Every visitor entering the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Arlington, Virginia, encounters two powerful reminders of why the agency exists.
The first is impossible to ignore.
Stretching across a prominent wall is the “Faces of Fentanyl” memorial — thousands of photographs of smiling Americans, many of them teenagers and young adults. Beneath each photograph appears only a first name and what the DEA calls a “Forever Age.”
Sixteen. Eighteen. Twenty-one. Fourteen.
Every face represents a life cut short by drug poisoning. Their families submitted those photographs so America would never forget the human cost of addiction.
Farther inside the building stands another memorial: the DEA “Wall of Honor,” displaying the photographs of special agents and task force officers who gave their lives protecting the public from drug traffickers. Many were colleagues and friends. I knew too many of them personally.
Those two memorials tell the story of the DEA’s mission. One honors the victims. The other honors those who sacrificed everything trying to prevent more victims.
Today, however, another story is unfolding inside those same walls.
The federal government is defending a proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. As someone who spent an entire career enforcing America’s drug laws, I never imagined I would see the Department of Justice and the DEA arguing for reducing federal restrictions on a drug generations of DEA agents worked tirelessly to keep off America’s streets.
This is more than a policy dispute. It is an institutional contradiction.
For decades, DEA agents dismantled marijuana trafficking organizations, seized enormous quantities of cannabis, and testified in court about its risks to public health and safety. Those efforts were not based on politics. They reflected the scientific findings and statutory responsibilities Congress assigned to the agency.
Now the same institution is being asked to argue the opposite.
During the recent administrative hearings, a career DEA scientist testified about marijuana’s abuse potential, widespread diversion, lack of standardized products, and the absence of rigorous scientific evidence ordinarily required to establish accepted medical use under the Controlled Substances Act. Much of her testimony reaffirmed positions the DEA itself has maintained for decades.
Yet the political momentum appears to be moving in the opposite direction.
Whether one favors or opposes marijuana legalization is beside the point. States remain free to debate their own policies. The question before the federal government is different: should scheduling decisions under federal law be driven by scientific evidence or by political and commercial pressures?
Congress deliberately established scientific standards for scheduling drugs to insulate those decisions from politics. If those standards can be reinterpreted whenever they become politically inconvenient, scientific integrity gives way to political expediency.
Law enforcement officers are trained to follow evidence — not polling data.
The DEA was created to reduce drug abuse and enforce the Controlled Substances Act. It was never intended to become an agency that legitimizes drugs whose risks remain well documented.
Marijuana is not fentanyl, heroin, or methamphetamine. Every controlled substance presents different risks. But the relevant question is whether lowering federal restrictions will increase availability, reduce public perception of risk, encourage greater use, and ultimately increase addiction, impaired driving, psychiatric illness, emergency room visits, and other harms among vulnerable populations.
History suggests it will.
Across the country, families are already confronting cannabis-induced psychosis, marijuana-impaired crashes, emergency psychiatric admissions, and addiction. Many young people begin experimenting with marijuana after hearing it described as harmless or even “medicine,” only to discover that today’s highly concentrated commercial products bear little resemblance to those of previous generations.
The science will continue to evolve. The human consequences are already evident.
Whenever I visit DEA headquarters, I think about those two memorials.
The men and women on the Wall of Honor devoted — and in some cases gave — their lives to prevent what is represented on the Faces of Fentanyl memorial. Their mission was straightforward: stop traffickers, reduce addiction, protect families, and save lives.
I cannot help but wonder what those fallen agents would think if they knew their own agency was now being asked to advance a policy many believe will normalize another addictive drug.
Their answer matters not because they opposed marijuana for ideological reasons, but because they understood the devastating consequences of drug abuse and dedicated their careers to preventing them.
If marijuana is ultimately rescheduled, perhaps future visitors to DEA headquarters should see another display — not to shame individuals, but to remind future generations how consequential public policy decisions are made.
It might begin with the Oval Office photograph taken on Dec. 18, 2025, when President Donald Trump signed the executive order directing expedited marijuana rescheduling. It could identify the policymakers, agency officials, and commercial interests whose decisions fundamentally altered federal drug policy.
History will judge whether those decisions were wise.
But there is another wall America should consider building: one displaying the faces of young people lost in marijuana-impaired crashes, devastated by cannabis-induced psychiatric illness, or whose lives unraveled after addiction that began with marijuana. Families forever changed deserve to be remembered as well.
The DEA headquarters already contains two enduring reminders of why the agency exists. One honors the victims. One honors the heroes.
Neither should become merely a monument to an agency that abandoned the mission for which so many sacrificed.
OPINION: WE CAN TEST FOR ALCOHOL IN SECONDS. MARIJUANA IMPAIRMENT? STILL A GUESSING GAME
The marijuana rescheduling proposal should be rejected — not because it is politically controversial, but because Congress established scientific and legal standards that should not be compromised. The DEA’s own scientific record raises substantial questions about whether those standards have been met.
The Drug Enforcement Administration should remain what Congress intended it to be: an agency guided by science, faithful to the law, and committed to protecting the American people — not the agency that normalized the very drug it spent half a century trying to control.
Retired DEA Assistant Administrator John J. Coleman argues that the proposed federal rescheduling of marijuana represents a fundamental departure from the DEA’s historic mission, contending that science, law, and the testimony presented during the administrative hearings do not support moving marijuana to Schedule III.