THE DEA TURNS 30

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration celebrates its thirtieth
birthday this month, as the U.S. Senate ponders the nomination of Karen P.
Tandy to be the first woman ever to head the anti-drug agency.

If U.S. drug policies were rooted in facts and logic, this would be occasion
for a searching reexamination of the DEA's priorities and tactics, not to
mention the wisdom of the laws the agency was created to enforce. That is
about as likely as George W. Bush deciding to replace Dick Cheney with Al
Sharpton as his 2004 vice presidential running mate.

On June 25, the Senate Judiciary Committee held what they tried to pass off
as a hearing on Tandy's nomination. No Democrats bothered to show up., and
the few Republicans present asked precisely zero challenging questions. A
handful of committee members say they plan to submit written questions to
Tandy, a career drug war apparatchik, but all indications are that her
nomination will sail through without significant debate.

So our anti-drug crusade can be expected to continue pretty much as usual --
as perhaps the cruelest, most spectacular policy failure in the history of
the republic.

Formed by an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon in July 1973,
the DEA was supposed to establish a unified command for federal efforts that
would, at long last, win the war on drugs. Its budget has skyrocketed, from
less than $75 million in fiscal 1973 to an estimated $1.9 billion in the
current fiscal year.

Not surprisingly, this 2,500 percent funding increase helped kick-start a
massive upsurge in arrests. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports,
the annual number of arrests for drug crimes skyrocketed from 328,670 in
1973 to 1,586,902 in 2001. That 2001 figure includes 723,627 arrests for
marijuana offenses -- more than double the number arrested for all drug
crimes combined in 1973.

This skyrocketing arrest rate, coupled with lengthy prison terms required by
mandatory minimum sentencing laws, has led to an incarceration rate that
strains state budgets and shocks most of the world. One thing it has not
done, though, is reduce the availability of illegal drugs.

Every year, the federally-funded Monitoring the Future study surveys
teenagers about illegal drug use and availability. In 1975, the first year
the survey was conducted, 87.8 percent of high school seniors said that
marijuana was "easy to get." In 2002 that figure was 87.2 percent.
Throughout the surveyis 28-year history, this "easy to get" figure has
remained astonishingly constant, ranging from a low of 82.7 percent to a
high of 90.4 percent.

Meanwhile, the percentage of high school seniors reporting that heroin and
cocaine are easy to get has actually increased since 1975.

To most sentient beings, the DEA's record of utter failure at what is
theoretically its principal job -- keeping drugs out of the hands of kids --
suggests it might be time to rethink the notion that we can arrest and jail
our way out of the drug abuse problem. If some 15 million marijuana arrests
since Nixon took office have made no dent in the marijuana supply, why
should another 15 million do the trick?

Even those wedded to prohibition ought to wonder about the DEA's -- and
indeed the whole federal government's -- near-obsession with marijuana. The
DEA continues to waste resources harassing, raiding and prosecuting medical
marijuana patients and caregivers in California. Do these people really have
nothing better to do?

Disgust with the medical marijuana raids has led several local law
enforcement agencies to consider reducing or ending programs in which they
cooperate with the DEA. Just how much damage is the agency willing to do to
itself in order to keep attacking cancer and AIDS patients?

These are just a few of the questions the Senate should be asking Karen
Tandy -- and insisting on direct, no-nonsense answers -- before confirming
her to lead the DEA into its fourth decade.

Don't hold your breath.