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Eradication

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The War on Marijuana = Federal $$$ for Local Cops

If you've ever wondered how police departments can afford to send so many officers off into the woods looking for pot plants, the Wall Street Journal just figured it out:



IGO, Calif.—Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there's one mission on which he's spending more than in recent years: pot busts.

The reason is simple: If he steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs. The majority of the funding would have to be used to fight pot. Marijuana may not be the county's most pressing crime problem, the sheriff says, but "it's where the money is."

Every year, more money is spent and more marijuana is discovered. The growers then respond by planting still more. New records are set every harvest season, keeping growers and the police who pursue them steadily employed. The big losers in this ridiculous cycle of idiocy are the taxpayers, who spend billions on this stupid self-perpetuating escapade while neighborhood crimes go unsolved.

Just because some people think legalizing marijuana might "send the wrong message," we're instead stuck in a massive domestic war that we can't afford, and we're losing worse every year. Meanwhile, cops and criminals just continue cashing in.

For more, check out this interesting exchange between MPP's Mike Meno and a California reporter who's been following the story.

NEW LOCATION: Reformers to Call for New Approach TODAY at Marijuana Eradication Conference

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                                                                 

MAY 10, 2010

Reformers to Call for New Approach TODAY at Marijuana Eradication Conference

Location Changed for Today’s Press Conference; Former Law Enforcement, Clergy Members, Other Advocates Will Call for End to Wasteful, Ineffective Eradication Campaigns

CONTACT: Aaron Smith, MPP California policy director …………… [email protected] or 707-291-0076

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA — At a press conference today, reform-minded advocates will make the case for ending the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting (CAMP), which, since 1983, has inarguably failed to achieve its stated goal: reducing marijuana use and availability by eradicating illegal grow sites.

            Today through Wednesday, local, state, and federal law enforcement officers will gather at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego to begin organizing this year’s eradication campaign, the wisdom of which has been increasingly called into question as Californians prepare to vote on a November ballot initiative that would end the state’s prohibition on adult marijuana use.

         “It’s time to stop this insanity of repeating the futile exercise of CAMP and instead replace marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation,” said Aaron Smith, California policy director for MPP, who is leading Monday’s press conference.

         Today’s press conference was originally planned to be held in the same hotel as the CAMP conference, but organizers were informed at the last minute and without explanation that they would not be able to hold the event in the same hotel. 

         NEW LOCATION: Westin Gas Lamp Quarter Hotel, Coronado Room, (3rd floor), 910 Broadway Circle, San Diego, CA 92101

         WHAT: Press conference to call for an effective marijuana policy and an end to eradication campaigns

         WHEN: Monday, May 10, at 11:00 a.m.

         WHO: Speakers who will question the wisdom behind CAMP will include:

Leo Laurence, a retired deputy sheriff and former legal researcher for the San Diego County District Attorney’s office, now a speaker for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The Rev. Canon Mary Moreno-Richardson, an Episcopal priest and coordinator for Hispanic Ministries at St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego, who has worked extensively to prevent violence in the community and help at risk youth.

         With more than 124,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit www.mpp.org.

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Press Release: Critics Call California Efforts to 'Eradicate' Marijuana Costly, Futile

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   
JULY 28, 2009

Critics Call California Efforts to 'Eradicate' Marijuana Costly, Futile

Reformers Say Time to Tax, Regulate Marijuana Is Now

CONTACT: Aaron Smith, MPP California policy director ……………………………………… 707-575-9870
                    Dan Bernath, MPP assistant director of communications ……………… 202-462-5747 ext. *2030

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Law enforcement efforts to "eradicate" outdoor marijuana growing operations currently underway in California fail to make any impact on the availability or price of marijuana in the state, officials at the Marijuana Policy Project charged today.

     The annual Campaign Against Marijuana Growing, or CAMP, has produced increasingly gaudy results in terms of numbers of plants destroyed by law enforcement each summer – for example, police recently reported that they had seized $1.26 billion worth of marijuana from illegal farms in Fresno County. But critics argue that the sheer volume of marijuana illegally grown, often in public parks, makes it impossible to identify and destroy enough marijuana to reduce the available supply or hinder drug cartels' profits in any way.

     "Law enforcement officers point to a 2,000 percent increase in plants seized in the past decade and hold that as a sign of success," said Aaron Smith, MPP's California policy director. "But these efforts have had no effect on the widespread prevalence of marijuana in our society. Just like the days of alcohol Prohibition, we have ceded control of a popular product to criminals – making them rich in the process."

     Although eradication programs rarely receive much public scrutiny, the Department of Justice acknowledged in its 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment that such operations do little more than drive growers to indoor sites, often in residential neighborhoods.

     "At a time when California is facing drastic budget cuts, it's beyond irresponsible to continue this costly and ineffective policy," Smith said. "The only way to get these illegal grows out of our parks and neighborhoods is by ending marijuana prohibition and regulating the drug's production. After all, you don't see wine producers sneaking into forests and setting up covert vineyards."

     With more than 27,000 members and 100,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit http://MarijuanaPolicy.org.

####

WOLA Press Release: New Estimates Show Coca Rising in Colombia, Despite Record Year for Fumigation

For immediate release: June 5, 2007 For More Information Contact: John Walsh, Senior Associate, (202) 797-2171, ext 203; cell (202) 213-4863 or Roger Atwood, Communications Director, (202) 797-2171, ext 211; cell (202) 316-3857 New Estimates Show Coca Rising in Colombia, Despite Record Year for Fumigation The U.S. government reported Monday that the amount of land in Colombia under cultivation with coca, the raw material for cocaine, increased 9 percent in 2006 over the previous year. The area under coca cultivation reached 388,000 acres in 2006, up 32,600 acres from 2005, based on figures released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). WOLA, the research and advocacy group, believes these figures offer fresh and disturbing evidence that the U.S.-backed policy of aerial herbicide spraying of coca fields – a practice known as fumigation – is failing to curb coca production. On the contrary, fumigation is prompting farmers to replant as quickly and in as many locations as they can, contributing to the dispersal of coca growing and Colombia’s internal armed conflict to new areas of the country. “Rather than weaken farmers’ reliance on coca, fumigation serves to reinforce it,” said WOLA Senior Associate John Walsh. “To insist at this point that more spraying will somehow deter farmers from replanting is not just unrealistic, it’s delusional.” The report of a rise in coca cultivation followed another record-setting year of fumigation, with 425,000 acres sprayed, nearly 25 percent more than in 2005. Since 2000 the U.S.-backed program has sprayed herbicide on some 2.1 million acres in Colombia. U.S. and Colombian authorities should focus resources on rural development, alternative livelihoods, and on-the-ground destruction of illegal coca plantations and end the wrong-headed, counterproductive focus on fumigation. ### The Washington Office on Latin America is a non-governmental organization that promotes human rights, democracy, and social and economic justice in U.S. policy towards Latin America.

WOLA/TransAfrica Forum: Aerial fumigation contributing to the worst recent humanitarian crisis in Colombia

[Courtesy of WOLA] Washington, DC April 7-- In the last 15 days, fighting between the Colombian military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the activities of new illegal armed groups vying for control of drug routes is reportedly generating the internal displacement of an estimated 7,000 people. The Colombian Department of Nariño is experiencing one of the worst protection and humanitarian assistance crisis since Colombian President Alvaro Uribe began his second term in office. The U.S. financed aerial herbicide spray program (fumigations) compounds and exacerbates the myriad of hardships that Afro-Colombian communities are already facing: racism, disadvantaged access to state programs, food insecurity due to the internal armed conflict, internal displacement and vulnerability to human rights violations by the armed groups.

Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) Action Network Alert: Congress to Vote on Poisoning People

From our friends at Drug Policy Alliance: Congress to Vote on Poisoning People This Week Earlier this year we warned you about a bill in Congress that would revive controversial research on the use of toxic, mold-like fungi called mycoherbicides to kill illicit drug crops in other countries. This provision could unleash an environmental disaster of monumental proportions. But Congressman Mark Souder and Senators Hatch and Biden are rushing it to the House and Senate floors this week. Here are three things you can do:
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