Drug Enforcement Administration

From Free net encyclopedia

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a United States Department of Justice law enforcement agency tasked with enforcing the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Not only is the DEA the lead agency for domestic enforcement of Federal drug laws (sharing concurrent jurisdiction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation), it also has sole responsibility for coordinating and pursuing U.S. drug investigations abroad.

1 Impact on the Drug Trade
2 Organization
3 Facilities
4 Narcotics Registration
5 Criticism
6 The DEA in popular culture
7 See also
8 External links

[edit]

Impact on the Drug Trade

In 2005, the DEA seized a reported $1.4 billion in drug trade related assets and $477 million worth of drugs.1 However, according to the White House's Office of Drug Control Policy, the total value of all of the drugs sold in the US is as much as $64 billion a year 2, making the DEA's efforts to intercept the flow of drugs into and within the US less than 1% effective. Defenders of the agency's performance record argue that the DEA has had a positive effect beyond their relatively small annual seizures by placing pressure on traffickers, raising prices for consumers (which, it is hoped, may reduce the affordability of drugs.) Critics of this theory (including the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman) point out that demand for illegal drugs shows little price sensitivity; the people who are buying drugs will continue to buy them with little regard to price, often turning to crime to support expensive drug habits.

[edit]

Organization

The DEA is headed by an Administrator appointed by the President of the United States and is approved by the US Senate. The Administrator is assisted by a Deputy Administrator, the Chief of Operations, the Chief Inspector, Assistant Administrators for the Operations Support Division, Intelligence Division, and Human Resources Division. Other senior staff include the Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Counsel. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia. It maintains its own DEA Academy located on the United States Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia along with the FBI Academy. It maintains 21 domestic Field Divisions with 237 Field Offices and 80 Foreign Offices in 58 countries. With a budget over two billion dollars it employs over 11,000 people to include over 5,000 Special Agents.

Job applicants who have a history of hard drug use are excluded from consideration, per DEA policy [1]:

Applicants who are found, through investigation or personal admission, to have experimented with or used narcotics or dangerous drugs, except those medically prescribed, will not be considered for employment with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Exceptions to this policy may be made for applicants who admit to limited youthful and experimental use of marijuana. Such applicants may be considered for employment if there is no evidence of regular, confirmed usage and the full-field background investigation and results of the other steps in the process are otherwise favorable. Investigation usually includes a polygraph test.

The DEA's relatively firm stance on this issue is in contrast to that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is considering relaxing its hiring policy on drug use.

[edit]

Facilities

The DEA maintains its headquarters offices in Arlington, Virginia. DEA has offices or posts of duty in over 350 locations throughout the world.

The DEA jointly runs the El Paso Intelligence Center, which plays a major role in and control for drug and immigration enforcement along the United States border with Mexico.

[edit]

Narcotics Registration

The DEA has a registration system in place which authorizes medical professionals, researchers and manufacturers access to even "Schedule I" drugs. Authorized registrants receive a so called "DEA number" which is to be solely used for tracking controlled substances. The DEA number, however, is often used by the industry as a general "prescriber" number as a unique identifier for anyone who can prescribe medication.

[edit]

Criticism

The DEA has been criticized for placing drugs which some researchers regard as having potential medical uses, such as MDMA and ibogaine, on highly restrictive schedules, even over the objections of some experts in the field of pharmacology and medicine. Critics claim that such decisions are motivated primarily by political factors stemming from the US government's War on Drugs, and that many potential benefits of such substances remain unknown due to the difficulty of conducting scientific research. They are also accused of allowing their politics to take priority over reason. For instance, the DEA has taken a strong stance against medicinal marijuana, claiming it has no medical value. This runs contrary to the findings of many privately run medical organizations, which causes the DEA's critics to speculate that the reason for their firm stance is due to a desire to demonize cannabis in order to defend its prohibition. There also seem to be some scheduled substances that are extremely rare and no reasoning as to why they are scheduled could be found. This includes the drug U4EA and bufotenine. The DEA is also criticized for not scheduling dangerous drugs more commonly used, such as datura, and for being extremely slow in the scheduling of popular analogues of existing scheduled substances, such as DPT, 2C-T-7, and GHB analogues.

Among the critics' most scandalous accusations is that the DEA arrests and prosecutes innocent doctors who prescribe what the government considers to be too much pain medication. In April of 2005, Dr. William Eliot Hurwitz of McClean, Virginia, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on drug trafficking charges. [2] Hurwitz was known for prescribing large quantities of Oxycontin. Many have speculated, however, that the amounts were consistent with the needs of the patients, and that he had no reasonable means of knowing when the drugs he prescribed were used illegally. Critics believe that the DEA convicted him as a show of force, rather than to protect society, and that his 25 year sentence is a violation of his civil rights. [3] These tactics allegedly cause doctors to avoid prescribing pain medication in fear that they will be prosecuted.

The DEA is also criticized for allegedly focusing only on the operations that it can seize the most money from, namely the organized crime cross-border trafficking of heroin and cocaine. Some critics say that, based on order of popularity, the DEA should be most focused on marijuana or based on order of danger, the DEA should be most focused on locally freebased "crack" cocaine. Based on order of opiate popularity, the DEA should focus much more on prescription opiates used recreationally, which critics contend is far more widespread than heroin use.

Others, such as the ACLU, criticize the very existence of the DEA and the War on Drugs as inimical to the concept of civil liberties by arguing that adults should have the right to put whatever substances they choose into their own bodies, particularly when legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and even prescription drugs have arguably caused much more death and suffering. Recurrently, billions are spent year in and year out, focusing much on criminal law and scare tactics in their anti-drug campaigns. Yet illicit drugs remains widely common, hence the taboo on drugs has little effect and affects people in that all illicit drug users are criminals and can theoretically be arrested if caught.

[edit]

The DEA in popular culture

TheDEA.org (The Drug Enjoying Americans), a drug information site.
Gary Oldman played a corrupt DEA Agent in The Professional.
Luis Guzman and Don Cheadle play two DEA agents in the movie Traffic.
Vin Diesel plays a DEA agent in the movie A Man Apart.
Max Payne is a DEA agent in the video game series Max Payne. In the game, Max battles addicts of a fictional designer drug called Valkyr.
David Duchovny played a transvestite DEA agent, Denise/Dennis Bryson on the series, Twin Peaks.