Big Government has obtained exclusive excerpts of a book scheduled to be released next month, which outline problems with the federal government’s handling of the drug war.

The book, The Border Challenge, authored by T. Michael Andrews, a former adviser at the Dept. of Homeland Security’s counternarcotics office, is scheduled to be released in bookstores in early February.

Andrews has suggestions for how federal drug enforcement agencies can reshape their strategies along America’s northern and southern borders, and he explains how government bureaucracy and shifting goals have made winning the drug war impossible thus far.

“One of the problems with having so many offices in the federal government directed at a common cause is direction and leadership,” Andrews wrote. “The scope of bureaucracy can be overwhelming. If one department wants to take a different policy direction from another, this could lead to an immediate bureaucratic tie-up and in some cases pushback among the many agencies.”

According to Andrews, bureaucracy comes from partisan politics, lack of consistent focus, and jurisdictional conflicts within competing law enforcement agencies that are not working together.

“One of the problems we always had–even today, I’m sad to say, are that there are still problems between the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement),” he said during an exclusive interview conducted from his home in northern Virginia.

“Those are really the two agencies that have drug enforcement power. ICE is charged with stopping any and all contraband coming into the United States under Title 18, and the DEA is charged with both domestic and international drug enforcement under Title 21.”

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The federal government is in the midst of a crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries across the state of California.

This is despite repeated claims from President Obama and his Department of Justice that they would not devote federal resources to circumventing state medical marijuana laws.

“The law has been hijacked by profiteers who are motivated not by compassion, but by money,” said Melinda Haag, one of California’s U.S. Attorneys, at a DOJ press conference on October 11, 2011.

Aaron Sandusky, owner of G3 Holistic, a group of medical marijuana dispensaries in California’s Inland Empire, is one such target of the DOJ’s crackdown on medical marijuana “profiteers.” The DOJ sent him a letter promising to shut down his operations within 14 days. And they followed through.

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So far, the shuffling of employees–and some might argue, the buying of their silence–has been the only reaction to the Gunwalker scandal, in which various agencies of the federal government conspired to assure the success of straw purchasers and smugglers running guns to a violent Mexican drug cartel.

In the months since the scandal was revealed, the Department of Justice (DOJ) , BATF, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service Criminal Division (IRS-CD), Department of Homeland Security, and Department of State, have conspired to stonewall and House and Senate investigations that have been launched to investigate a scandal that appears to be worse than Iran-Contra and Watergate combined.

The scandal is not complicated, and would be revealed by the answering of five simple questions that the media dare not demand answers to from this Administration.

1. Who came up with the idea of allowing guns to be purchased by straw purchasers and then “walked” across the border by smugglers?
2. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Justice?
3. Who authorized Operation Fast and Furious in the Department of Homeland Security?
4. Is Operation Fast and Furious the only operation of its type, or were there similar operations in Texas, Florida, and other states as evidence suggests?
5. What, precisely, did Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Janet Napolitano know about Operation Fast and Furious, and when did they know it?

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Over the July Fourth weekend, there was a major development in the Fast and Furious investigation when BATF head Ken Melson made a surprise July 4th appearance before Darrel Issa and Chuck Grassley’s congressional committee put together to investigate Fast and Furious.

That operation involved BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) agents allowing straw purchasers to buy over two thousand automatic weapons and then smuggle them illegally across the border to Mexican Drug cartels. The operation led to a spike in violence in Mexico, the killing in Arizona of a U.S. Border Patrol agent last December and a possible attempted cover up by the BATF and the US Department of Justice.

BATF head Melson was placed in a particularly bad light by the earlier testimony of agents, some of whom depicted him watching the illegal gun deals go down on closed circuit TV and literally rubbing his hands with glee. Melson, a temporary appointee, was set up to fall on his sword for Fast and Furious and was apparently under a great deal of pressure from the Obama Administration to ‘resign’. Instead, he resisted and said he wanted to testify before the investigative committee, but in order to do that, he needed clearance from the Department of Justice.

In a particularly revolting display of partisan horse trading and disregard for justice, the ranking Senate Democrat on the committee, Patrick Leahy made a deal with Republican Senator Chuck Grassley to allow access to certain documents and allow Melson and other witnesses to testify – in exchange for releasing holds on three Obama Administration DOJ nominees.

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Kellogg’s Corn Pops® may be going out of business, but Captain Zig-Zag is about to get an up-tick in popularity if political odd couple Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA) have their way.  In a bipartisan effort to end the federal ban on marijuana, a newfangled congressional edition of the “doobie” brothers are banding together to put forward legislation that limits the federal government’s role in policing pot.

Ron Paul and Barney Frank are proposing the first bill ever that, if enacted into law, would end centralized marijuana prohibition.  The legislation seeks to limit federal involvement in cannabis monitoring to “cross-border or inter-state smuggling.”  If the proposal succeeds, marijuana farmers across America stand to save on electricity and light bulbs as recreational horticulturists venture outside to legally grow weed and even sell the fruit of their harvest in states where pot is legal.

Ron Paul, individual liberty and freedom Republican/Libertarian and one half of the bill’s sponsor, said the following: “Drugs are very dangerous but there are a lot of things that are very dangerous. The question is, should we regulate danger? Should we take responsibility for ourselves or should the government take care of us? I don’t believe in the nanny state.”

Paul consistently maintains that the government has no business butting into private lives, so it stands to reason that the same philosophy would apply to bong usage, whether it’s Ron Paul’s, if he has one, or someone else’s.  One would expect Congressman Paul to step forward on behalf of legalizing marijuana if the end result limits government and grants individual autonomy to be either as reckless or responsible as one desires.

On the other hand, Barney Frank may have other, more personal reasons for proposing the legislation.  Seems Congressman Frank found himself embroiled in marijuana-related controversy when visiting longtime partner and Fire Island ferry companion James Ready at his home in Maine a few years back.

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From the New York Times:

Like many of the cables made public in recent weeks, those describing the drug war do not offer large disclosures. Rather, it is the details that add up to a clearer picture of the corrupting influence of big traffickers, the tricky game of figuring out which foreign officials are actually controlled by drug lords, and the story of how an entrepreneurial agency operating in the shadows of the F.B.I. has become something more than a drug agency. The D.E.A. now has 87 offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm’s length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today’s D.E.A. has access to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua’s and Venezuela’s, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency’s drug detection and wiretapping technologies.

In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, with the drug agency providing intelligence that has helped bring down traffickers, and even entire cartels. But the victories can come at a high price, according to the cables, which describe scores of D.E.A. informants and a handful of agents who have been killed in Mexico and Afghanistan.

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Over the past couple of years, the medical marijuana industry in Los Angeles has exploded. Estimates vary, but there may be as many as 800 dispensaries currently open for business in the city of angels. An ordinance recently passed by the LA city council, however, is about to change all that.

The new ordinance will force hundreds of dispensaries to close and all but a few to relocate. The goal was to bring clarity to the medical marijuana industry, but the only thing that’s clear is that the transition process will be difficult.

Especially now that the DEA has begun raiding dispensaries again, despite the promises made by the Obama administration to respect state laws legalizing medical marijuana.

While federal, state and local governments struggle to make sense of medical marijuana laws, an increasing number of Californians support a completely different approach: marijuana legalization. Nothing more than a pipe dream? Maybe. But consider this: 56 percent of Californians currently support pot legalization, the same proportion of Californians who voted for the Compassionate Use Act, which legalized medical marijuana, back in 1996.

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