DEA Chief Dials Back Drug War Bluster After Talk With Holder

Drug Enforcement Administrator
Michele Leonhart and her boss, Attorney General Eric Holder, appear

locked in a bureaucratic staring match over the Obama
administration’s attempt to reform the way the federal government
approaches criminal justice and punishment.

For Holder and for President Barack Obama, sentencing
reform has become a critical, second-term legacy item, as
they aim to bend the arc of incarceration policy away from a
federal system well practiced at imprisoning drug offenders for as
long as possible. But those efforts are colliding with
institutional resistance from law enforcement officials with a
single-minded focus and, perhaps, turf to defend.

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