DEA laments that “media attention” is making it tough to put people in jail for pot
In the Drug Enforcement Administration’s annual survey of the nation’s law enforcement agencies, heroin remained the top concern in 2016 — head-and-shoulders above all other illicit drugs — while marijuana was a drug of negligible concern. Only 4.9 percent of law enforcement respondents named it their most worrisome drug, down slightly from 6 percent last year.
Concern or not, marijuana remains illegal for all purposes under federal law, a policy the DEA emphatically reiterated this past summer. To that end, the DEA devoted 22 pages of its Drug Threat Assessment to pot — considerably more real estate than it devoted to, say, prescription painkillers (16 pages), which kill more than 14,000 people per year.
Many of those 22 pages on the idiosyncrasies of state-level medical and recreational marijuana laws, as well as marijuana use trends in legalization states and nationwide. Most of that information will be familiar to anyone who has been following the legalization story closely.
[Marijuana wins big on election night]
However, the DEA makes the interesting claim, not present in last year’s Threat Assessment, that “media attention” to marijuana issues is making it more difficult to enforce marijuana laws and prosecute people who violate them. The agency also appears to blame the media for spreading inaccurate information about the legality and effects of marijuana use.
The report says:
Many states have passed laws allowing the cultivation, possession, and use of marijuana within their respective states. Due to these varying state laws, as well as an abundance of media attention surrounding claims of possible medical benefits, the general public has been introduced to contradictory and often inaccurate information regarding the legality and benefits of marijuana use. This has made enforcement and prosecution for marijuana-related offenses more difficult, especially in states that have approved marijuana legalization.
Certainly, there’s a fair amount of misinformation about marijuana circulating online. Some overzealous advocates mistakenly believe that marijuana is “safe,” full-stop, or that marijuana is not addictive. The messier reality is that, like any other drug, the use of marijuana comes with a certain number of risks, including the risk of addiction and dependency — even if those risks are generally less severe than the risks associated with, say, alcohol.
But it’s unclear exactly what media reports the DEA is referring to in its Drug Threat Assessment, or what concrete effect those reports may be having on enforcement. The DEA did not respond to a request for clarification from The Washington Post.
To the extent that the public is misinformed on the risks and benefits of marijuana use, some of that misinformation originated with the DEA. The previous administrator of the agency, Michele Leonhart, famously refused in 2012 to admit that crack and heroin are more harmful than marijuana (the agency didn’t officially reverse this position until 2015).
In recent years, the DEA has attempted to convince lawmakers that non-psychoactive hemp plants could get people high (they can’t) and also seized shipments of industrial hemp seeds, prompting a lawsuit from the state of Kentucky.
The DEA has also repeatedly promoted the notion that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder substances. But that’s not the position of the National Institute on Drug Abuse; the attorney general, whose purview includes the DEA; or of most researchers who study the drug.
In opposing various recreational and medical marijuana bills, DEA agents have testified before state legislatures, sometimes making outlandish claims. In one case, a DEA agent in Utah warned that wild rabbits might develop a taste for marijuana if medical use of the plant were approved there.
The DEA also has a lengthy history of casting aspersions on the idea of “medical” marijuana. Most recently, the acting administrator of the DEA, Chuck Rosenberg, called medical marijuana “a joke.” This statement overlooks an ample body of research suggesting that smoked marijuana is an effective treatment for ailments such as chronic pain and muscle stiffness. Researchers also say smoked marijuana holds promise for treating post-traumatic stress disorder in troops, and studies have shown that medical marijuana availability reduces the reliance on deadly opioid painkillers.
Such misconceptions have driven the federal government’s 40-year war on marijuana, which has resulted in the drug’s classification in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act for that time period, alongside heroin.
Filed under: General Problems
Typical of government agencies the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing and the only thing they care about is money and job security!
Wow.
The new onerous CDC guidelines recommend against testing for cannabis on urine screens.
The IOM calls for better pain treatment for 100 million Americans.
Weird how these agencies just can’t seem to agree…
The DEA is going after medical Marijuana in a different way by making pain doctors do drug testing and patients fill out questionnaires about Marijuana use. Last week was the very first time in 3 years that I had to do a questionnaire spacifically targeting pain sufferers who use Marijuana to help control their pain. Here’s the thing, i live in Louisiana where medical marijuana was legalized 2 years ago but very few doctors have prescribed. It’s my understanding that the DEA is playing games with doctors who prescribe opiates and are threatening their lisences if they treat or prescribe Opiates to pain patiens who have both MMJ and Opioids in their systems. Or at least that was my interpretation when my doctor told me about it. I told my physician that he could take urine, blood and even hair if he wants to, and that I do not take anything or any more then prescribed by him. I guess we’ll see at my next appointment whether or not this so called DEA questionnaire messes with my prescriptions.