Pubdate: Wed, 23 Oct 2013
Source: East Bay Express (CA)
Copyright: 2013 East Bay Express
Contact: http://posting.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/SubmitLetter/Page
Website: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1131
Author: Jeff Hoffman
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v13/n494/a08.html

"Greenwashing the War on Drugs," Feature, 10/9

STOP ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION

I have long been an advocate of legalization of all drugs, not just 
marijuana, for reasons of civil liberties. You are quite correct that 
prohibition leads to all of the problems that you described, and many 
more, including imprisoning people who should not be imprisoned. 
However, the federal government is not legalizing pot anytime soon, 
regardless of what the majority of people want. Too many rich and 
powerful people make too much money from pot being illegal, and until 
we get a far more representative government, from one dollar one vote 
to one person one vote, and proportional representation so that 
people are not afraid of "wasting" their votes by voting for people 
whose policies they actually support, pot will remain illegal. So, we 
have to deal with reality as it is while trying to change it to what 
it should be.

The reality is that (mainly) Mexican gangs have been invading our 
national forests and other "undeveloped" (a better term would be 
"undestroyed") lands for ten to twenty years to grow pot, as 
evidenced by the two people identified in your article. While I would 
far prefer that pot were grown organically and sold and consumed 
legally, in our current situation of immoral illegalization the only 
way to stop this hideous destruction of our forests is by 
military/police intervention. Unfortunately, the people who run the 
military and police are far more concerned with making and 
maintaining imperialist wars for resources (mainly oil, now some gas, 
and soon to be water) and squelching dissent than they are protecting 
our environment, so we get no response from them.

I couldn't care less whether anyone, including Mexicans, grows pot in 
our national forests, but no one should be allowed to cut down trees 
or kill other plants, suck water out of ecosystems, or poison the 
earth and its inhabitants to do so. If we're not going to legalize 
pot, we should at least provide whatever military and police 
resources are necessary to stop the environmental destruction 
described in your article.

And by the way, all of these pot grows use diesel-powered generators 
that leak diesel fuel into the ground and watersheds, so the problem 
is even worse than you described.

Jeff Hoffman, Berkeley
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom