ODALE (Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement)

Richard Nixon increased drug law enforcement and created ODALE. ODALE's purpose was to supplement existing federal, state, and local drug enforcement agencies. In the city of San Diego, ODALE learned that most of the heroin was sold by one gang. Because in California it is illegal to to bust the gang by wire-tapping them, it was impossible to catch them. However, considering that ODALE was a federal agency, they could override the state laws and thus this gang was wire-tapped and therefore all the gang members incarcerated. For a week, there was no way of buying heroine off the streets of San Diego, unfortunately on the eighth day, there were new heroin pushers on the streets. Judge Gray stated, "We had spent hundreds of thousands of federal tax dollars, and we sent every one of the 39 pushers to federal prison, but there was no lasting effect on the availability of heroin or its price. In one respect we were worse off for our success. Before we know who was selling, but afterwards we had no idea."
This whole story can be read in "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It," written by Judge James Gray.
ODALE no longer exists as a federal agency and that is probably one of the few wise actions taken by the government regardless under what president's term. The bottom line is that the government makes drug busts and fills the prisons with drug dealers and drug users, yet there is a growing market for drugs and almost every senior in high school across the country has been exposed to the possibility of trying a drug. Contrary to people's beliefs drug users are not introduced to drug by the dealers but by close friends and unfortunately family members.
As a result, with all the successes that the DEA has, capturing huge amounts of cocaine, heroin and marijuana, you can imagine that much more of what is intercepted makes it on the actual streets where drugs are as available as any other legal product.