TAX DOLLARS USED FOR ILL-CONCEIVED DEA PUSH

It's hardly news that Drug Enforcement Agency officials are opposed to
a Colorado ballot initiative seeking to make it legal for adults to
possess small amounts of marijuana.

It certainly is news, however, when DEA agents admit to spending staff
time, paid for by taxpayer dollars, fighting that ballot measure or
any other.

The Daily Camera reported Aug. 27 that DEA agent Michael Moore sent
out e-mails to political consultants looking for someone to advise the
federal agency how to set up a campaign against the amendment.

The issue comes before voters in November and seeks to allow state
residents over 21 to keep up to 1 ounce of marijuana.

The wisdom of such a change in drug laws is certainly debatable.
American learned hard lessons during Prohibition, mostly that it
neither kept people from drinking nor persuade Americans to shun alcohol.

Clearly, for all the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on fighting
the so-called War on Drugs, illegal drug use seems as dangerous and
pervasive as ever.

It's unclear whether decriminalization of drugs such as marijuana
would have any effect on American drug use or drug sales, but it's
hard to argue that there's much of a black market for alcohol these
days.

There are many unanswered questions from this proposal that the media
and voters will certainly look to the DEA to for answers. Rest assured
anything the DEA says about the issue will be big news, freely
disseminated as their side of the story. But any opinions from the DEA
are just that.

It's a given that drug-agency officials will be releasing only
information that supports their position that legalizing even small
amounts of marijuana would be bad for Coloradans. It could be that
there would be a need for fewer DEA agents. That means current DEA
would be spending time on the job paid for by taxpayers to lobby
voters to keep them employed. That's wrong. Certainly DEA agents, like
all Americans, enjoy the right of free speech. But here in Colorado,
we've wisely limited how the government can use tax dollars to promote
that free speech.

Congress would do well to amend the age-old Hatch Act, which limits
federal employee involvement in partisan political races, to include
limits on all political questions.

And DEA agents would do well to back off their ill-conceived plan
against this state ballot issue so that any Hatch Act amendments are
precautionary rather than justifiably punitive.