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The widespread destruction of our national forests caused by illicit marijuana cultivation is becoming a bigger story every summer. The problem just keeps getting worse and it seems that Mexican cartels aren’t the only ones cashing in on it:

Forest Service law enforcement staff was doubled from 14 to 28 agents in California between 2007 and 2008, said spokesman John Heil, resulting in the eradication of 3.1 million marijuana plants in the last fiscal year.

Congress is responding too, with a recent $3 million supplemental appropriation secured by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that allowed the Park Service to add 25 new law enforcement officers to its Pacific Region parks…[New York Times]

The more marijuana gets planted, the more jobs are created for people to cut down the plants, which causes still more marijuana to get planted. The harder you try to put a stop to this, the worse the damage gets. The cops doing this work won’t hesitate to tell you that there's more of it every year. We haven't even scratched the surface of how bad it's going to get:

"As more pressure happens in California, they're going to start looking at Oregon, Nevada and Idaho," said Krogen, of the High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew. "Then they'll start looking at the Southeast too, closer to distribution."

Does anyone really believe that law enforcement is going to solve this problem? I'm sure going on treasure hunts in the woods is a popular assignment, but I have a hard time believing that these guys actually think they're accomplishing anything.

The bottom line is that legalization is absolutely the only option that exists for controlling where, how, and by whom marijuana is grown. I hope it won't require the permanent destruction of precious natural resources across the country to illustrate that fact. It never ceases to amaze me that all of this is happening because the government won’t let people grow their own marijuana.

Paul Armentano at NORML has the details. He rightly points out that we can only imagine how much progress could have made towards developing promising marijuana-derived treatments if the government and the press hadn’t spent the last several decades trying to vilify marijuana instead of examining its potential.

It's a plant, and like other plants, it's here to help us. It's probably just a matter of time until marijuana's full potential as a cancer cure is discovered, and when that happens, the consequences of decades of mindless anti-pot propaganda will be revealed like never before.

Anyone applying for a job at the Drug Enforcement Administration must answer this question:



That's funny, I thought there was no such thing as "legally prescribed" marijuana under federal law. Either this is an idiot test for prospective applicants, or we've come so far that the DEA is beginning to lose track of its own ideology.

As the call for legalization continues to reverberate louder than ever before, the hired soldiers in the war on drugs are seeking to defend their livelihood with arguments of unprecedented desperation and incoherence:

Legalization is not the solution, [statewide CAMP Commander Michael] Johnson said, given that most of the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign citizens who cannot be taxed. [San Francisco Chronicle]

You won't have to tax them because they'll be out of business. No one's going to buy some crappy weed that's grown illegally and destructively in our national forests if there's an alternative. The instant you allow California's legions of skilled and socially conscious marijuana growers to operate in a regulated and legitimate environment, everything ugly and uncontrollable about the state's marijuana industry will change overnight.

Just watch how he proves my point:

"I've been doing this for five years, and there just seems to be more and more of it everywhere," Johnson said. "We don't even bother with medicinal grows. What we're concerned about is the destruction of the habitat."

See how he admits that the "medicinal grows" are not what's causing the problem? That's because they're legal and regulated. It really isn’t any more complicated than that.

Remember last week when the new drug czar Gil Kerlikowske dusted off the old drug czar pocket manual and whipped out the classic "marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit" line? Well, Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone recalls his recent interview with Kerlikowske, in which the new drug czar claimed the verdict wasn't in yet on marijuana's medical benefits:

This is a striking departure from what Kerlikowske told me in an interview in May.

Because of the restrictive terms the Vice President’s office imposed on our interview, I’m not at liberty to quote the drug czar directly.

But when I asked Kerlikowske for an example of how he hoped to bring sound science back to Office of National Drug Control Policy, he told me that science would answer whether smoked marijuana has any medical benefit.

That’s a question that science answers, he told me, not ideology.

So when the drug czar is talking to Rolling Stone, he cares about science, but when he's hanging out with a bunch of drug cops in California, he's got no problem spouting off pathetically false and antiquated drug war propaganda. Beautiful.

Of course, even the earlier position about waiting for the science to explain everything to us is flagrantly dishonest. Everyone knows what the science says and it's been that way for a long time now. It's really just disgusting to act confused about it when an extraordinary number of real human beings with real illnesses are standing before you eager to share the stories of how medical marijuana has improved and sometimes saved their lives.

So whichever position the drug czar ultimately decides to stick with, he's a liar either way.

Last week we reported that the crime subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee had unanimously passed H.R. 3245, a bill to reduce federal crack cocaine penalties to the same level as those for offenses involving powder cocaine. The full Judiciary Committee approved the bill today, we just heard, by a vote of 16-9. I'll post back with a link to the roll call when it becomes available on Thomas, or follow the link to the bill above to check in the meanwhile. Reports indicate it is expected to be taken up on the floor of the House of Representatives, and that a bipartisan Senate bill is expected out soon too. So this is big news. Not the only big news -- read more in our current top Chronicle feature, "Winds of Change Are Blowing in Washington -- Drug Reforms Finally Move in Congress."