When eight former DEA chiefs signed a letter [3] to US Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this month, demanding that the feds crack down on Washington and Colorado, the states which voted last November [4] to legalize marijuana, there was more than just drug-war ideology at stake. There was money.

Two of the elder drug warriors, Peter Bensinger (DEA chief, 1976-1981) and Robert DuPont (White House drug chief, 1973-1977), run a corporate drug-testing business. Their employee-assistance company, Bensinger, DuPont & Associates [5], the sixth largest in the nation, holds the pee stick for some 10 million employees around the US. Their clients have included the biggest players in industry and government: Kraft Foods, American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, the Federal Aviation Administration and even the Justice Department itself.

‘These are not just old drug war architects pushing a drug war model they’ve pushed for 40 years,