It was standing room only when Chuck Rosenberg—former Acting Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and former Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—visited John Jay on February 18. John Jay President Karol V. Mason thanked and welcomed her former colleague, who happened to work in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

“As Acting Administrator of the Department of Justice’s Drug Enforcement Administration, Chuck was committed to enforcing our nation’s drug laws and protecting the health and safety of the public. Under Chuck’s leadership, the DEA worked closely with local, state, federal, and international partners to identify, investigate, and dismantle the drug trafficking organizations responsible for creating the drug epidemics that have devastated our communities,” said Mason. “Chuck saw the research citing drug overdoses as the leading cause of injury-related death in the United States—which eclipsed deaths from motor vehicle crashes and firearms—and he knew that the DEA had to take a different strategy to counter the opioid crisis.”

Mason went on to explain how under Rosenberg’s leadership the DEA worked with community partners to implement evidence-based programs designed to reduce drug demand. And, in an effort to kick-start conversations about the dangers of prescription opioids and heroin in the home and classroom, Rosenberg had the DEA develop and distribute prescription drug and heroin education curriculum for students, teachers, and parents.

“Under his leadership, the DEA and the United States Attorney’s Offices across the country, proactively pursued criminal and civil cases against drug distributors, demonstrating that drug companies were accountable when they violated the law and threatened public health and safety,” said Mason. “Chuck understands that the prolonged war on drugs has produced racial disparities in arrests and incarceration, and he recognizes that the punishment for drug law violations has a ripple effect on peoples’ lives—impacting everything from child custody, employment, public housing, and even voting. Chuck has a deep understanding of the complexity surrounding drug problems in America, and I know our entire community is excited to learn from him—especially the fantastic panel of students gathered with us today.”

Guided by savvy questions from the John Jay student panel—including Armela Ademi, Heaven Rodriguez, Emma Steele, Emily Suh, Cody Tchou, and Jorge Velez—Rosenberg deftly explained his thoughts and experiences regarding many of the justice-related topics that occupy the minds of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. Below are some of his thoughts on marijuana, law enforcement, criminal justice reform, national security, and the opioid crisis.

Examining Marijuana and Law Enforcement

I think the DEA is doing things right by prioritizing things that are killing Americans. By and large, that’s not marijuana. If you made a list of things that are killing Americans, marijuana wouldn’t be high on the list. When you have limited resources you need to focus on what’s on the top of the list, not the bottom of the list. When I was in the DEA we did marijuana cases occasionally, but usually that was when it was poly-drug organizations and marijuana was just a part of it.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law, although it’s treated differently under some state municipal laws. That does send confusing signals. I’ve never smoked marijuana, and I don’t think that you should. In fact, I hate this whole notion of medical marijuana, and I’ll tell you why. You wouldn’t smoke Benadryl for seasonal allergy relief, and it doesn’t make sense to me that you’d smoke a medicine. That’s not the way drugs are delivered in our country. Drugs are approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and they’re synthesized, and dosage amounts are known and measured precisely. You know the side effects. So, this notion of medical marijuana has always struck me as a bit of an oxymoron.

Analyzing Marijuana and Incarceration 

Very, very few people are in federal prison strictly on marijuana charges. I spent the entire first part of my career as a federal prosecutor, and then later as a United States Attorney and the Chief Federal Prosecutor. I can say with real certainty that I’ve never seen anyone go to federal prison for simply possessing marijuana. It’s unheard of. There are people in federal prison because of marijuana, but they tend to be distributors and part of a large-scale drug organization.

Remember, federal law enforcement makes up a tiny percentage of law enforcement in this country. There are 18,000 police departments in the United States. The New York City Police Department has three times more sworn officers than the entire FBI. That’s astonishing, right? There are about 38,000 to 39,000 New York City police officers, and there are 18,000 FBI special agents. The work that federal law enforcement officers do is a tiny fraction of the work that’s done nationwide. The incarceration problem in regards to marijuana—which I think is a real problem—is mostly happening at the state and local municipal level.

Legalizing Marijuana

When it comes to the issue of legalizing marijuana, like a lot of things in society, you realize that there’s a spectrum. You have to figure out where in society you want to draw the line. You can have a very thoughtful argument about legalizing marijuana. Actually, can you name three or four things that are bad for you, but are legal? [The students: cigarettes, alcohol, firearms, sugar, gambling.] Yes, you can name lots and lots of things that in society we decided we’re going to tolerate, and you could easily put marijuana into that bucket. I get that. But, I would worry about the other end of the spectrum. I would worry about those things that are so inherently and intrinsically dangerous, that legalizing them would significantly increase deaths in America. 

Confronting the Issue of Drug-Related Overdoses

In terms of the DEA, we were prioritizing violent criminals and drug cartels, and large amounts of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and synthetics. Those were the things that were killing people. To give you the numbers, something like 30,000 Americans die each year in car accidents. Something like 30,000 Americans die each year from firearms. Add those two numbers together and it still doesn’t meet the number of drug-related overdose deaths every year. In terms of drug-related overdose deaths, it’s almost like a commercial airline accident happens every single day. If an airplane with 200 Americans crashed every single day, killing everyone in the plane, wouldn’t you start rethinking commercial aviation? That’s essentially what’s happening in our country right now. It’s worrying that we’re not properly focused and properly attuned to the magnitude of this problem.

I think of drug-related issues as a two-dimensional problem. At the very top are the cartels and drug gangs, that’s taking a lot of law enforcement resources, and at the bottom of the pyramid is the public health crisis. People addicted to drugs are in need of public health care services. They don’t need to go to jail. They don’t need to be prosecuted. They need public health services. I think we have to divide the problem up in that way. I worry that we treat too much of the bottom half of the issue as a criminal-enforcement issue and not enough as a public-health issue.

Reimagining the Criminal Justice System

We know that 99 percent of the people in prison are going to come out of prison. We need to spend more thought, time, and money in this area because we want people to come out and be productive members of society—supporting their families, getting work, and getting an education. We’re just not making that investment right now. In my lifetime, I could probably count on one hand the number of people I’ve talked to and prosecuted who were truly evil. You see evil in the movies, you don’t actually see it in real life. A lot of people are reckless, some people are addicted to drugs, some people are greedy, some people are just plain stupid, but those are the types of people who we tend to catch and prosecute—and almost every single one of them comes back out. As a society, we have to really think about paving that path, making sure there’s some way to rehabilitate folks and have them reenter society in a meaningful way. And right now, I think we’re completely failing at that.

Contemplating National Security

What would I consider the largest security threat to our nation? That’s a great question, do I have to pick just one? I worry a lot about the cyber threat in its various dimensions. There are people trying to get into your bank accounts, steal your PIN numbers, and they’re phishing to get you to give up personal information—do not click on the cute kitten video that you got in an email. There are a lot of malicious actors out there. Through the cyber vector there’s significant cyber espionage, mostly from other states who are our adversaries—China, North Korea, Iran, and some others. There’s also a counter intelligence threat; massive breaches, like Equifax; and all kinds of horrific cyber-attacks on America. Then there’s also a significant threat in terrorism, and I think of that in two ways: the continuing international terrorism threat; and the growing, and deeply troubling, domestic terrorism groups—particularly in white supremacy and white nationalist groups.

Changing the Culture of Pain Management

My wife’s oldest brother is a surgeon and he says that there is an enormous pressure on doctors in big state hospitals and big university hospitals to meet the demands of patients, because that’s how hospitals and doctors get rated. So when someone comes in and says “my back hurts,” and the doctor tells them to go home and stretch and sit in a hot tub, the patient will give the doctor two stars on Yelp, and the hospital suffers. There are so many facets to this problem. I do think we have to change the culture of pain management, but I also think that we have to change the culture of pain expectations.

My daughter had her wisdom teeth pulled out and they gave her a prescription for oxycodone. We didn’t fill it and we gave her Tylenol. Why? Because it’s okay to be in pain for a weekend. I do think doctors are part of the problem, even if they’re well intentioned. If there really is a connection between the prescription problem and the addiction problem—and I do think that problem is both causal and correlative— if we can drive down the prescription part of the issue, then the addiction aspect should follow. But we’re not going to know that outcome next weekend, next month, or next year. We’re going to know that outcome five years from now. I have seen some reporting that the prescription of dangerous opioids is actually down.

But, there’s also a reason why we prescribe these dangerous opioids. My dad died of pancreatic cancer—which is extraordinarily painful—and that’s what he needed at the end of his life. So, we don’t want to make these drugs unavailable, we just want to be smart about how we use them.