How is this a success?
I saw a story on Wool Blitzer’s “Propaganda Room” show today about some California State police officer (wearing full fatigues) who was proudly recounting a tale about a major crop of pot his unit discovered and will (has already?) destroyed the crops. Searching for that story lead me to this from San Francisco/Oakland NBC affiliate:
It used to be that marijuana came to the Bay Area from the legendary back country of Humboldt County or the desert fields beyond Tijuana.
Now the fields are in the Bay Area, and everywhere else in the state. Marijuana is one of the top cash crops in California, NBC Bay Area’s Mike Luery reported.
Many of the fields are located next to popular trails and in the middle of state parks.
A fierce battle is being waged in our own back yard to remove the pot groves. They are hidden in brush so thick that specially trained officers must dangle dangerously from ropes tied to helicopters or hike miles just to get in.
“If you grow it, we will come,” said one agent.
“We’ve recovered assault weapons, rifles and hand guns from those that we’ve arrested,” said another agent.
Last year, the state’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting eradicated nearly 3 million pot plants. Most of them, about 75 percent, were found on public land.
“They’re basically stealing the land from what it was intended for, which is recreation and hiking and hunting,” said Ryan Pontecorvo, Eradication Team Commander.
One pot grove that Luery visited in the Napa Valley is located on federal land owned by the Bureau of Land Management. However, Luery said, typically agents find farms in state and national parks.
Wherever people go, drug traffickers have chopped down trees and hijacked the water supply.
They lay hundreds of yards of plastic tubing to irrigate their plants with stolen water, while leaving behind mounds of fertilizer and trash that brings chemical pollution.
Let’s review. Innocent taxpayers are forced to pay for police officers who scavenge public lands looking for a plant illegal to grow only because other people supposedly hired by those same taxpayers have declared it to be so. On top of that, every plant seized and destroyed means those that survive have a higher value, thus making drug trafficking a more lucrative business, in turn causing increased violence among dealers and various gangs who profit from the sale of this plant which is deemed illegal for absolutely no legitimate reason.
In the end, there is absolutely no way to “win” the “war on drugs” with armed men lawlessly seizing people’s property and throwing non-violent people into prison. Ending this farce would save untold sums of money, and taking marijuana off the black-market would reduce real crimes committed by gang bangers desperate to stake their turf in the market place.
Ironically, it seems even the most wonderful of all humans, government bureaucrats, those treasured “servants” to whom we are all supposed to thank and worship, are not immune from the profitable lure of drug dealing.