Retired DEA Agent gets slammed by the real facts! Below is a comment left by a retired DEA agent in response to "The 6 facts about marijuana" article. Needless to say, he had nothing more to say after being confronted with the real facts.
Comment by William Mattingly
I’m a retired DEA Special Agent. In my 20 years on the job in 7 major U.S. cities, I’ve never interviewed a heroin addict who stated that he/she started drug use on heroin. No, their first entry into the drug world was pot, then they looked for a “bigger high” and off they went. Contrary to current myths, FBN, BNDD, DEA leadership forbid we agents on working on any cases under 100 lbs. and this was Chicago circa 1958! Small cases like this we turned over to local or state police. Our targets then and now are organized crime traffickers and lab operators. States that have liberalized pot use will see an increase in major auto accidents as a result of drugged drivers. As for me, I don’t intend to drive in either state. It’s bad enough in the state where I live now with alcohol intoxicated drivers!
Reply
REPLY by Katherine Williams
If you are a DEA agent, you have effectively demonstrated why your group has been one of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money in the history of this nation, because clearly you don’t know much about the drug you’re policing.
The entry drugs are nicotine, alcohol and caffeine. Every study has said as much – it’s just that most addicts are as oblivious as you apparently are, that those are mind-altering substances.
2.3 million people reported trying marijuana in 2009 – 617,000 tried cocaine and 180,000 tried heroine, in the same year. Facts are facts – marijuana is the most easily obtainable illicit drug (despite all the money wasted by our government trying to maintain a prohibition), so most people who’ve used other illicit drugs, have tried it too. That they found pot first, is in no way, shape or form, an indication that marijuana had any part in their later drug use. Some of them found LSD first – LSD isn’t the cause of their further drug use. Your attempt to suggest otherwise, is a joke – the facts overwhelming support that there is no gateway affect between marijuana and other drugs.
States that have had medical marijuana have NOT seen an increase in major traffic accidents, because the drug that causes driving impairment, is the legal one – booze. Every legitimate study on the use of marijuana while driving, showed that for most people, it made them highly observant (i.e. paranoid) and that people drive slower and more carefully when under the influence of marijuana.
Which is not to say that it isn’t an impairment, but if you’re in an accident involving marijuana, you are likely to be going a lot slower, and it’s less likely to be a major accident. Because unlike most other drugs, on marijuana, you are AWARE that you’re impaired, and you try to be extra cautious. Unlike with alcohol, where you imagine you’re bulletproof. There is zero correlation, between a relaxation in marijuana prohibition, in any state or nation, and an increase in major traffic accidents.
You think your experience makes you the expert, but it demonstrates the lies that parts of the drug enforcement engine have been telling themselves for years – because they refused to call Anslinger the liar he was.
And he was a liar – just ask Portugal. They have proven, conclusively, that a responsible drug policy doesn’t involve jailing users. They have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that decriminalization works. And right now, 17 states are in the process of proving it too.
But you continue to tell yourself, that the facts – that we jail a larger percentage of our population than any other nation, and that an insane amount of people serving life sentences are doing so for non-violent possession crimes affected by the BS three-strikes rule, and that while white and black people use marijuana at roughly the same rates, black people are three times more likely to be arrested for possession – are good things.
The rest of us will rely on rational evaluation of the facts, not anecdotal stories from someone who clearly hasn’t bothered to ever research the lies he tells himself and others.
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