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Page 1 of 3 courtesy of IAmShaman. Introduction
Let's assume for a minute that the folks over at the DEA are intelligent, resourceful, articulate beings who just happen to have a desire to eradicate substances they find offensive from the face of the Earth; a passion equally as great, but just the polar opposite of most of ours. Just because you crusade against drugs, doesn't automatically make you stupid, does it?
Next, imagine sitting at your desk, contemplating your day and your progress. It doesn't seem unreasonable at all to assume that you would have a bevy of statistics staring you in the face.
Let's take one statistic out of many; Cannabis:
$600,000.00 per minute is being spent on the Drug War, yet marijuana use is still on the rise, Americans alone are consuming 20,000 pounds of Cannabis per day, spending $400,000.00 per hour, with 13 states recently passing laws making medical marijuana legal, the Truth In Trials Act being co-sponsored by several Congresspeople, the Supreme Court is calling to repeal the mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenders, Canada recently decriminalized marijuana, and prisons bursting at the seams with record numbers of people in jail. Of the more than 2,000,000 convicted "criminals" in jail, 80% are non-violent offenders. This doesn't even account for the thousands of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation and the countless more that will be incarcerated from the new anti-terrorism laws, the Rave Act, and the Clean Up Act.
Enter Salvia
Faced with these statistics, this agent is now faced with a new media sensation called "Salvia divinorum." The department gets a few hundred letters, find no reports of death or injury, do a profile of users of this obscure plant, and find that they often fit the same profile as Cannabis users…non-violent, keep to themselves, peaceful people who wear funny clothes and listen to strange music, and that this plant comes from the same place (Mexico) who's government secretly sanctions the exportation of marijuana to the United States.
On top of that, ahead of any possible action, there is a reasonably well-funded group preparing a defensive against any move to make Salvia divinorum illegal called the CCLE (Center for Cognitive Liberties and Ethics).
"Drug Prohibition 101" taught you that prohibition only serves to raise the awareness of the controversial substance, which immediately creates an even greater desire for it, while simultaneously creating a black market as well, eventually making the people you are supposed to despise, even wealthier. On top of that, you will have just created mountains of beaurocracy, paperwork, law enforcement snafus, arrests, convictions, etc., etc., etc., to deal with this new "problem."
As a result, and even though you would never publicly say it, you may not be so quick to jump to make this plant illegal, realizing that, at a minimum, you would be creating a potential nightmare in an already overtaxed, overburdened legal system that is beginning a slow, dangerous backlash against you. Afterall, it isn't justice you are really looking for; it's self-preservation, and preservation of your department.
Look at what happened when the only other plant that has been outright outlawed in the USA was outlawed (Cannabis)…the DEA is still paying for that mistake!
Then, couple this with a Congressperson named Joe Baca from Rockland County, who tried to circumvent the legal system, while going over the heads of the FDA, by introducing the "Hallucinogen Control Act of 2002" into Congress. This is the same Congressperson who has introduced hundreds of other bills, including one to honor the sportsmanship of Jack Nicolas.
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