While the Drug Enforcement Administration continues to unleash a savage crackdown on marijuana across the United States, some of the agency’s own employees have reportedly been busted for using illegal drugs with minimal repercussion.
A disciplinary log published over the weekend by USA Today indicates that for the past several years, members of the DEA have been failing random drug tests without being terminated from their positions like the average working class citizen would be if pegged for the same offense.
The report shows that a minimum of 16 employees have pissed dirty since 2010, most of which ended with those cases being dealt with “administratively,” while only a few opted to resign from their posts. However, none of the employees caught using substances that go against the grain of the DEA’s drug policy were fired for their indiscretions.
Apparently, while “applicants who are found, through investigation or personal admission, to have experimented with or used narcotics or dangerous drugs, except those medically prescribed for you, will not be considered for employment with DEA,” the federal government’s leading drug warriors are more lenient with employees once they have been hired.
Among the hypocrisy of junkie drug agents being allowed to remain gainfully employed by Uncle Sam is a number of other serious conduct violations that resulted in almost no disciplinary action whatsoever. The documents uncovered by USA Today reveal that DEA employees have been caught doing a variety of illegal and morally apprehensive acts, including DUI, distribution of drugs, drinking on the job, government fraud, and stealing or losing firearms—all with the sternest punishment being short term suspension.
Not many terminations have transpired as a result of these types of violations and crimes, which, under certain circumstances, would almost definitely get a normal civilian time in prison.
Yet, even in rare cases where agents were fired, the federal Merit System Protection Board often reinstated them. In fact, the report shows that the board recommended an agent return to work after he was terminated for leaving a message on his girlfriend’s voicemail threatening to give her 8-year-old daughter a copy of the couple’s sex tape for her birthday.
This type of sick behavior is consistent with recent, highly publicized reports regarding agents engaging in sex parties with prostitutes hired by cartels and another where a couple of agents lied about owning a strip club that doubled as a New Jersey brothel.
A report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General found that these violations were punished with only suspensions, most of them ranging from two to 10 days.
Throughout all the controversy which has made the DEA a laughing stock of American law enforcement, it appears that it is still virtually impossible for an agent to do anything serious enough to actually lose his or her job.
Carl Pike, a former internal affairs officer with the agency confirmed this claim with USA Today, saying the disciplinary system was flawed and, “if we conducted an investigation, and an employee actually got terminated, I was surprised.”
Perhaps the biggest question to come from this report is: Why do we continue to pay for scoundrels, thieves and other questionable monsters with badges to make criminals out of non-violent Americans who cultivate and possess a plant that has now been legalized for medical and recreational purposes in over half the nation?
Congress needs to act expeditiously in the current session to reel in the leash on these beasts or else we can almost certainly expect the DEA to continue its untouchable rampage against the very nation for which it is supposed to serve.
