Pubdate: Mon, 14 Jul 2014
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2014 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/IuiAC7IZ
Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Evan Halper, Tribune Washington Bureau
Page: 13

DEA'S WAR ON MARIJUANA GOING TO POT

Once-Certain Support Eroding Within Congress

WASHINGTON - For narcotics agents, who often confront hostile 
situations, Capitol Hill has been a refuge where lawmakers stand 
ready to salute efforts in the nation's war on drugs.

Lately, though, the Drug Enforcement Administration has found itself 
under attack in Congress as it holds its ground against marijuana 
legalization while the resolve of longtime political allies, and the 
White House and Justice Department to which it reports, rapidly fades.

"For 13 of the 14 years, I have worked on this issue. When the DEA 
came to a hearing, committee members jumped over themselves to 
cheerlead," said Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy 
Alliance, a pro-legalization group. "Now the lawmakers are not just 
asking tough questions but also getting aggressive with their arguments."

The DEA's role in the seizure of industrial hemp seeds bound for 
research facilities in Kentucky drew angry rebukes from the Senate's 
most powerful Republican.

The GOP-controlled House recently voted to prohibit federal agents 
from busting medical marijuana operations legal under state laws. 
That measure, which demonstrated a shared distaste for the DEA's 
approach to marijuana, brought one of the Senate's most conservative 
members together with one of its most liberal in a rare bipartisan alliance.

How much the agency's stock has fallen was apparent in the House 
debate, when Rep. Jared Polis, D Colo., denounced the agency's 
longtime chief, Michele Leonhart.

The two had previously clashed over the DEA's insistence that 
marijuana continue to be classified as among the most dangerous 
narcotics in existence.

Leonhart, who declined through a spokesman to be interviewed, is not 
getting much backup from the White House.

This year, she complained that President Barack Obama seemed 
alarmingly blase about what she sees as a pot epidemic. Her remarks 
to dozens of sheriffs gathered at a conference in Washington came 
soon after Obama told The New Yorker magazine that marijuana seemed 
no more dangerous to him than alcohol.

"She said, 'I am so angry the president said what he said and 
completely ignored the science,' " recalled Thomas Hodgson, sheriff 
of Bristol County, Mass.

Leonhart's remarks were so frank, Hodgson said, that another sheriff 
who had been attending such meetings for three decades interrupted 
Leonhart to tell the crowd what a risk she was taking. The audience 
then gave her a standing ovation, Hodgson said.

Leonhart went on to complain about a softball game White House staff 
had participated in with marijuana advocates and declared that one of 
the low points of her career had been seeing a hemp flag fly over the 
Capitol- a display Polis had requested.

When Leonhart left, Hodgson said, she got another standing ovation.

The enthusiasm from law enforcement agents suggests why Leonhart, a 
holdover from the George W. Bush administration, where she served as 
acting DEA chief, remains ensconced in her post even as more than 
42,400 people have signed a petition demanding her resignation.

"The Obama administration has to walk this tightrope," said Sam 
Kamin, a law professor at the University of Denver. "The youth vote 
and a number of populous states are moving in one direction, and 
elements of law enforcement are not.

"These are people who have spent their lives enforcing marijuana 
laws," he said. "To say we are going to let the states decide what 
federal law is, is difficult for them to swallow."

The DEA also is operating amid mixed signals.

Many lawmakers think marijuana should no longer be classified among 
the most dangerous drugs, but they're reluctant to vote to change 
federal narcotics law.

Despite cautious acceptance of state legalization laws by the White 
House, its enforcement strategy is ambiguous. The statutes that 
guided narcotics agents at the height of the war on drugs to 
aggressively go after pot remain on the books.

After word spread in May that Attorney General Eric Holder had called 
in Leonhart for a private chat and admonished her to stop 
contradicting the administration, Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., rushed to 
her defense.

Wolf accused Holder's office of a "Nixonian effort to pressure a 
career law enforcement leader into changing her congressional testimony."

Leonhart "has done an outstanding job leading this agency during a 
challenging time," Wolf wrote in a letter to Holder.

But that view no longer commands a clear majority in Washington, as 
the agency repeatedly has run into congressional opposition.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, 
reprimanded the DEA after it impounded 250 pounds of hemp seeds en 
route to the University of Kentucky from Italy. The seeds were to be 
used by researchers exploring the possibility of reintroducing the 
hemp industry in the U.S.

Hemp, the fiber of a non-psychoactive cannabis plant, can be 
manufactured into clothing and numerous other products. One thing it 
can't do is make a person high. Nonetheless, the DEA deemed the seeds 
a controlled substance.

McConnell said the agency was wasting limited resources on the 
seizure "at the very time Kentucky is facing growing threats from 
heroin addiction and other drug abuse."

Amid pressure and a lawsuit from Kentucky's Department of 
Agriculture, the agency granted the university an expedited 
controlled substances permit.

The hemp case also irritated Kentucky's other senator, tea party 
favorite Rand Paul, who signed on to sponsor the Senate version of a 
House measure that would curb raids on medical marijuana dispensaries.

A desire to rein in the DEA has kindled an intriguing political 
alliance between Paul and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., one of the 
chamber's most liberal members, who is co-sponsoring the measure.

But the DEA is undaunted. It's latest policy paper on pot declares 
the medical marijuana movement, which has won victories in 22 states, 
to be a fraud.

"Organizers," it says, "did not really concern themselves with 
marijuana as a medicine - they just saw it as a means to an end, 
which is the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes."

Displayed prominently in the DEA Museum at its Arlington, Va., 
headquarters is part of a California dispensary that narcotics agents 
raided and shut down. It sits alongside the rebuilt front of a crack house.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom