By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The DEA has proposed numerous reasons to oppose medical marijuana – health effects, lack of motivation, dependency. But the latest reason given by a DEA agent may be the most memorable. Speaking to a Utah Senate panel about a bill that would allow certain patients to consume edible cannabis, Special Agent Matt…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com All nine of the DEA’s former administrators signed an amicus brief that was filed Thursday in support of a Supreme Court petition challenging Colorado’s recreational marijuana laws, Politico reports. The directors are siding with Oklahoma and Nebraska’s Supreme Court petition that challenges legalization. The law in Colorado “gravely menace[s]…[t]he health, comfort…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A former U.S. Army sniper has pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder a DEA agent and an informant. Joseph Hunter, 49, and five others were arrested in September 2013 after they were recorded plotting to kill a DEA agent and informant in Liberia for $800,000, International Business Times reports. Hunter was…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A license-plate scanning system designed to combat drug trafficking and other crimes has raised serious privacy questions because of the technology’s ability to snap photographs of drivers and their passengers, the ACLU said, reports Bloomberg. The concern is that authorities will combine the photographs with facial-recognition software. “This adds a whole…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com A license plate tracking program established to seize cars and money to combat drug trafficking has gone far beyond its original scope and has led to the collection and storage of millions of records about motorists, Reuters reports. Not only is the database being used to track drug dealers, but state…
By Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com The recent discovery of a drone carrying methamphetamine near the U.S. border in Mexico has raised some eyebrows. But the DEA said drones will not become tomorrow’s drug mules because they are not cost-effective, the Los Angeles Times reports. “This method will only allow a small amount of drugs to be…
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com Webster Bivens may have been a drug dealer, but his place in law enforcement history is not proportional to his status as an alleged dealer. In the fall of 1965, Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents raided Bivens’ Brooklyn apartment. The FBN agents had neither an arrest warrant nor a search warrant….
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Thomas M. Harrigan, DEA’s number two person who was confirmed by the Senate as deputy administrator in March 2012, has retired from the agency to join the private sector. Harrigan stepped down at the end of December. Harrigan joined the DEA in 1987 and was first assigned to the New York…
