RANDOM FIRE

What kind of periodicals and books would you expect to litter the library
shelves and bathroom stalls at the Drug Enforcement Administration?

Apparently to keep a finger on the pulse (or, more likely, thrust a thumb
in the eye) of the drug culture, the DEA regularly forks over taxpayer
money for High Times -- multiple copies according to a report obtained
pursuant to a Freedom of Information request, filed by the guys at the
Smoking Gun.

"The narcs must have been fighting over each month's copy," Smoking Gun
opined, "because the Drug Enforcement Administration's in-house library is
shelling out for three copies a month of the drug bible. "

Smoking Gun got its hands on the DEA's official library acquisition
reports, which keep record of the publications to which the agency
subscribes, along with the books it purchases.

Some of the 2000 DEA library acquisitions include riveting legal
scholarship, such as Vincent Johnson's book, "Mastering Torts: A Student's
Guide to the Law of Torts" (Academic Press, 1999), which I understand reads
a lot like John Grisham -- only with characters slightly more believable
and three-dimensional. Should DEA staff tire of reading industry
publications like the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and
Therapeutics, they can always thumb through the library's copy of Michael
Gross' 2000 tome, "My Generation: Fifty Years of Sex, Drugs, Rock,
Revolution, Glamour, Greed, Valor, Faith, and Silicon Chips" (Cliff Street
Books) and maybe head down to the lunchroom to whip up a recipe or two from
Todd Dalotto's "The Hemp Cookbook: From Seed to Shining Seed" (Healing Arts
Press, 2000). Mmm.

Reading some of these books, however, must be less fun than breaking your
toes. Though I haven't looked at it myself, Tom Andrews' "Codeine Diary:
Confessions of a Reckless Hemophiliac" (Harcourt Brace & Co., 1999)
probably requires an unhealthy dose of the junk just to make it through.

And you might want to double the dose for this one: "Handbook of Chemical
and Biological Warfare Agents" by D. Hank Ellison (CRC Press, 2000). Either
somebody over at the DEA has a pretty sadistic idea about bathroom reading,
or we should start biting our nails. Drug warriors studying biochem warfare
is not an encouraging sort of thing to find out. What, no-knock raids
weren't lethal enough with conventional weapons?

There was, interestingly enough, no mention of why it's fine for the DEA to
subscribe to High Times, while simply owning a magazine that looked like
High Times was used as pretext to search a woman's car in Davidson, N.C.,
last year. No drugs were found in the search, but the Davidson police
maintained that the magazine cover photo seen in the car was probable cause
for a rummage and rumple session through the vehicle.

"He acted properly," said Assistant Police Chief Butch Parker about the
officer. "He thinks he had reasonable suspicion, and we do too." (I wonder
if the founders would agree that an image of a marijuana leaf -- which,
according to Jack Herer, Ronald Reagan once mistook for the Canadian maple
leaf -- is all that's needed to satisfy the demands of the Fourth Amendment.)

I suppose this means Parker should be heading to Virginia to search the
cars of DEA library staff.

Possibly the most interesting purchase, however, was this: a copy of
Herbert N. Foerstel's "Freedom of Information and the Right to Know: The
Origins and Applications of the Freedom of Information Act" (Greenwood
Press, 1999). Maybe someone at DEA wanted to find out if he could tell
Smoking Gun to stuff a sock in its FOIA request.

Better luck next time.