Leonhart has nothing to back her arguments up except the circular logic of authority. Check out the action below, after which, Congressman Polis said, ‘We have an agency that can’t even acknowledge basic scientific facts.’
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A direct link to the video reference by David above. She is glorious in her stupidity.
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tons died during alcohol prohibition, most of what we think of with al capone was fueled by raids on speakeasies and controlling the illicit alcohol market. rum runners, speakeasies, raiding underground clubs, organized crime was 100% behind offering alcohol at a price to anyone who wanted it, and the shootouts between them and the cops are legendary, the stuff many many many movies have been made of.
of course that is all a drop in the bucket compared to the lives lost enforcing a drug war that should never have been created. the irony is it is the enforcement that directly brings in the danger, guns, crime, etc. we never see those around legal things, those officers likely wouldn’t have died if they weren’t enforcing a drug war that needent have been.
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Of course they did - or at least, the non-corrupt ones did.
At the time, the cops were pretty darn crooked. All it really took to keep your bootlegging operation going was the proper bribes and keeping things quiet.
Then again, when and where the police actually enforced the law, there were naturally enough altercations between criminal elements and law enforcement, a certain number of which ended up in dead police officers and other figures of law enforcement.
If you need direct evidence, however, look no further than Al Capone. On April 27, 1925, a hit on a rival gang ended in the death of Bill McSwiggin, an assistant state’s attorney who was known as the Hangman Prosecutor due to his predilection for obtaining the death penalty. Like many of the authorities of the time, he was somewhat corrupt and fraternized with a group of bootleggers who supplied him with illegal alcohol. Capone’s boys mowed him down along with their competition as he was visiting them for some friendly illicit drinks.
Of course, he’s just one of the most well known cases, being a well known rising star of an assistant state’s attorney. The low level officers on the street, when they weren’t just making dumbshow performances of carrying out the law or raiding unprotected bootlegger warehouses to take publicity photos of themselves smashing kegs of booze in the streets, did come head to head with machine-gun toting criminals who would and did blaze away at when it became necessary, often from inside speeding bulletproofed vehicles.
And so we need an additional $100 billion if we are to effectively wage our War On Textiles.
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Well said 
Very well said indeed!
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Why stop there? Do you know how many brave boys in blue gave their lives enforcing miscegenation laws?
She is an exemplar of that particularly banal species of bureaucrat that survives by sucking the ichor of fear, hate, and ignorance.
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Don’t forget the bright idea to allow guns to flow into Mexico. Oh wait - that was ATF, wasn’t it?
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Marijuana prohibition is terrible, but I love the refined awareness of textiles that it inspires.
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Oh, FFS, how have we gotten to 2014 without people in power knowing that hemp and marijuana are not the same fucking thing?
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How is this dumb bitch still running the DEA?
Wasn’t she implicated in some dodgy Ponzi scheme?
This one is just begging to enter Godwin territory: just think of all the SS officers who bravely gave their lives to ensure that the Jewish people were eradicated from Europe. The dedication and service exhibited by the SS can hardly be exaggerated. Can we just think of them for once?
The reason this woman is trying so hard to continue pedaling the big lie that marijuana is dangerous is that the DEA and much of our legal system will have to majorly downsize when marijuana is legalized. The vast majority of drug war efforts go towards marijuana interdiction. This is so because its the only illegal drug that is used by more than a tiny fraction of one percent of the population. Without marijuana the DEA will no longer exist in anything resembling its current form. What will all these drug enforcement types do when their jobs are downsized? Their highly dubious skillset, such as as it is, will not land them anything better than a McJob. I heard Walmart is hiring.
Ms Leonhart – I don’t believe that you believe that marijuana is harmful. I believe that you abuse the concept of belief in a deeply cynical attempt to further your own power and wealth. You’re a liar and a fabulist, and you have no place wielding the power and trust that has been placed in your hands. You’re a trite, silly little person who goes through life blithely and purposefully unaware of the destruction you leave in your wake. Your ignorant, authoritarian and vicious temperament has no place in the apparatus of our democratic republic.
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Shouldn’t the increase in Prohibition violations be NaN%? Since there were zero violations before Prohibition was enacted, an increase can’t be defined as a percentage.
Of course it should go without saying that crime goes up when more activities are defined as crimes. I’m not at all defending Prohibition, but these particular stats don’t say that incidents of drunkenness, drunk driving, etc. went up, just the arrests — which you’d expect given the surge in law enforcement funding.
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There’s something else, too. They’ve painted themselves into a rhetorical corner, where drugs are EVIL and weed is EVIL and anybody who advocates even the smallest liberalization WANTS OUR CHILDREN TO BE ADDICTED TO DRUGS!!!
Once you’ve gone there, how do you return to even marginal sanity? Imagine what it was like in 1500 to be the first guy who said the Devil isn’t real.
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Indeed. Its a version of the credibility trap: once they’ve gone to such extreme lengths they can’t really backtrack, it makes them look like either hysterics or liars. And whichever they are, they are also complicit in massive injustice. It takes a spiritually deep and large soul to humble oneself to that extent. And I don’t think anyone anywhere has ever accused the DEA of spiritual depth ;).
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You mean besides the DEA?
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Drunk driving, for example, was illegal in some parts before prohibition.
Sure, but pre-Prohibition drunk driving wasn’t a Prohibition violation (Prohibition-with-a-capital-P commonly being understood as the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act.)
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair
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