Drug Enforcement Administrations And Its Criticism

The DEA has been criticized for placing highly restrictive schedules on a few narcotics, which researchers in the fields of pharmacology and medicine regard as having medical uses. Critics assert that some such decisions are motivated primarily by political factors stemming from the US government's War on Drugs, and that many benefits of such substances remain unrecognized due to the difficulty of conducting scientific research. A counterpoint to that criticism is that under the Controlled Substances Act it is the Department of Health and Human Services (through the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse), not the DEA, which has the legal responsibility to make scientific and medical determinations with respect to drug scheduling; no drug can be scheduled if the Secretary of Health and Human Services recommends against it on a scientific or medical basis, and no drug can be placed in the most restrictive schedule if DHHS finds that the drug has a currently accepted medical use.The DEA is also criticized for allegedly focusing only on the operations from which it can seize the most money, namely the organized cross-border trafficking of heroin and cocaine. Some individuals contemplating the nature of the DEA's charter advice that, based on order of popularity or numbers of persons addicted, the DEA should be most focused on marijuana or, based on order of danger; the DEA should be most focused on locally freebased "crack". Others suggest that, based on opiate popularity, the DEA should focus much more on prescription opiates used recreationally, which critics contend is far more widespread than heroin use. Some scheduled substances are extremely rare, with no clear reason behind the scheduling of 4-Methyl-aminorex or bufotenine.

Related Links:
Marijuana drug test
Breathalyzer