We live in a political climate where it is considered acceptable to have teams of soldiers attack civilian homes if there is even a suspicion that they are producing, transporting, or distributing the drugs described in this article. Our politicians firmly believe that propaganda promoting such approaches to drug policy should be forced down the throats of grade school children, and that those children should be asked to report their parents' activities to the government in the name of enforcing drug policy. That is a pretty rough political climate for a researcher investigating positive or medical uses for those drugs. There is also the issue of having to be careful not to tell the public how to manufacture these drugs in their kitchens, as Alexander Shulgin discovered after a team of soldiers attacked his lab.
If men with assault rifles, body armor, grenades, who use military tactics in their operations are not soldiers, what do you call them? The DEA is a paramilitary force, soldiers in all but name.
I don't know why I did not pick up on that subtext. It must have been the attack component that threw me off. It is nice to see that there are no rhetoric asymmetries in the "war on drugs."
"If men with assault rifles, body armor, grenades, who use military tactics in their operations are not soldiers, what do you call them? "
Usually a Special Weapons and Tactics team and in Canada I think they are known as Emergency Task Forces. Does the DEA deploy units with fragmentation and/or incendiary grenades?
