The
Drug Enforcement Administration is an agency of the
United States Department of Justice. The two paragraphs below are taken directly off the
DEA's web site. "Marijuana is the most widely used and readily available drug in the United States, and is the only major drug of abuse grown within the U.S. borders. The DEA is aggressively striving to halt the spread of cannabis cultivation in the United States. To accomplish this, the DEA initiated the Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP), which is the only nationwide law enforcement program that exclusively targets Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO) involved in cannabis cultivation.... In 2007, the DCE/SP was responsible for the eradication of 6,599,599 cultivated outdoor cannabis plants and 434,728 indoor plants. In addition, the DCE/SP has attributed for 8,321 arrests and the seizure in excess of 54.9 million dollars of cultivator assets. The program also removed 4,909 weapons from cannabis cultivators."
It further reported "in 2007, the DEA State and Local Task Force Program had expanded to 218 state and local task forces, of which 173 are program funded and 45 are provisional. The difference between funded and provisional state and local task forces is that the financial support for funded task forces is provided by DEA headquarters and includes additional resources for state and local overtime. Provisional task forces are supported by the operating budgets of DEA field division offices, without resources from DEA headquarters, and do not included state and local overtime. These task forces are staffed by 1, 670 DEA special agents and 2,875 state and local police officers. Participating state and local task force officers are deputized to perform the same functions as DEA special agents.
See U.S. Map of DEA Task Forces."
The second wave of federal opposition is the
Presidents Office of National Drug Control Policy whose
National Drug Control Strategy FY 2009 Budget Summary calls for $14.1 billion more of the same.
