cannabisnews.com: Tandy’s New Drug-War Strategy Is Old News 





Tandy’s New Drug-War Strategy Is Old News 
Posted by CN Staff on August 19, 2003 at 09:01:38 PT
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
Newly appointed Drug Enforcement Chief Karen P. Tandy has announced that her goals will be to target drug organizations, dry up their money supply, and dismantle them entirely. Wow! What a novel and profound idea! Now, why in the world didn’t previous DEA chiefs think of that before now? But wait a minute! I think they did! What about all the cartels that have been targeted and destroyed since Tandy graduated from law school in 1977, six years after President Nixon declared war on drugs? 
Do the Medellin and Cali cartels come to mind?And what about all the drug lords who have been busted over the years, such as Carlos Lehder and Antonio Noriega? Surely Tandy knows about them. And what about the asset-forfeiture laws, whose fruits have been used to fund drug-enforcement agencies for years? Surely Tandy is also familiar with them. If these things haven’t proven successful after 30 years of drug warfare, why should we expect them to prove successful in the future? One big problem, of course, is that they don’t teach economics in most law schools in the country. If they did, Tandy would know that even if the government succeeds in knocking off drug organizations or drug kingpins there will always be more waiting in the wings to take their place. Why? Because exorbitant black-market profits inevitably arise from the artificially high black-market prices of the illegal drugs. In fact, the more the government “cracks down” on drug organizations and drug lords, the higher the price goes, which attracts even more drug organizations and drug lords. Despite any good intentions she might have, the result will be the same for Tandy as it has been for all other drug-war chiefs for the last 30 years. It’s called the law of supply and demand. Think about all the “record drug busts” that the drug warriors have made for the past 30 years of drug warfare. Think about how the DEA trumpeted those drug busts as great successes in the war on drugs. Think about how they were used to justify ever-increasing budgets for the DEA. Now ask yourself: Did any of them do anything to reduce the supply of drugs? Did any of them result in victory in the war on drugs? In fact, just recently, we’ve read that Bolivian authorities have seized 5 tons of cocaine in a “record drug bust” and that U.S. officials have indicted one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, the Zambada-Garcia organization, and arrested 240 people as part of that drug bust. That’s all great, but haven’t we heard this a thousand times before? And would someone mind explaining to me why new record drug busts are considered a success in the decades-long war on drugs? For the past 30 years, the drug war has destroyed countless lives and wasted millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Karen Tandy’s appointment as the new DEA chief reminds us of another downside to the war — the horrible waste of lives devoted to what is arguably the most nonproductive and destructive government program in U.S. history. We’d be doing both Tandy and the world a favor by bringing it to an end. Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Source: Future of Freedom Foundation (VA)Author: Jacob G. HornbergerPublished: August 18, 2003Copyright: 2003 Future of Freedom FoundationContact: fff fff.orgWebsite: http://www.fff.org/Related Articles:Senate Confirms Prosecutor as DEA Chief http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16990.shtmlFirst Woman To Head DEA Sets Agenda http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16987.shtmlTandy Won't Be Dandy for Medical Marijuanahttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16876.shtml 
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Comment #9 posted by kaptinemo on August 20, 2003 at 15:51:37 PT:
No honor among thieves...and traitors
I am still laughing at the last posting john wayne kindly graced us with.So...the new head of DEAth, Incorporated is trying to stifle dissent on the sinking S.S. DEA? She should have observed how many rats were jumping ship from it before assenting to it's captaincy...and wondered WHY?In military terms, Tandy is trying to perform some 'ball-cutting'. She's trying to gain the upper hand by showing those (few and rapidly dwindling) agents remaining that she is a 'leader' by trying to either shame or neuter them, or both. But she has chosen this as a means of doing so?When a new 'butterbar' (freshly commissioned second lieutenant) tried this stunt with the senior enlisted men, he usually wound up on the short, sharp and dirty end of the stick, because the senior troops would make sure that his many mistakes were quite public, indeed. It wasn't that they went out of their way to cause trouble for the fool; because he was such an arse, they just let him hang himself with his actions; they just didn't take him aside and show him where he f'ed up. Sooner or later, he would say or do something and the situation would spiral out of control, causing serious disaffection in the ranks, requiring older and wiser heads to step in and clean up the mess. And remove the mess-maker.You can expect the very same thing to happen as of now with the senior DEA agents vis-a-vis La Tandy. She's hasn't just shot herself in the foot, she's blown it clean off.
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Comment #8 posted by john wayne on August 20, 2003 at 14:15:25 PT
DEA agents say: "Shame on Tandy"
http://members.aol.com/deawatch/daily.htm20 Aug 2003, 09:47 PST, 1st Edition"Shame us into silence":Someone reported this yesterday:"During Administrator Tandy's all hands meeting in LA, she lectured that any agents who have complaints, gripes, or criticism about DEA to stand before the Wall of Honor and complain to the 71 agents who have lost their lives in the line of duty. The SACs were even told to put up a Wall of Honor with photos of each of those 71 agents in every Division. I guess our new Bush appointee is implementing in DEA the current administration's M.O. of no leaks, no complaints, and no criticism. While loyalty to the mission, what we stand and fight for is critical, loyalty to bad managers, bad practices, and bad policies is not. There needs to be a forum for constructive criticism, corrections, and suggestions. "1984" has arrived in DEA! Long live DEA Watch!"Tandy blinked... bigtime!This very early thrust by Tandy to shut down our reporting DEA's problems in DEA Watch gives us a clear look into Tandy's vain, fragile and frightened personality.Tandy has no doubt been briefed by our permanent duty horseholders at HQ that some of our former Administrator's gaffs, bad decisions, unethical and near criminal acts were instantly published by people like me in DEA Watch. The Watch scares Tandy because she apparently realizes that anything and everything she does can be made instantly known to everyone in DEA within a matter of minutes... if not seconds.But to attempt to shame us into silence by directly inferring that our KIA's are dishonored by our desire to expose bad management and improve working conditions in DEA was devious and abhorrent. Tandy has shown that she can go really low.Before coming up with this new approach to silence us (we all remember vividly the scams and lies that came out of the Constantine, Marshall and Hutchinson offices intended to silence us), Tandy must have thought long and hard about a variety of underhanded tactics to use to get across her primary goal, which was to shame us into not reporting DEA's serious problems, and those new problems she might create for us. Tandy's decision to use our deceased DEA employees as the vehicle to silence us clearly shows that this scheming woman would stoop to the lowest denominator to get her way. History is replete with scheming women who would use a man's sense of honor to betray him. We must all be on the lookout for anything Tandy says or does because she has now proven that she can curve a baseball around a wall to bean us.Shame on Tandy for using our dead to try to manipulate us.
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Comment #7 posted by John Markes on August 20, 2003 at 09:13:06 PT
success?
Success in the War on Drugs could only be shown by a significant DECREASE in avalablilty of these illegal substances. They have only shown us that they can't show any success at all.
ARDPArk
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Comment #6 posted by goneposthole on August 19, 2003 at 14:38:34 PT
drug wars
episode IV through what now, episode XX? May the farce be with you.
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on August 19, 2003 at 13:23:08 PT:
Sov Communism as template for a US State religion?
I am reminded of Huey Long's statement that if fascism comes to the US, it will be wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.But no social movement, good or bad, arrives without it's 'catechism'. There has at least to be the pretense of justification in order to rationalize the organizations' existence. Communism had it's own dogma; our DrugWarriors are no less entrapped by theirs. But when that pretense is shown to be nothing but? Then those who become aware of the difference between the reality and the dogma do tend to become the self-serving, clock-watching, liver-abusing 'shammers' keeping their arses and their heads down and counting the days 'til they can retire. The board of DEAWatch is full of comments advising just such a course of action; the ones close to retirement are warning those left that it is innately foolish to risk their lives for the present regime...while those newly inducted into the modern day version of the 'Holy Inquisition' are amongst it's most ardent supporters.So, for E_J to say that those in power continue to delude themselves is only too true; these dim bulbs think they can over-ride human nature with a wave of their hands. No less self-deluded than any old Sov nomenklatura was.
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Comment #4 posted by OverwhelmSam on August 19, 2003 at 11:50:52 PT:
Record Busts are Success Stories?
Interesting to note that while a state patrol pulls over a truck with 5 tons of marijuana to the side of the road, you can see the trucks streaming by in the background, probably with similiar loads.
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Comment #3 posted by E_Johnson on August 19, 2003 at 11:43:49 PT
When the Soviet amnesty was approved
In 1986 when the Soviet Politburo voted to give amnesty to imprisoned Soviet dissidents, Gorbachev had to persuade them that all meaningful resistance to the Soviet system had been stamped ouyt so there was no harm in freeing remaining agitators who were still locked up.He was lying, of course, but he was merely playing to the massive level of self-deception and self-delusion of those souls who inhabited, or perhaps infested, the Soviet political elite.The old polite dissident movement of literary professors and Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov had morphed in 1986 to young people who trafficked in blue jeans, dollars and Led Zeppelin bootlegs.The Soviet system was poised for collapse. It had lost all credibility. The economy was stagnated. The children of the Soviet elite wore blue jeans, listened to rock, had dollars in their pockets, schemed to travel in Europe and refused to come back home. Yet these officials who ran the country were so out of touch that Gorbachev was able to convince them that all dissidence in the USSR had been wiped out and therefore it was safe to let the remaining dissidents out of prison.
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Comment #2 posted by Petard on August 19, 2003 at 11:20:49 PT
Record Busts
Could "record busts" possibly be tied to "record harvests"? Gee, seems to me to be a no-brainer. Like all agricultural products, the more that is planted, nurtured, grown, the greater the amount that is harvested. The greater the harvest, the greater the amount available for sale/consumption. Supply and Demand then says that at a given Demand, a greater Supply results in lower prices and greater availability. So record harvests which equal record busts equals lower prices for consumers. This doesn't even take into account the efficiency of scale of distribution and production which further reduces price and increases Supply. Greater Supply at a lower price generally leads to greater Demand also thus expanding the whole market. Ain't Capitalistic Economics great? Personally, I love it when the system works against itself. Like the DEA actually increasing Supply AND Demand in providing free promotions and encouraging both Supply and Demand. Like some in Hollywierd say, "bad press is still press" and so it brings in money. Of course, Prohibition is an arms race where the main weapon is money. More spent on one side = more spent on the other and the more money involved, the more money is available 
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on August 19, 2003 at 09:13:01 PT
The Drug War is the New Communism
Tandy is like a Soviet bureaucrat announcing the start of another Five Year Plan. Only the most hardened appartchiks will be able to hold their heads up in public as if they take this nonsense seriously.Any true idealist in the DEA has long ago succumbed to the comforting embraces of alcohol and dysfunctional sex and now only dreams of staying on the job long enough to collect his federal pension.This is how it went in Soviet bureacracies. That's why the alcoholism rate in Russia was 80% by the time the Party was cast from power.The worst thing that can happen to a person in this situation is to believe in the cause they are supposed to be fighting. To believe that the next five year plan will take people from the miseries of state socialism into the heavenly purity of stateless Communism.Drug Free America is our own vision of Communism. And we have the prisoners to prove it.
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