On drugs: He has said the legalization of marijuana "undermines the war on hard-core drugs." (Although he's okay with veterans using it for medicinal reasons.) He says pot is a gateway drug to more serious drug use "There's no doubt." He claims the "ripple effects" from pot are tied to El Salvador's murder rate.
As for cocaine,
"If Americans understood," Kelly said, "what doing a little blow on the weekends — on a college campus or here on Capitol Hill — was doing to Honduras or El Salvador, or what it's doing to Colombia, I think they'd responsibly realize that this is not a good thing."
He praises the DEA's Excellent African Vacations. I guess we can expect to see more DEA stings all over the world with him at the helm of Homeland Security.
"We know," Kelly said, "that as that cocaine [bound for Europe] moves up through [Africa], ... some of the old al Qaida type organizations allow it to pass but charge a fare....
As I wrote here and here:
I'd bet that if you told every American how much money Congress has authorized the DEA to spend on stings designed to stop drugs being shipped from South America to Africa to Europe, and then to fly those arrested to the U.S. for trial and how much we'll be paying for their years of incarceration, you could fit all those who approved on the head of a pin.
...The DEA's most excellent African adventures aren't winning the war on drugs or even impacting drugs coming into the U.S. They are just wasting our money.
Is Kelly going to further militarize the DEA's Global Holy Warriors?
What a shame that America is getting an UnPresident who chooses an afficionado of our decades old failed War on Drugs policy rather than someone astute enough to know that the cause of the problems is not college kids doing a line of blow but the criminalization of drugs which creates and sustains the black market for them -- especially in countries with extreme poverty, like El Salvador and Honduras -- and in Africa.
Here is Gen. Kelly's 2015 statement to Congress. Here is his 2016 statement, in which he blasts marijuana and legalization even more:
If it is not obvious as this point, I will cut to the bottom line and tell you that the fundamental factor that drives the entire illicit enterprise is our country’s demand for heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine, and opiates in pill form. I do not even include marijuana and the many synthetic offshoots which in and of itself is a major factor in so many social ills. It is in fact a “gateway drug” to more destructive illegal drug use, and its use results in a great many destructive physical effects on the brain, the user’s health, and social development. Many hoping to cash in on the emerging commercial enterprise that is legal or medical marijuana work hard to discount or deny these facts, but they are facts. It is at the same time ludicrous and inconceivable to me why with all the Americas already struggling with drug and alcohol addiction that we would make available even more substances to poison the body and confuse the brain. To make the powerful modern-day drug that is marijuana available on demand and compound the problem.
...Mr. Chairman, it is a fool’s position to think that the tax revenue raised by legal sales will offset the physical and social costs of its use. Indications and warnings are already coming in from those states that have legalized the drug or allowed widespread “medical” use and abuse, but something to consider is what the DEA would tell you and that is for every dollar raised from two drugs already legal—tobacco and alcohol—amounts approaching 23 and 17 dollars respectively are paid out by the already overburdened taxpayer to deal with the effects of these two drugs. If those public officials voting to legalize pot either by outright legalization, or via the dispensing of medical marijuana, were responsible they would most certainly, and responsibly, consider the additional burden that it will have on the tax payer and add additional tax by say 17x onto the price of the drug at the counter.
Gen. Kelly is already a Homeland Security Advisor. He serves on the Countering Violent Extremism Subcommittee, the Foreign Fighters Task Force
Homeland Security is:
... the third largest Department of the U.S. government, with a workforce of 229,000 employees and 22 components including TSA, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, FEMA, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service.
While it's unfortunate Trump is stocking his cabinet with so many military leaders, at least we dodged the Rudy Giuliani bullet which would have been a disaster for civil liberties and privacy, and the radical right local sheriffs Trump was reportedly considering for the position.
