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Volume 40, Issue 12
April 8, 2003
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April 8, 2003
DEA seizures a case of smoke
& mirrors
By Dan Smith
Editor-in-Chief
Logic and reasoning has recently been tossed aside by the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
A lapse in cognitive ability is made clear by futile seizing of 11 websites
selling glass pipes, bongs, roach clips, and other items that are considered
drug paraphernalia by the federal government.
This action has instilled fear in proprietors of such goods nationwide
and has no doubt angered civil liberty groups, but will make no progress
in the ultimate goal of the DEA, of reducing the amount of drug use in
the United States.
Operations “Pipe Dreams and Headhunter,” as the new prosecutions
are called, undermine integrity of a federal government agency and should
not only infuriate the website owners, civil liberty groups, and consumers.
This decision should ire any citizen who expects the federal government
to use that thing called common sense.
It was after paraphernalia became a $1 billion business that the United
States’ logically-impaired law enforcement became resolute in cracking
down on symptoms of drug use that exist so far away from the actual issue.
“I applaud the hard work of the Justice Department, the U.S. Attorneys,
and the Drug Enforcement Administration, who have provided an important
and welcome boost to our drug prevention efforts,” said John P. Walters,
director of National Drug Control Policy, about the operations.
Did he say “prevention?”
Anyone who takes the most miniscule amount of time to look at drug abuse
studies (the DEA must have been too busy) can deduce that paraphernalia
plays little or no role in creating drug users.
It is hard to imagine someone running around with their new Internet purchased
bong searching for their first bag of pot to load it with.
It can also be presumed no one is seeking their virgin hit of crack to
put in their shiny new crack pipe.
Granted, the perception of drug use as a socially acceptable behavior
increases by letting these sites and stores exist, but by the time someone
seeks these vendors they have already made up their mind about moralities
of drug use.
John Brown, the DEA’s acting administrator, said “People selling
drug paraphernalia are in essence no different than drug dealers, they
are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal
homicide.”
Comparing the suppliers directly with the drug dealers is ridiculous,
these paraphernalia sellers are the tip of the drug culture ice burg,
and drug dealers are the base. Lessons in elementary critical thinking
would benefit the DEA greatly.
There is no justification for punishing those who sell such wares in the
name of drug prevention.
The booming paraphernalia business is only a flagrant symbol of the DEA’s
failure to make progress in the drug war.
In response, Ashcroft and gang did the metaphorical equivalent of shooting
the messenger.
Remember that saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,”
maybe a saying like “pipes don’t get people high, people get
people high,” might enlighten federal law enforcement agencies.
It would be a struggle for the federal government to come up with more
backward reasoning. Ashcroft and DEA must have skipped psychology class
when the lesson of correlation not being causation was taught.
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