Posted on 07/13/2007 6:25:51 PM PDT by SubGeniusX
The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.
John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.
"Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said.
After touring gardens raided this week in Shasta County, Walters said the officers who are destroying the gardens are performing hard, dangerous work in rough terrain. He said growers have been known to have weapons, including assault rifles.
"These people are armed; they're dangerous," he said. He called them "violent criminal terrorists."
Walters, whose official title is director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said too many people write off marijuana as harmless. "We have kind of a reefer blindness,' " he said.
No arrests have been made so far in the four days of raids, the opening leg of what Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko has promised will be at least two straight weeks of daily raids.
He said suspects have been hard to find because their familiarity with their terrain makes it easy for them to flee quickly.
Although crews doing the raids are using Black Hawk and other helicopters to drop in on some of the gardens, Bosenko said they don't want to give the growers any warning of a raid.
"We try to move in under stealth," he said.
As of Thursday morning, Operation Alesia raids had resulted in the yanking of 68,237 young marijuana plants from public lands in Shasta County. Raids already have been conducted in Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, as well as on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service north of Lake Shasta and other public land near Manton.
The operation is being led by the sheriff's office and has involved 17 agencies, including the California National Guard and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It's believed to be the largest campaign of its kind in the state, Bosenko said.
The operation is named after the last major battle between the Roman Empire and the Gauls in 52 B.C. That battle was won by the Romans.
With the blitz of marijuana gardens around Shasta County, Bosenko said officials hope to not only get rid of the pot, but also win back the land for the public that owns it.
"These organizations are destroying our lands and wildlife," he said.
Bernie Weingardt, regional forester for the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Region, said the 28,000 acres believed to house illegal marijuana grows on national forest land throughout the state would cost more than $300 million to
revive.
"These lands must be cleaned and restored," he said.
His estimate is based on a National Park Service study that found it costs $11,000 per acre to pull the plants, clear irrigation systems, reshape any terracing and replant native vegetation, said Mike Odle, Forest Service spokesman.
While Walters didn't give specific goals for Operation Alesia, he said anti-drug agencies aim to cripple the organized crime groups that he said are behind the marijuana cultivation.
"This business we intend to put into recession, depression and put its leaders into jail," Walters said.
Ok, John whatever you say....
It is this kind of BS that totally discredits the War on Terror. No one believes this. If we took all of the resources we waste fighting the War on Drugs and focused them on the fighting terrorists, there would be no terrorists.
Your tax dollars at shirk bump! Something to think about as you merrily pa your AMT.
Say No to Drugs!
Did he actually use the term “reefer?”
I’m from an area of rural Oregon where pot gets grown in te national forest... and it’s grown by illegal immigrants. The legal guys (like the sherrif of our county when I was a little kid) do it in greenhouses out back of their homes.
So, clear out the illegals, and the problem largely goes away.
Destroy the “Made in USA” stuff so the money goes into the hands of some Mexican gangster.
Bush and his Cartel of idiots.
“Reefer Madness” flashback.
“Adbul! It’s time!”
“Uh.. sure Abu, whatever. But first, lets have another pull on the hooka, and a few more brownies...”
“Abdul, you have been postponing this operation for WEEKS...”
If Walters is really worried he should start a program to supply government grown pot, with the proceeds used to fund border security, etc. ...
No kidding. This kind of verbal overkill sounds like Reefer Madness to a lot of us and is just impossible to take seriously.
“If we took all of the resources we waste fighting the War on Drugs and focused them on the fighting terrorists, there would be no terrorists.”
You just don’t know what you are talking about. Drug sales are a primary means of raising money for terrorist causes. In Afganistan, if we could stop the production of opium, the Taliban would dry up from lack of funds.
I am surprized that marijuana is still a problem though. In Okla. & MO it used to be the number one cash crop. Of late the former marijuana growers are into meth labs now.
Libertarian Ping
Rubbish. It is the War on Drugs that causes violence and funds terrorism. Not the drugs themselves. Just like Prohibition funded the brutal gangsters of the Al Capone era.
I wrote the following in 2004:
I have long been opposed to the federal government’s so-called “War on Drugs,” which is second perhaps only to the income tax in terms of the burdensome tyranny that it imposes on the American people.
One would think that our nation would have learned the lessons of Prohibition — an arrogant and ultimately failed Progressive Era attempt to improve human beings by engineering their personal behavior. Of course, to their credit, the people who gave us Prohibition were at least sufficiently aware of the extent to which their agenda was inconsistent with the rights of American citizens that they did us the courtesy of seeking and securing a constitutional amendment.
Not so with the War on Drugs, which is far more damaging to our rights, and yet somehow was foisted on the American people without a similar bow to the necessity for submitting it to constitutional authority.
There are many good reasons to oppose the War on Drugs, but certainly at the top of the list is the fact that it has spawned the outrageous federal and state Drug Forfeiture Laws. These laws “enable” the government to confiscate private property without even a cursory nod to our 4th and 5th Amendment rights to due process and protection from unreasonable search and seizure. According to a recent article from Florida Today (1/11/2004):
Federal and state drug forfeiture laws allow authorities to take homes, cars, boats and other personal possessions of those caught with even the smallest amounts of illegal drugs. Often, such decisions are left to the discretion of individual police departments and municipalities.
“Even if you have a tiny pill in your pocket, they can confiscate your vehicle,” said Steve Casanova, a former prosecutor with the Brevard County State Attorney’s Office and now a Melbourne defense lawyer whose specialties include drug trafficking cases.
The law also allows cash and property of those not directly involved in drug arrests to be confiscated, Casanova said.
“If you loan your car to someone who’s pulled over by the police and arrested for having drugs, they can take your vehicle,” he said.
Sometimes, confiscated cash and property is held in limbo for one or two years before a judge decides whether such forfeitures should go to authorities, she said.
Anyone who thinks they are safe from such abuse because they don’t use drugs might find the following 1993 story from Newsweek a bit chilling:
“Gary and Kathy Bergman had their home seized after a houseguest was found with marijuana. After a three hour search of the house, federal agents found a trace of pot and a marijuana butt in a car outside belonging to the Bergmans’ daughter. Even though neither of the Bergmans was charged with a federal crime (Gary pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor state charge) the federal government seized the entire house as the presumed tainted property of a drug ring. The Bergmans have been allowed to stay there under an occupancy agreement. However, their front and back doors post signs stating, “No trespassing by order of U.S. Marshall.” – David Kaplan, Bob Cohn, and Karen Springen, Where the Innocent Lose, Newsweek, pg. 42, January 4, 1993.”
Most Americans are not aware of the extent to which government has usurped our supposed constitutional rights through drug war legislation. We have been sleeping for a long time. But my presidential candidacy will be the wake-up call that is long overdue, and I will use all of my powers as president to end this indecent assault on our most fundamental liberties.
Of course, the damage that the War on Drugs has done to our nation is not limited just to the abuses of the drug forfeiture laws. There is also the matter of financial cost. In 2002, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy FY 2003 Budget Summary, the federal government spent $18.8 billion fighting the drug war, and still has not made a dent in drug use in the United States.
But even apart from that, there is the fact that the drug war is simply bad public policy. Like Prohibition in its time, the primary social outcome of the War on Drugs is that it has financed the growth of organized crime. But today we are not just talking about good old fashioned Godfather-type organized crime that was mostly focused on high-jacking, prostitution, gambling and corrupting labor unions. We are talking about nationally organized street gangs recruiting aggressively, with millions of dollars in their treasuries, and nationwide networks of distributors and enforcers. We are talking about arsenals of high-powered weapons owned by criminals in gang controlled neighborhoods throughout America.
One could say, at least the Prohibition-era gangsters kept their own neighborhoods relatively safe. But what has the War on Drugs done to our inner-city neighborhoods, except turn them into war zones? What has it accomplished, except to enable vicious gang-bangers to expand their networks into the heartland of America, and recruit children into the drug business with a pay level that makes working at McDonald’s seem like something only chumps and suckers would do.
Space does not allow me to adequately chronicle the terrible toll that the Drug War has taken on our nation. But there is certainly a compelling case to be made that the supposed threat posed by individual drug addicts is far less damaging than the threat of the drug war itself.
When I was struggling to make a living during my music career in the mid-80s, I suffered the theft of an entire car-load of expensive instruments and band equipment. I later learned from others in my neighborhood that the likely suspects were several heroin users who shared an apartment up the street. I could never prove that, and I never did recover my equipment.
But let’s assume that the heroin addicts were, in fact the culprits. Had heroin been legal, they would have purchased it at some store for some nominal amount, gone home, shot up, nodded off, and left me alone. Possibly, they could even have managed their drug use to the point where they could hold jobs. Instead, in order to support drug habits made exorbitantly expensive by the artificially inflated prices of illegal drugs, they resorted to crime.
How is that a benefit to society? How do such outcomes justify the cost in lost rights, wasted dollars and the lost productivity of criminalized non-violent individual drug users, many of whom – but for the fact that their habit is illegal – would be in a position to function with relative normality and make at some sort contribution to their communities? Or at least not be driven by addiction to steal and burglarize.
Lastly, there is the pure issue of American liberty. I would agree that there might be a legitimate reason to outlaw certain individual drugs if it could be proven that their effect had a very high correlation to violent behavior. PCP comes to mind as an example as a substance that might merit such consideration. And I would certainly support laws relating to safety, such as prohibiting driving under the influence of certain substances – although such laws rightly belong at the state level.
But to threaten millions of non-violent drug users with prison and huge civil fines for engaging in behavior that is not generally harmful to others is a gross violation of their core liberties. It is not the federal government’s business to prohibit individuals from engaging in non-violent recreational behavior simply because it may not be good for them.
Ending the drug war raises some very complex issues about the practical realities, options and potential regulatory requirements relating drug legalization or decriminalization, but surely the War on Drugs as it stands now is the worst and most destructive approach.
P.S. I didn't get the gig.
“John P. Walters, President Bush’s drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties...”
Do these folks really believe this s-—? Just from a logical point of view, Why would anyone growing drugs for a mass audience want to decimate their market with mass casualties?
i don’t doubt they’d shoot someone who tried to rip them off, but helping terrorists cause mass casualties is a little over the top, wouldn’t you say?
I thought this was even better....
crews doing the raids are using Black Hawk and other helicopters to drop in on some of the gardens...
I would think the Gov't might have better things to do w/ a FRIGGIN BLACK HAWK these days ....
“people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties”
total BS....
What a maroon ...
A while back Walters got taken to court over calling marijuana "poison". The court decided he can pretty well say whatever he thinks will help them accomplish their stated mission - to convince the public to support, and oppose any change to, our current drug policy. I'd consider that fair warning to take whatever they say with a grain of salt.
Not you personally .... the Drug Warriors is to whom I was referring ...
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