Drug WarRant

The US Department of Justice wants us all to know that internet swindlers are impersonating DEA agents and scamming money from people online. Unfortunately, the warning doesn’t include a similar public concern about the DEA’s own scams.

Actual DEA agents in plain-clothes are mugging airline passengers at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport by tricking disembarking passengers into being searched for cash when the passengers don’t know they are legally free to reject the search and simply walk away. Any cash seized by the agents disappears into a quagmire of red tape while returning the money to the traveler is made complicated. Passengers with a darker skin color make up 68-percent of the targeted travelers.

Recently the DEA repeated an unsuccessful attempt to prohibit certain psychedelic drugs by failing again to get them placed on Schedule I before researchers can discover any new medicinal information about the drugs. Allowing the DEA to arbitrarily choose what it prohibits or regulates can result in major conflicts of interest that benefit only the DEA. A Schedule I drug ranking can always be expected to extend the bureaucratic tenure of the DEA by encumbering new research for a drug and by arresting people who need it as a medicine.

For all this and more the DEA’s operations cost the American taxpayer more than $2.4 billion each year. Any progress toward winning the drug war should result in defunding the DEA and the socioeconomic complex it created. In some cases it might be possible to minimize the DEA’s impact by transferring the agency’s present duties to the Food and Drug Administration – like the scheduling of drugs – but these changes and any others designed to diminish the drug war won’t be encouraged by law enforcement agencies or the federal government. It would mean giving up their authority to mug airline passengers.

Candace Owens (aka Candace O) conflates trans Native Americans with cannibalism and drugs:

…I don’t know what you’re talking about with Two-Spirit people. Is this like a Native American tribe, like high smoking and talking about your spirit? I’m asking you seriously, because when I think of Native American tribes talking about their spirits, I know that they used to smoke a lot, they used to do drugs, they also were cannibals who used to eat people, so I don’t know if we should be taking our cues from cannibals…I don’t think that there were trans Native Americans….

Criminalizing drugs weaponizes them. Since drug crimes typically lack victims who voluntarily act as plaintiffs against themselves, a law enforcement apparatus was created that can target just about anyone with planted evidence or accusations originating from personal enemies or a corrupt government. Famous drug suspects include Joan of Arc who was questioned by the Inquisition about her drug use prior to being burned at the stake in 1431 for wearing men’s clothes.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) President Kevin Sabet, a former three-time White House drug policy advisor, eulogizes the late-Senator Dianne Feinstein for her opposition to medicinal marijuana in the 1990s:

…“For a Californian like me working on drug policy, Senator Feinstein was a role model throughout my career in public service. She stood steadfast against legalization until the very end because she knew it was the right thing to do to protect public health and safety.

“Throughout her illustrious career, the Senator was a leader on drug policy even when the lobbyists and special interests came knocking. I was honored to work alongside her on numerous occasions. She opposed medical marijuana in the 90’s and later the state’s move to allow full-scale commercialization of THC drugs. Especially noteworthy was the late-Senator’s work on the “Protecting Kids from Candy-Flavored Drugs Act,” which she introduced as to help crack down on Big Marijuana’s predatory practices to hook new, younger users.

“Senator Feinstein will be missed by all who stand for a responsible, science-based approach to drug policy.” […]

Science-based? Really? Neither Dianne Feinstein nor Kevin Sabet were trained in the sciences or specifically in pharmacology. And when did it supposedly become the goal of science to thwart improved public health by prohibiting cannabis use as a medicine?

Tony Perkins and Jennifer Bauwens of the Family Research Council (FRC)–a think tank and organization of churches accused of wanting to end democracy in the U.S. and replace it with a theocracy–are warning Americans that psychedelics open people up to demonic activities:

…when you’re reading the Bible and you see the word “witchcraft”… for example … Moses’ encounter with magicians in Egypt … those magicians weren’t just partaking in witchcraft to access the evil realm … they were also doing it with drugs … that now we would know as psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs….

Ritualized medical applications gave Egypt’s witches and magicians a professional edge over the many competing religious practitioners who rejected drugs and particularly psilocybin mushrooms for use in treating serious disorders like major depression and PTSD. The devil is in the details. One detail includes a threat to the Family Research Council of a happy, healthy, well-adjusted and highly informed public engaging in critical thinking and exposure of demonic FRC schemes that perpetuate fallacies, anti-intellectualism and human misery in ways that obstruct medical science.

Public consumption of marijuana terrifies prohibitionists. In practice they appear to view cannabis users in groups as the moral equivalent of demonic rituals. Maybe it’s because for thousands of years heaps of smoldering marijuana and psychedelic herbs have been publicly consumed during mystic ceremonies, usually attended by all types of pagans, witches, heretics and ancient Romans participating in orgies. Whatever the reasons, the Las Vegas hotel industry is progressively challenging Nevada’s laws prohibiting public use of weed. According to Nevada attorney David Edelblute:

…the distinguishing legal factor of the … approach to cannabis consumption is that [a hotel] does not intend to sell cannabis products, or allow consumption in public areas. […]

Solutions lie in who considers what to be public. Pushing the legal boundaries, rooms on some hotel floors offer special air filtration systems where people can smoke their weed in private without offending others. Other types of spaces not deemed totally public make up the flexible boundary attracting the industry’s focus. As one hotel owner noted:

You don’t come to our hotel just to get stoned — it’s not the goal, Rizk said … You come for the experience, the events, the parties, the pool parties … and the fact that we allow (cannabis) consumption in certain areas, where permissible by law, is just an additional perk.

If failure can be defined as something that creates the very crisis it’s intended to prevent, then a recent Brown University study of close-proximity opioid overdoses in Indianapolis confirms suspicions that little else fails like the drug war when it comes to saving lives.

The [researchers] found that within seven, 14 and 21 days, opioid-related seizures of drugs by police were significantly associated with increased overdoses within 100, 250 and 500 meters of the seizure location. Most notably, the number of fatal overdoses was two-fold higher than expected within seven days and 500 meters following an opioid-related incident in which police seized drugs.

The researchers hypothesized that the increase in overdose events was because people who use opioids will generally seek out a new supply after losing access to their previous drug supply, and that new supply will have unknown potency. In addition, in the time period between losing the familiar supply and finding a new one, people using opioids can experience diminished tolerance to drugs. Accidentally ingesting a dose beyond one’s tolerance can be fatal. […]

Congratulations are due the Brown University research team for making ‘drug war’ another definition of failure and enabling it to appear next to synonyms like breakdown, malfunction, cataclysm, crash, defeat, ruin, collapse, catastrophe, miscarriage, tragedy, frustration, and disappointment.

The US Office of Inspector General has identified questionable funding practices by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, a former NYU law professor, federal prosecutor, and New Jersey attorney general.

Milgram is accused of diverting no-bid DEA contracts into the hands of friends or former colleagues in violations of federal regulations. These included a $400,000 data analysis contract to Jose Cordero, a $257-per-hour consulting contract to Lena Hackett, and a $1.4 million contract to a Washington, DC law firm to “review the DEA’s scandal-plagued foreign operations, a report widely criticized for giving short shrift to repeat instances of agent misconduct.”

“This report is stunningly vague in its actual evaluation of known problems at the DEA and remedies to fix them,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This speaks to the agency’s broader effort to evade oversight. The agency has attempted to dodge my oversight inquiries but I intend to push forward.”

The external probe was announced in 2021 following reporting by The Associated Press on the crimes of José Irizarry, a disgraced former DEA agent now serving a 12-year federal prison sentence after confessing to laundering money for Colombian drug cartels and skimming millions from seizures and informants to fund an international joyride of fine dining, parties and prostitutes.

Irizarry told the AP last year that DEA agents have come to accept that there’s nothing they can do to make a dent in the flow of illegal cocaine and opioids into the United States that has driven more than 100,000 overdose deaths a year.

“The drug war is a game,” Irizarry said. “It was a very fun game that we were playing.”

Irizarry’s case got one paragraph in the external review. An ongoing federal grand jury inquiry into some of his jet-setting former DEA colleagues was mentioned in a footnote. Also, Irizarry’s lawyer told AP he offered to make his client available for an interview for the review but was never contacted. […]

A June deadline from the Biden Administration demanding that medical doctors who prescribe opioids qualify for a DEA license to do so by taking 8 hours of training has drawn critical comments from the many doctors affected:

So if I understand this correctly, the new requirement applies to DEA registrants who did not obtain the “X” waiver (as I did more than 15 years ago) or are not certified in addiction medicine. – William F Cox MD

I have to have a DEA license for my telehealth job, in which I’m not even allowed to prescribe Sudafed or Phenergan. Yet I have to spend 8 hours on this BS. – L Knight MD

Big Pharma, organized Medicine calling pain the fifth vital sign, quality measures being introduced threatening docs for not prescribing for controlling pain, local law enforcement moonlighting as security at pill mills and politicians ignoring complaints of citizens about out of state vehicles driving through their communities to pill mills the same time each week to stock up and it’s doctors’ fault we have an opioid crisis? – Steve Reznick

Incredible. Of note, 11 of the 28 “free” courses on the AMA website are actually free. – Sunset MD

Another waste of time and money. Most of the drugs that are being abused and causing fatal overdoses are illegal and are not being prescribed by anyone. – Dr. Whatnow

Makes a lot of sense for a dermatologist wasting their time taking a class on substance abuse. – BMS

State licensure has required courses for renewals. Now the MBAs and legislative committees who have no experience in the real world are making new rules. – SRB

More uncompensated time. – Dan Smith

Let’s see how many hours we can suck out of a caring MD…THE financial guys already have them on a mandatory treadmill of x patients per x minutes … God help the cancer patients, postsurgical patients, fibro patients … why is it that I feel somehow street drugs will become your grandmother’s recourse…better stock up on narcan…. – kat sheetz rn bsn

How about physicians demanding President Biden and the politicians take courses on Laws and the Constitution (just a refresher and update) to make sure they’re current with the laws and current events? This way the constituents will know they can pass laws effectively and put the dollars for these “required” courses back into the coffers of the homeless and un-and underinsured. – BarbW38

Shows you how out of touch the edict makers are. So we have to do 20-25 modules of garbage every year on Healthstream. Then more garbage to renew licenses. Now the DEA. Have to pay friends of these people to take the modules. They need to be offered “free” which means our licensing fees go to “friends and family” who get the contracts to provide this learning. Meanwhile in the trenches I dread to renew narcotics every month for cancer patients because it is so onerous and time consuming. Care is fractured and everyone and every state operates in a silo. That is the dangerous problem. – D shields