Pubdate: Sun, 26 Nov 2006
Source: Record Searchlight (Redding, CA)
Copyright: 2006 Record Searchlight
Contact:  http://www.redding.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/360

WAR ON ILLICIT POT FARMS HAS SUNK INTO A QUAGMIRE

We're Not Winning the War on Drugs.

Two decades ago, the state government launched the Campaign Against 
Marijuana Production (CAMP). Agents fanned out through the woods and 
took to the skies to find and destroy illegal pot gardens, especially 
in Northern California.

The results were dramatic. In its third year, 1985, officers uprooted 
nearly 170,000 marijuana plants from isolated patches. Growers even 
appeared to get the message, or at least they grew more cautious. By 
1990 the number of plants found dropped to about half the peak, and 
it stayed at that manageable level through most of the '90s.

Those Were the Days.

This year, agents in Shasta County alone yanked up nearly 240,000 
illegal pot plants. Statewide, the figure approached 1.7 million -- 
10 times the 1980s peak.

State officials' reaction? A declaration of victory.

"The record-breaking numbers reflect CAMP's continued, remarkable 
success in ridding California of illegal large-scale marijuana 
gardens," state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said last month in 
announcing this year's results.

He would have a point if there were any evidence that the problem was 
whipped, that illegal growers were getting the message and taking 
their business elsewhere. But even the cops who take on the tough and 
dangerous job of stopping pot farming guess they find only 20 percent 
to 30 percent of the illicit crop.

Is There a Solution?

U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott, the chief federal prosecutor for the 
region and former Shasta County district attorney, suggested that the 
increase was in part caused by tougher law enforcement -- not in the 
northern mountains, but on the southern border. Since it's become 
harder to smuggle drugs from Mexico, cartels have simply started 
growing dope up north. Even if Scott is correct, though, relaxing our 
border controls isn't in the cards these days.

Shasta County District Attorney Jerry Benito says tougher sentences 
for growing marijuana are needed, especially for the massive gardens 
that are increasingly common in Northern California. We must punish 
lawbreakers, but as it happens the state's prisons are already so 
full that federal judges are threatening to free prisoners to relieve 
the overcrowding.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who died last 
week, advocated treating marijuana the way we do alcohol -- taxing 
and regulating it to keep it out of the hands of children, keeping 
intoxicated drivers off the road, but otherwise letting adults do 
what they want to their own bodies. Well, Friedman's free-market 
views on the economy greatly influenced such leaders as Ronald 
Reagan, but Americans aren't quite ready to apply them to drugs. (In 
anything-goes Nevada, an initiative to legalize marijuana won 44 
percent of the vote in this month's election.)

But the lens of supply and demand clarifies the issue. As long as 
there's a demand -- and neither the law nor good sense has stopped 
pot smokers yet -- somebody will provide the supply.

In other words, helicopters will be scanning the north state's 
forests for pot patches for a long time to come.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine