Controversial enough because of questions surrounding whether its various activities trample Constitutional rights with abandon, the War on Drugs has hit the Internet weeding - with the Justice Department indicting eleven Website operators on charges of selling bongs, marijuana cigarette holders, and other drug paraphernalia.
"With the advent of the Internet, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has exploded," said Attorney General John Ashcroft, announcing that the government would ask a federal judge in Pittsburgh to point the Websites in question to Web pages at the federal Drug Enforcement Administration explaining why they've been taken down.
"The drug paraphernalia business now thrives not only in small shops but it is now accessible in anyone's home with a computer and Internet access," Ashcroft continued. "Quite simply, the illegal drug paraphernalia industry has invaded the homes of families across the country without their knowledge."
The eleven Website operators indicted were part of a Federal indictment hit against fifty people charged in trafficking in illegal drug paraphernalia, part of what the DEA calls Operation Pipe Dream. And Ashcroft said the Feds will no longer ignore the drug paraphernalia business, which he called a billion dollar plus industry - on or offline.
Acting DEA Administrator John B. Brown called drug paraphernalia makers and sellers no different, "in essence," than drug dealers.
"They are as much a part of drug trafficking as silencers are a part of criminal homicide," Brown said. "These criminals operate a multimillion dollar enterprise, selling their paraphernalia in headshops, distributing out of huge warehouses, and using the worldwide web as a worldwide paraphernalia market. With Operations Pipe Dreams and Headhunter, these criminals are out of business and 11 illicit dot.coms are dot.gone."
But civil libertarians suspect that Operation Pipe Dreams may be an opening toward the usual kind of law enforcement overreaching - whereby not only can they shut down Websites arbitrarily if the drug war is interested, but individual parts of "drug paraphernalia" which have nothing by themselves to do with drug abuse could eventually be enough to get someone arrested on drug-related suspicions.
And who is to say, for example, that if the DEA can re-route visitors to drug-related Websites - whether or not they actually offer drug materials for sale - they can't re-route, say, visitors to adult entertainment Websites to other places, with equal arbitrariness?
"In essence," says one such civil libertarian, Ron Bennett, "the DEA is going to usurp the freedom of speech or expression of the people who run those seized Websites. This would be akin to the Department of Justice redirecting the (American Civil Liberties Union) Website to (the Justice Department's) Website."
