The DEA has failed to eradicate marijuana. Now Congress wants it to stop trying.

[n2doc]

By Christopher Ingraham

The Drug Enforcement Administration is not having a great year.

The chief of the agency stepped down in April under a cloud of scandal. The acting administrator since then has courted ridicule for saying pot is "probably not" as dangerous as heroin, and more recently he provoked 100,000 petition-signers and seven members of Congress to call for his head after he called medical marijuana "a joke."

This fall, the administration earned a scathing rebuke from a federal judge over its creative interpretation of a law intended to keep it from harassing medical marijuana providers. Then, the Brookings Institution issued a strongly-worded report outlining the administration's role in "stifling medical research" into medical uses of pot.

Unfortunately for the DEA, the year isn't over yet. Last week a group of 12 House members led by Ted Lieu of California wrote to House leadership to push for a provision in the upcoming spending bill that would strip half of the funds away from the DEA's Cannabis Eradication Program, and put that money toward programs that "play a far more useful role in promoting the safety and economic prosperity of the American people:" domestic violence prevention and overall spending reduction efforts.

Each year the DEA spends about $18 million in efforts with state and local authorities to pull up marijuana plants being grown indoors and outdoors. The program has been plagued by scandal and controversy in recent years. In the mid-2000s it became clear that the overwhelming majority of "marijuana" plants netted by the program were actually "ditchweed," or the wild, non-cultivated, non-psychoactive cousin of the marijuana that people smoke.

more

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/27/the-dea-has-failed-to-eradicate-marijuana-now-congress-wants-it-to-stop-trying/?tid=sm_tw

[B Calm]

1. Stripping half of the funds away is not enough. They could save us tax payers

the full 18 million dollars (for pulling up plants), by stopping the funding of them all together!

[rhett o rick]

2. Doesn't this fall at the feet of the President? He needs to adjust the priorities for the DEA.

The DEA is just trying to keep their jobs.

[Scuba]

3. Haven't you heard? Presidents are powerless. At least Democratic Presidents are.

[rhett o rick]

6. He gets credit for things that are good but not responsible when things aren't good. nm

[jomin41]

4. consider this

"The plants were destroyed by law enforcement officers under the auspices of the DEA's cannabis eradication program. This program allocates money from the Department of Justice's Asset Forfeiture Fund to 128 state and local law enforcement agencies. The agencies use this money to locate and destroy indoor and outdoor marijuana grow sites."

So the mf'ers steal somebody's money, then use it to take somebody else's herb!

The important thing about all this is that it has always been a fraud. A genuine giant fraud committed by our own government on us. The big question for me is, " How has this been allowed to go on for so long and to such a degree of evil AFTER thinking people KNEW it was wrong?" The ACLU position paper on drug policy was written 20(?) years ago. It's all there. What is wrong with our country when it takes so gd long to change a policy that is so unredeemably bad and destructive in so many ways.

[rhett o rick]

7. "The ACLU position paper on drug policy was written 20(?) years ago." But HRC says it still needs

more study.

[jomin41]

5. Keep in mind

This represents a very small part of the DEA budget which is somewhere around 30 or 40 BILLION dollars every year.

Your tax dollars at play in the interest of evil.

[mountain grammy]

8. I think with what's going on the world, the DEA is the least of Obama's worries.

But it sure is on the top of the list of many Americans. This agency has power and has been destroyed more than a few lives.