DEA Museum Highlights Pen That Nixon Used To Sign Modern War On Drugs Into Law
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One of the featured exhibits at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Museum—which attempts to put a fun, exciting spin on America’s war on drugs—is a relic that helped give shape to federal prohibition: the pen that then-President Nixon used in 1970 to sign the modern drug war into law.
The pen and a signed photo of Nixon endorsing the Comprehensive Drug Prevention and Control Act is featured on an episode of Stories From the Collection, a video series from the DEA Museum intended to “take you into the collection to share stories about our most exciting objects,” according to the video’s host, Museum Technician Emma Miller.
“This set includes a signed photograph copy of the first page of the Comprehensive Drug Prevention and Control Act, and a pen used by President Nixon to sign it into law,” Miller explains in the video. “It commemorates a pivotal moment in federal drug law enforcement.”
Title II of the federal statute is the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which created five schedules of substances—Schedule I to Schedule V—based on the government’s perception of their medical value and potential for abuse.
Fifty-four years ago Tuesday—on June 17, 1971—Nixon famously stepped up America’s war on drugs, declaring substance misuse “public enemy number one” and requesting increased funding for prevention.
“In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all out offensive,” he said. “I’ve asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive.”
The pen used to sign the federal drug law, which took place the previous October, was a gift from Nixon to Jack Ingersoll, who at the time was the director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which later became DEA.
“This framed set commemorates the creation of a law that is still widely utilized by DEA,” Miller said in the video, adding that the writing instrument is “only one of over 45,000 artifacts, photographs, videos and documents in the DEA Museum’s collection. Each illuminates important moments in the history of DEA, federal drug law enforcement and drug use in American culture.”
Earlier this year, the drug policy publication Filter visited the DEA Museum in order to—as senior editor Helen Redmond critically put it—“see all the lies and misinformation in one place” and “understand how the curators sold and sanitized the war on drugs.”
“I was not disappointed,” Redmond wrote in an op-ed, concluding that “The fiction that permeates the museum is that the DEA is somehow winning a drug war that is justified.”
DEA is widely seen as ideologically committed to the drug war—a commitment that former President Joe Biden’s drug czar recently said may have compromised the government’s effort to move marijuana from the most-restrictive Schedule I of the CSA to Schedule III.
About five months into President Donald Trump’s second term, there has still been no movement on the pending plan to reschedule cannabis, leaving advocates and stakeholders frustrated by both the current inaction as well as the Biden administration’s failure to get the job done.
According to former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director Rahul Gupta, that may have been due to deliberate resistance from within DEA—a suspicion shared widely among supporters of the reform, including those involved in an administrative hearing that’s been stalled for months, with no clear indication it will proceed any time soon.
What happens next in the process is uncertain, especially ahead of the potential Senate confirmation of Trump’s pick to lead DEA, Terrance Cole, who has declined to say whether he supports the proposal but has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth.
Trump, for his part, has not publicly weighed in on cannabis reform since taking office, and the White House did not include rescheduling in a recently released list of drug policy priorities for the administration.
Other former DEA and HHS officials have separately expressed their sense that, if rescheduling is going to happen, the president will need to proactively demand its completion.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), meanwhile—a backer of legalization whom Trump first tapped for attorney general but withdrew from consideration—recently made somewhat surprising comments about the president’s position on rescheduling, suggesting that his endorsement of the reform while campaigning last year may have been a politically motivated move to try and win over more young voters but that he personally has “a deep personal aversion to anything that dulls the senses.”
While Trump’s position on the issue has evolved over the years, including several past comments supportive of medical cannabis, Gaetz said the president is still “totally intolerant” to any reform that “he believes will increase drug use.”
That represents a significant shift in rhetoric Gaetz used in an op-ed in March, when he predicted that “meaningful” marijuana reform is “on the horizon” under the Trump administration and praised the president’s “leadership” in supporting rescheduling.
DEA recently notified an agency judge that the proceedings are still on hold—with no future actions currently scheduled as the matter sits before the acting administrator.
Separately, in April, an activist who received a pardon for a marijuana-related conviction during Trump’s first term paid a visit to the White House, discussing future clemency options with the recently appointed “pardon czar.”
A marijuana industry-backed political action committee (PAC) has also released a series of ads over recent weeks that have attacked Biden’s cannabis policy record as well as the nation of Canada, promoting sometimes misleading claims about the last administration while making the case that Trump can deliver on reform.
Its latest ad accused former President Joe Biden and his DEA of waging a “deep state war” against medical cannabis patients—but without mentioning that the former president himself initiated the rescheduling process that marijuana companies want to see completed under Trump.
Most Marijuana Consumers Oppose Trump’s Cannabis Actions So Far, But Rescheduling Or Legalization Could Bolster Support, Poll Shows
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