that position in protest. I didn’t advocate spitting in anyone’s face, either - that’s a straw man on your part. That would be wrong as well, and I have never advocated violence against law enforcement personnel. Hell, if corrections counts, I’ve spent years working in law enforcement, on top of a couple of decades serving the government in the military.
I wish it were as easy as it sounds to use the political process to change things, but we know that too often it doesn’t work that way. Our political process is pretty much driven by money and power, and there are some rich and powerful interests who want to keep things the way they are, whether it’s just and reasonable or not. There are the lobbyists for the prison industry, as Chris notes; in the case of medicinal marijuana in particular, the pharmaceutical industry; and various others with ideological or interest-group axes to grind.
I am not an advocate for drug use in general; I’ve seen too much of the damage it causes working as a therapist in addiction treatment programs and in the prisons. But I also know that the “war on drugs” approach is ineffective and cruel. The Feds did a study in California a number of years back on the relative efficacy of treatment versus arrest and punishment, and they found that every dollar spent on treatment saves us seven dollars in law enforcement and prison money. Another government study found that every dollar spent on youth substance abuse prevention (research based programs with data to prove their results, not boondoggles like DARE) saves us about five dollars of treatment money! So if we limited the DEA’s role to going after people involved in things like violent drug-related crime, and spent the money they’re using on this nonsense on prevention and treatment, we’d have a lot more to support our first responders who desperately need more funding for homeland security. Wouldn’t that be a better way to spend this money than torturing cancer patients?
I’m not saying that the DEA people are evil. For the most part they’re very likely ordinary people, with no doubt the usual mixture of really decent folks and losers. But this policy is evil. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for decent people to get caught up in evil systems and to cause huge amounts of suffering by just doing their jobs. Yes, we should pursue the political process. But we should also be challenging these folks to really look at what they’re doing and ask themselves if that’s what they want their impact in the world to be, if that’s something they’d be proud to have their kids watch them do.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I don’t see a big difference between that and spitting in their face. Call it metaphoric spitting, if you must. I do, of course, recognize that spitting would be (I imagine) battery in legal parlance whereas merely “gang of sleazy shitbags” and “sadistic douchebag” are mere words but then I’m not a lawyer, merely someone making a moral equivalence between the two. Anyone reading your words, Jersey and Emmet for example, might think that the two aren’t all that different. I don’t either and I don’t even have any friends who are DEA agents.
As for the Nuremberg “conscience” principle, ok, I’ll buy that, but since the offenses are not equivalent, there surely is room for a non-shitbag, non-sadistic douchebag to do a job that one doesn’t like, in the case of interfering with the supply chain of illegal substances for the sick but still do it on the basis of the principle that people should either obey the law or change it, not break it. At least, I would think so.
You didn’t think that maybe bringing up Nuremberg might have given that pretty distinct impression to your readers? Or that calling them “gang of sleazy shitbags” and “sadistic douchebag” are pretty functionally equal to “evil”?
Very well, this was part of your challenge to DEA agents to to look at what they’re doing, ask themselves if that’s what they want their impact in the world to be or something to be proud of…so calling them “gang of sleazy shitbags” and “sadistic douchebag” were, you think, likely to be just that push of reason that would get DEA agents to rethink their obedience to lawful orders? It seems more likely to result in them calling you a supreme asshole, ignoring you, and shutting off all possible future challenges.
LJ, whatever your goal, your means is not only not likely to lead to your goal but you’ve just managed to turn off two guys who are usually on your side, politically and one guy who isn’t usually on your side politically.
Seems like you’re going backwards from your stated goal.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Oh, man…talk about a brain-blip. Emmet, of course, is not usually on your side politically. I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I wrote that part. Sheesh!
September 30th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Craig,
I didn’t write the initial post, where the majority of the language you quoted came from. Please address your rejoinders to the people who made the original comments. You are putting words in my mouth (or in my keyboard) that I did not say/type. Talk about likely to turn people off, slamming me for something someone else said is a good way to do that.
As for evil, there’s a big difference between saying someone is doing evil and saying he/she is evil. Everyone alive has done evil at times (unless you know about someone I don’t who hasn’t.) We all have the capacity to do bad things, which is why we need to keep an eye on ourselves and avoid it or stop it when we can. So no, when I say someone is doing evil, I am not calling them evil as people. If they were evil by nature, they wouldn’t be able to help it and would have no capacity or obligation to do better.
By the reasoning that if we think a law is bad we should use the legislative process to change it (I agree with that part) but we should obey/enforce it until it changes, it was appropriate and moral for police to catch runaway slaves and return them to captivity; for good citizens under Nazi rule (to return to the Nuremberg principle) to turn in Jews rather than help them. Only a fool would argue that there are not sometimes wrong and immoral laws. I am saying that at those times, the only ethical choice is to disobey those laws, and that every person has the moral duty to take responsibility for those choices. When one is in a position of being sworn to enforce the laws in general, that means giving up that position if necessary.
Enforcing drug laws like those preventing terminally ill people from reducing their suffering by using marijuana helps no one, protects no one from any harm, serves no legitimate interest of the community or the state. What it does do is inflict prolonged agony on people, to a degree that could reasonably be called torturing them. So I believe that by any reasonable standard, that is an act of evil.
As I already noted, I cited Nuremberg to show why the military chose to make this duty to consult and follow one’s conscience explicit. That was the sequence of events. And if the reference offends anyone, I would ask them to consider the real-life impact of what the federal government is doing here and ask what they would consider a kinder, gentler equivalent when we’re talking about inflicting intense and prolonged pain on people and/or depriving them of their freedom.
You didn’t say anything in response to my mentioning data showing that the current approach is not the one that the government’s own research has proven would work best to reduce the harm done to society by drug abuse, either. Any thoughts on that?
I don’t participate in BIO to turn anyone off - I do indeed hope to persuade people rather than just insult them. But at the same time, I have to call an evil an evil when I believe I see one. That’s why, if you reread everything I’ve said here, I’ve been harshly critical of actions, but I haven’t stuck any labels on people themselves. Actions we can change. Who and what we are, we can’t. If I believed that the majority of DEA agents were sadists or incapable of moral choice, I wouldn’t urge that they change their actions, because then they wouldn’t be able to.
September 30th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
My mistake. I apologize for my confusion. I’m gonna shut up not and try to pry my feet out of my mouth.