{"id":76978,"date":"2013-10-08T08:28:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T07:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/why-didnt-the-shutdown-cut-funding-for-the-dea-its-one-of-the-least-essential-govt-agencies\/76978\/"},"modified":"2013-10-08T15:20:11","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T14:20:11","slug":"why-didnt-the-shutdown-cut-funding-for-the-dea-its-one-of-the-least-essential-govt-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/why-didnt-the-shutdown-cut-funding-for-the-dea-its-one-of-the-least-essential-govt-agencies\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Didn’t the Shutdown Cut Funding for the DEA? Its One of the Least ‘Essential’ Govt. Agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"
The GOP House’s temper-tantrum-induced shutdown of the U.S. government can be called many things\u2013an extortion, a frustration, an outrage… name your unflattering descriptor. But if it does anything of use for the American people, it serves up an inarguable indication of the government’s true priorities. It shows us, verbatim, which programs are deemed \u201cessential\u201d and which aren’t.<\/div>\n

For instance, the national parks and almost a million federal employees have been cutoff, while the military continues to operate full-force.<\/p>\n

And while the injustices of the shutdown are many, among the most hypocritical government priorities is the continued funding of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).<\/p>\n

Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)\u2013an organization focused on ending the war on drugs\u2013sent an email to supporters on Friday asking why the DEA was considered essential during the government shutdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou and I both know the DEA isn’t effective,\u201d he wrote. \u201cSo why is it considered essential?\u201d<\/p>\n

A very good question considering the fact that, even if fighting the war on drugs was reasonable priority to maintain during a shutdown (it isn’t) the DEA has long since lost the war. Since its inception in 1973, it has failed to reduce the number of drug-related crimes<\/a> in the U.S., and continues to place more than 1.2 million people behind bars each year for the mere possession of illegal substances.<\/p>\n

As a report<\/a> last week by the British Medical Journal Open<\/a> <\/em>declared, the war on drugs has failed\u2013not just in America but around the globe. The report shows how, despite decades of ‘war on drugs’ efforts, the potency of illegal drugs has increased, prices have dropped, and the number of users is on the rise.<\/p>\n

Even U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appears to be humming a tune contrary to that of the drug war, as he announced<\/a> in August the Department of Justice will stay out of the way when it comes to the state-regulated legalization of marijuana.<\/p>\n

The DPA’s email called for supporters to sign a petition<\/a> urging Congress to defund the DEA once and for all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe DEA is one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of marijuana law reform and ending the drug war,\u201d the email notes. \u201cIt blatantly lies about marijuana and other drugs while blocking and ignoring scientific research. It relies on dishonesty and scare tactics to promote its vested interests. It undermines the will of voters in medical marijuana states with militarized raids that have resulted in the deaths of innocent people. And it’s been secretly using NSA and CIA programs to spy on virtually all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
April M. Short is an associate editor at AlterNet. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Copyright: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GOP House’s temper-tantrum-induced shutdown of the U.S. government can be called many things\u2013an extortion, a frustration, an outrage… name your unflattering descriptor. But if it does anything of use for the American people, it serves up an inarguable indication of the government’s true priorities. It shows us, verbatim, which programs are deemed \u201cessential\u201d and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76979,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-76978","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}