Word: deas
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...weaknesses of the Government's approach is the tendency of the agencies involved to squabble over prerogatives and credit. Communication is sometimes only intermittent. The task will be to develop smooth relationships between, say, the rough-and-ready DEA (one in 50 agents was shot at in 1981), which specializes in street stakeouts and gritty undercover work, and the green-eyeshade technocrats at the IRS, who delve into the esoteric evidence of drug peddlers' financial crimes. "Any prosecutor," says U.S. Attorney Walsh, "can tell you horror stories about information they didn't have because it was in the hands...
...cocaine will amount in the end to a token fight. "All we can hope to do," says Sergeant Rene LaPrevotte of San Francisco's drug squad, "is prevent someone from setting up a cocaine stand in Union Square." One federal official, who has been with the DEA since it began in 1973, has no heroic notions of putting an end to cocaine runs. "We feel like we're part of a spectator sport," he says. "We're not the answer. The answers are going to be found in your wallets and your conscience...
...they could not win. "They never got rid of pot," says René, 29, a Western publishing executive, "and they won't make a dent in cocaine. There's no stigma." Cocaine retains its less and less valid cachet as the plaything of athletes, entertainers and other starry achievers. Says DEA Agent James Burke of Denver: "The mystique, the myths and the respectability are all working against...
...point is well taken: criminal sanctions are a difficult, awkward way to do battle against people's vices. As long as millions of Americans want to pay fortunes for diluted cocaine, cocaine will get to them, the law be damned. Another DEA veteran poses the problem this way: "The only way to stop the trade is to stop the production or stop the demand. And we can't stop the source...
...overnight, it was, like, you know, a real trip. "I was with vagrants, drunks and car thieves," he says. "It was unreal, bizarre, like The Twilight Zone. "The glamour of outlawry, with the ante upped considerably, is also an attraction for many dealers and even some smugglers. Says a DEA official in Florida: "Breaking the law may not be just incidental to the white Americans involved in dealing cocaine. It may be essential...