Of course, Karen Tandy should never have been confirmed as head of the DEA in the first place (see my post Can Congress Get a Clue (Karen Tandy and the DEA)). At the time, she was unqualified, uninformed, and, previously as a prosecutor, probably guilty of criminal misuse of prosecutorial powers.
During her tenure as head of the DEA, she has overseen a DEA that has gained notoriety for harrassing doctors and patients.
Now, not only has she gone after a foreign citizen (Marc Emery) for marijuana charges, she has bragged that part of the reason was to stifle political dissent.
Today’s arrest of Mark (sic) Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine and the founder of a marijuana legalization group, is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery’s illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on. [Link]
Yes, that’s right. The head of the DEA came out and said that the importance of the bust is not the marijuana that was grown from Emery’s seeds, but rather the stifling of political speech.
The US Marijuana Party has called for Tandy’s resignation. I intend to write to Senator Dick Durbin (the only Senator to question Tandy’s confirmation) and ask him to investigate. You should do the same.