By Laurence M. Vance via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity | December 12, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has withdrawn. This is one agency that Trump shouldn’t nominate anyone to lead.
The selection of Florida Hillsborough County sheriff Chad Chronister was opposed by many Republicans. Chronister “has a long and sordid history of making the exact sort of decisions that have contributed to widespread distrust in law enforcement. He arrested a pastor who defied the lockdowns during the pandemic, has used his office to promote the political agenda of the gay and transgender movement, and has refused to enforce Florida’s laws prohibiting employers from hiring illegal immigrants.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) said Chronister “should be disqualified for ordering the arrest a pastor who defied COVID lockdowns.”
Drug warrior that he is, Trump will no doubt nominate someone else to lead the agency, but he shouldn’t. The DEA is one of the most unconstitutional, evil, and unnecessary agencies of the federal government.
The DEA is under the Department of Justice. The agency was established in 1973 during the beginning of President Nixon’s war on drugs. According to the DEA:
The mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is to ensure the safety and health of American communities by combating criminal drug networks bringing harm, violence, overdoses, and poisonings to the United States. To accomplish this mission, the DEA employs approximately 10,000 personnel throughout the world – Special Agents, Diversion Investigators, Intelligence Analysts, Chemists, and professional staff – across 241 domestic offices in 23 Divisions and 93 foreign offices across the globe.
The mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of the United States and bring to the criminal and civil justice system of the United States, or any other competent jurisdiction, those organizations and principal members of organizations, involved in the growing, manufacture, or distribution of controlled substances appearing in or destined for illicit traffic in the United States; and to recommend and support non-enforcement programs aimed at reducing the availability of illicit controlled substances on the domestic and international markets.
Since one of the “core values” of the DEA includes “dedication to upholding the Constitution of the United States,” the agency should shut itself down. The Constitution nowhere gives the federal government the authority to have a DEA, a drug czar, a Controlled Substances Act, an Office of National Drug Control Policy, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, a Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, a National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act, a Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, a Domestic Cannabis Suppression / Eradication Program, or a drug war.
But the federal war on drugs is a war not only on the Constitution, but on personal freedom, private property, limited government, personal responsibility, individual liberty, personal and financial privacy, civil liberties, the free market, and freedom itself.
It is not the business of the government to concern itself with the personal eating, drinking, or smoking habits of Americans; with the nature and quantity of any substance Americans inhale or otherwise take into their body; with restricting or monitoring any harmful or mood-altering substances that any American wants to consume; or with regulating the consumption, medical, or recreational habits of Americans.
Since the DEA is the main federal agency responsible for the drug war, it needs neither an administrator nor agents. The agency should be shuttered, completely and permanently.
Laurence M. Vance, Ph.D., is the Director of the Francis Wayland Institute, Adjunct Instructor in Accounting at Pensacola Junior College, and an Adjunct Scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
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