Framed

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced yesterday that its "Operation High Step" had uncovered a sophisticated new wrinkle in the heroin trade. Drug traffickers concealed bricks of the drug in the porcelain frames of paintings, then shattered the them to retrieve the drugs for sale. So far, so cool. But then DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy had to go and take the metaphor and drive it over a cliff:

Behind the allure of artwork lurked the poison of heroin. Heroin promises anything but beauty -- forcing addiction, pain, and devastation on its users. Operation High Step shows that traffickers are working hard to get their poison onto our streets, but DEA is relentless in keeping it where it belongs: out of the picture.