yahoo | These days, former DEA
administrator Peter Bensinger is like a lonely voice crying out in the
wilderness – an anti-drug crusader who served three American presidents,
now battling the perils of pot at a time when legalization is all the
rage.
“I think it’s a
disaster,” he told “Power Players” of the rapid growth in sales of
recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington and medicinal pot in
18 other states.
It “will
damage the young people in that state. It will damage the industries in
the state, and put the highways in jeopardy,” he said. “Plus, it's
against federal law and the Constitution and our international
treaties.”
Bensinger argued
that the public, and politicians now pushing to legalize the drug, have
been duped by the “myth” that marijuana can do no harm.
“You'll
dissipate a drink in about an hour per drink; marijuana can stay in
your body for a week,” he said. “It goes to where we're fattest, which
is our brain. … It causes short-term memory loss if used chronically. It
impacts on the immune system if used regularly. It affects your depth
perception.”
He said recent
statistics show a spike in traffic fatalities from drivers high on pot
and a significant influx in hospital emergency room visits due to
overuse of the drug.
As for
President Obama’s claim in a recent interview with “The New Yorker” that
marijuana isn’t more dangerous than alcohol, Bensinger said it’s just
flat wrong.
“I don't agree
with the president at all and neither does his director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Nora Volkow, nor the American Medical
Association. They both say marijuana is not safe,” he said. “The Food
and Drug Administration, not legislators, should decide what's medicine.
And the Congress should decide, not the president of the United States,
what's legal.”
The Obama
administration’s decision not to enforce federal statutes that conflict
with the legal distribution of pot in Colorado and Washington also puts
many DEA field agents in those states in a bind, Bensinger said.
“You
think that this world is strange because you took an oath of office to
uphold the law and the constitution of the United States and enforce the
federal laws,” he said of the DEA agents in states where marijuana is
legal. “And you've got a president who is unwilling to do it.”
