Drug Enforcement Administration

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a United States Department of Justice law enforcement agency, a federal police service 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.

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 when the drug prices rise.

Organization

The DEA is headed by an Administrator of Drug Enforcement appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the US Senate. The Administrator reports to the Attorney General through the Deputy Attorney General (Title 28, C.F.R., Part 0.102). 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. The Administrator and Deputy Administrator are the only Presidentially-appointed personnel in the DEA; all other DEA officials are career civil servants. DEA's headquarters is located in Arlington, Virginia across from the Pentagon. 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 2.4 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 [3]:

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.

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" that 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.

Diversion Control System

Many problems associated with drug abuse are the result of legitimately-manufactured controlled substances being diverted from their lawful purpose into the illicit drug traffic. Many of the narcotics, depressants and stimulants manufactured for legitimate medical use are subject to abuse, and have therefore been brought under legal control. The goal of controls is to ensure that these "controlled substances" are readily available for medical use, while preventing their distribution for illicit sale and abuse.

Under federal law, all businesses which manufacture or distribute controlled drugs, all health professionals entitled to dispense, administer or prescribe them, and all pharmacies entitled to fill prescriptions must register with the DEA. Registrants must comply with a series of regulatory requirements relating to drug security, records accountability, and adherence to standards.

Criticism

The DEA has been criticized for placing highly restrictive schedules on a few narcotics which some researchers in the fields of pharmacology and medicine regard as having medical uses. Critics of varying political and personal agendas assert that some such decisions are motivated primarily by political factors stemming from the US government's War on Drugs, and that many benefits of such substances remain unrecognized due to the difficulty of conducting scientific research. The DEA has taken a strong stance against medicinal marijuana, claiming it has no medical value[4]. This runs contrary to the findings of some medical organizations[5] [6], causing decriminalization advocates to posit that the DEA demonizes cannabis in order to defend its prohibition. The Administrations's Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program[7] even admits that 98% of the plants it seizes are (non-drug) hemp.^[1]

The DEA is also criticized for allegedly focusing only on the operations from which it can seize the most money^{[citation needed]}, namely the organized cross-border trafficking of heroin and cocaine. Some individuals contemplating the nature of the DEA's charter advise 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. Others suggest that, based on opiate popularity, the DEA should focus much more on prescription opiates used recreationally, which critics contend is far more widespread than heroin use. Some scheduled substances are extremely rare, with no clear reason behind the scheduling of U4EA or bufotenine.

Others, such as the Cato Institute[8] and the Drug Policy Alliance[9] criticize the very existence of the DEA and the War on Drugs as inimical to the concept of civil liberties by arguing that anybody should be free to put any substance they choose into their own bodies for any reason, particularly when legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs are also open to abuse, and that their right to do so is at least as great as, or even outweighs, the rights of persons who they may incidentaly cause harm to. Recurrently, billions are spent yearly, focusing largely on criminal law and demand reduction campaigns^{[citation needed]}, in a losing attempt to counter the marketing techniques of drug dealers and Hollywood to minors^{[citation needed]}. The DEA currently spends $4 billion a year on arresting and prosecuting marijuana related crimes.^[2] United States federal law currently registers cannabis as a Schedule I drug Yet it is common for illicit drugs to be widely available in most urban, suburban, and even rural areas in the United States, which leads some to believe that drug laws, like most other laws, have little effect on those who choose not to obey them, and that the resources spent enforcing drug laws, as well as many other laws, are wasted. As it relates to the DEA specifically, the vast majority of individual arrests stemming from illegal drug possession and distribution are narrow and more local in scope and are made by local law enforcement officers, while the DEA tends to focus on larger, interstate and international distribution networks and the higher ranking members of such organizations in addition to operating in conjunction with other local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies along US borders^{[citation needed]}.

DEA was accused in 2005 by the Venezuelan government of collaborating with drug traffickers, after which Hugo Chávez decided to cut off any collaboration with the agency. In 2007, after the State Department criticized Venezuela in its annual report on drug trafficking, Venezuelan Minister of Justice reiterated the accusations: "A large quantity of drug shipments left the country through that organization,...[]..We were in the presence of a new drug cartel."^[3]

The DEA in popular culture

• In the James Bond film Licence to Kill, Bond's recurring ally Felix Leiter (played here by David Hedison) is a DEA agent, as is Ed Killifer (Everett McGill), who turned traitor and helped the villain Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) to escape.
• Gary Oldman played a corrupt DEA Agent in Léon. It was one of his most critically acclaimed roles.
• 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.
• David Duchovny plays a transvestite DEA agent in Twin Peaks. The acronym 'DEA' was mistakenly said to stand for 'Drug Enforcement Agency'.
• Max Payne is a NYPD police officer who later becomes a DEA agent in the video game series Max Payne.
• Mary-Louise Parker finds out that her boyfriend is a DEA agent on the Showtime series "Weeds."
• In the game Narc, one of the two playable charcaters is DEA Agent Marcus Hill played by Bill Bellamy
• In The Power of the Dog Don Winslow follows the main character Art Keller through the DEA's beginnings with the War on Drugs (Operation Condor) in Sinaloa, Mexico in 1975 to the year 2004
• In the movie Swordfish, the character Ginger claims to be an undercover DEA agent.

References

See also

• Bureau of Prohibition
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• War on Drugs
• Operation Web Tryp, a DEA investigation culminating in 10 arrests and the closure of 5 suppliers of research chemicals.

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