Former Head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), NYC, Bob Stutman, was interviewed on Community Forum in depth about the Opioid Epidemic in the US.
Former Head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), NYC writes a memorandum
to Attorney General Jeff Sessions:
Dear Attorney General,
This memorandum establishes that your policy on charging and sentencing for the Department of
Justice will not succeed. An incarceration-based reaction to drug use in our society is costly and is
of vague service to public safety. I’ll make this simple…
Incarceration doesn’t work. Been there. Done that.
I was once the head of the DEA’s largest office in the world, New Your City, under the Reagan
and Bush administrations. I fought the first war on drugs. I lived through the LSD elevation, the
birth of the marijuana inclination and, most importantly, the cocaine and crack epidemic. Some
have said I was the face of the drug war. An observation proven right when in 1988 Pablo Escobar
put a hit on my life for seizing several tons of his cocaine and holding up his headshot at a press
conference.
ELON, N.C. — The man who once lead the war on drugs, as the head of the DEA in New York, is now an outspoken critic of that crackdown. After leading the so called “war on drugs”, Stutman now says putting drug addicts in prison is a mistake.
Bob Stutman travels the country speaking to kids, doctors and drug counselors. Stutman spoke at a symposium titled, ‘Prevention is the Answer’ held on the campus of Elon University. He tells WXII 12 News many parents would be surprised to learn their kids biggest risk of opioids comes from sports injuries and wisdom teeth when the doctor prescribes drugs such as Vicodin.