BUD’s Most Wanted List (2015)

Tue Dec 24, 2014 4:20am EST

(WASHINGTON, DC) – Both the FBI and DEA have a Most Wanted List, a brief history of which was reported by Business Insider earlier this year:

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-top-10-most-wanted-2014-4

The FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list began in 1950 after a news reporter asked the bureau for the names of the “toughest guys” it wanted to capture. The resulting story generated so much publicity, J. Edgar Hoover, then director, decided to launch the most wanted program.

Since then, 501 fugitives have made the list, which requires that they committed serious or dangerous crimes and that national publicity would help apprehend them. The bureau has caught or located 471 of them — well above a 90% success rate.

Although there are scores of anti-drug groups and agencies — mostly funded by the federal government — there is only a handful of advocacy organizations that fight to end the Drug War. To address this lopsided representation, a new group based in Washington, DC, has announced it will join such well-known groups as NORML and MAPS in working towards that end.

The advocacy group calls itself the Rational Organization for the Systematic Education and Basic Understanding of Drugs (Rosebud for short). Rosebud’s very basic website describes the group as “a nonprofit entity that’s name is self-explanatory.” The first post under the “News” heading is an announcement that the group will begin targeting members of the Drug War for inclusion in its newly-announced BUD’s Most Wanted List.

For the year 2015, Rosebud named the following:

Michele Leonhart
Nora D. Volkow
Patrick Kennedy
David Frum
Andrew Kolodny
Jennifer Weiss

BUD’s Most Wanted List will be published annually and include the top six people this group will be working against in the coming year. Also, Rosebud indicates that additional Most Wanted Lists, targeting members of the Drug War by city and state, are in the works.

“The FBI’s Most Wanted list is for terrorists, the DEA’s is for fugitives, and BUD’s is for anyone with power and influence who use these privileges to wage a war against drugs, including members of the injustice system, in the media, and in the war against science,” said Jackie Herer, a spokesperson for Rosebud, in an email response to this reporter.

Ms. Herer went on to say that Rosebud doesn’t have a measurement for the success of its list, and that the most important thing was to educate the American people on who’s responsible for continuing the failed Drug War.