Security going to pot

With the US on Orange Alert last week, what the heck was the Dept. of Justice doing turning its considerable power on that unquestionable threat to homeland security, bong distributers.

Yes, that was bong, not bomb.

Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter encompassed raids on drug paraphernalia manufacturers, distributors, and their homes. At least 60 people have been arrested for supplying pipes, bongs, and roach clips. They face up to three years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. “This illegal billion-dollar industry will no longer be ignored by law enforcement,” Ashcroft roared on February 24.
And his muscle matched his volume. On the very day that New York state officials announced that they would dispatch 113 vans to detect and combat chemical and biological weapons, Washington arranged a massive attack on this harrowing menace.
“Including federal, state and local officials, our estimate is about 1,200 were involved, just on that day,” Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Will Glaspy says by phone. Among them, “easily hundreds” of U.S. agents were deployed “about 103 U.S. Marshals alone,” Justice spokesman Drew Wade adds. “It was just exhaustive.” The Feds responsible include prosecutors in eleven U.S. attorneys’ offices from southern California to western Pennsylvania. Rather than guard America’s docks and porous borders from the next Mohamed Atta, Customs and Immigration and Naturalization Service personnel joined the anti-pipe posse.

Give me a break. I mean, no matter how you feel about the War on Drugs, during a time Orange Alert (“high risk” of terrorist attack) you’d expect a bit more law enforcement focus on, oh, terrorism, rather than folks who sell roach clips. The nation can’t shut down during an Orange Alert, obviously, but allocating that much law enforcement manpower to an operation that could easily have been put off for a week or two seems kind of, well, stupid.