For the Drug Enforcement Agency Museum, being located in the D.C. area is akin to being a hot dog on the menu of a four-star restaurant. Sure, everyone enjoys a frankfurter from time to time, but few people would order the hot dog over the filet mignon. In an area with roughly one museum per citizen, any institution not complicit in the Smithsonian cartel has a tough time getting its fair share of attention.
Luckily for the folks down at the DEA Museum, I wasn’t looking for museum fine dining when I headed out to Arlington. Rather, a desire to view mountains of drugs and paraphernalia and read about the most fearsome kingpins this world has known led me straight to the DEA Museum, conveniently located right across from the Pentagon City Mall. I spent the next hour or two immersed in the history of and artifacts from the sordid love affair America has had with drugs, starting with the opium craze of the 1800s right through the lover’s tiff we’re going through right now with the war on drugs.
The instant I walked through the museum’s entrance, I knew I was in the right building. Taped on top of the x-ray machine were two instantly recognizable marijuana leaves. I instinctively reached out to feel their tender greenness, but was only met with cold plasticity. “They’re not…” I said to the security guard. The disappointment in my voice was matched only by the forlorn look on his face as he shook his head.
The inside of the museum, however, did not disappoint. Anyone who has ever been impressed by a stoner friend’s collection of memorabilia and paraphernalia must go to the DEA Museum. One look into the first display case at the DEA museum and you’ll see there’s no way your buddy’s $200 tie-dye bong or vast collection of Bob Marley posters can even begin to hold a candle, or joint, for that matter, to the elaborate trappings of the nineteenth century opium addict. From the silver opium pipe to the bowl scraper used to salvage left-over opium to the long-needle scoop used to twirl the gooey opium to a “Chinese pillow” designed to keep your head up while smoking the ope’, it was clear that though hygiene and health were secondary to these nineteenth century addicts, they took their dope smoking seriously.
As I moved on down the exhibit and started reading about the diverse origins of America’s drugs, I felt like I was experiencing déjà vu. Cocaine grown in the jungles of South America, opiates from Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle, low-grade brown heroin from Mexico, and marijuana, grown right here, at home in the United States of America. Then it hit me—it was the Pluralism presentation on diversity all over again. Whoever’s planning next year’s diversity presentation ought to consider a program entitled “The Diversity of D.C. Dope” to really spark the discussion afterwards.
Not only does the museum educate you about drugs, it answers the age-old question: what does the DEA do with all the luxury items they seize from drug smugglers? Do they indulge in late-night street races, blazing down M street in the hot rod dragster seized from a Texan race-car driver and the souped-up Harley taken from the Salem, MA’s Hells Angels leader? Do they sneak the diamond-encrusted Colt .45 confiscated from a South American drug lord and all those Colombian sub-machine guns down to the firing range for a bit of target practice? Unfortunately for the DEA, no. Fortunately for us, they instead choose to put all these items on display. I couldn’t decide whether I’d rather be one of the drugs dealers, with millions of dollars and the nicest cars and houses money could buy, or an agent for the DEA, ruthlessly snatching these goodies away from the pushers. One thing’s for sure, though—I’m throwing that degree in English I was supposed to get right out the window and joining the war on drugs, whichever side I end up on.
