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Dear Mr. President:

Having just learned of the resignation of the head of your Drug Enforcement Administration, I would like to propose myself as a replacement.

Some obvious reforms are needed. Any organization can have individual bad apples, but when a group of ten agents are caught repeatedly partying with hookers hired by the drug lords the DEA is supposed to be hunting, then it's safe to say even the team building exercises are a concern. Sadly, the current DEA chief doesn't agree, having recently told her staff in an email that these misdeeds should not be permitted to tarnish the "incredible reputation DEA has built over more than 40 years."

A telling part of that "incredible reputation" was indeed set in motion a bit more than 40 years ago. One of your predecessors, President Nixon, personally handed a badge and government identification to Mr. Elvis Aaron Presley, appointing him a Special Assistant for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which would shortly thereafter become the DEA. According to the King of Rock & Roll's spouse at the time, Elvis desired G-man status so he could breeze through airport and international security while carting along firearms and a personal pharmacy of mood and mind altering chemicals.

Presley's demise from a drug overdose definitively added "drugs" and "rock and roll" to the DEA's "incredible reputation." But to get from Elvis' bold yet incomplete vision, to the full "sex, drugs and rock and roll" reputation of today, it took the willingness of his fellow crime fighters to work closely with a harem full of whores.

J. Edgar Hoover was initially reluctant to send the FBI after organized crime figures (or even acknowledge that organized crime existed), in part because he knew the extensive financial reach of the gangsters could corrupt even his cops. The drug lords buying prostitutes for the narcotics agents in our own era proves that what Hoover knew was true of making alcohol illegal back then is also true of drug prohibition today.

I would use the DEA to take us in a different direction. While for a time it would still be necessary to catch and convict violent gangsters created by the drug trade's profits, my long term priority would be to take those profits away. Rather than continuing to mindlessly lobby Congress for crime fighting dollars, as my predecessors have done, I'd instead seek to convince Congress to take away the crime itself.

These are indeed dangerous chemicals, far too dangerous for us to have recklessly put the ugliest elements of our species in control of the drugs, the profits and even the addicts. If we legalize the drugs, and put the profits under control of government, then we take away from the gangsters the money to pay the whores and cause more serious problems.

By stealing the drug market from the thugs, we could fight a war on addiction. With the cooperation of Congress and then a stroke of your pen we could use drug profits to attack our drug problem by treating the pathetic damaged souls who should have been our priority all along. Rather than measure success by drugs seized, the DEA would measure by lives salvaged.

If my pile of speeding tickets does not constitute the 'law enforcement experience' you are seeking, then please consider as an alternative retired Maryland State Police Major Neill Franklin, now the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or any of the other members of that organization who recognize the DEA's "incredible reputation" has come at too high a cost.

My contact information is provided, should you wish to discuss.

Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House and worked for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He has assisted in a start-up effort to encourage employers to provide economic education to employees, and is currently the director of policy for InformationStation.org. His employer is not responsible for what he says here, on Facebook, or Twitter ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.