Drug czar gives warning (Pot growers "dangerous terrorists")

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

They were producing meth in Mexico and “superlabs” out West long before pseudoephedrine was put behind pharmacy counters. Little kitchen meth labs were never the main suppliers of meth. Even back before the new laws the feds were estimating that something like 85% of the meth was coming from the really big labs that would produce ten pounds or more per batch. Most of these little tweaker labs were only producing a few grams at a time, and most of that was being used by the tweakers who were cooking it and all their helpers.

I know a little about the meth and marijuana businesses. I’ve handled thousands of pounds worth of drug cases as a criminal defense attorney. I’ve got more than a couple of thousand pounds worth of pot cases pending right now. I handled way more meth lab cases than I ever wanted to handle as a public defender before the new laws passed. I still get plenty of drug mule cases, mostly marijuana, but quite a few meth and cocaine mule cases too, and I get the occasional pot grower case. I talk to narcotics officers all the time. I’ve heard plenty of testimony from state, federal and local officers, and of course all the things I’ll hear from clients and other witnesses. This gives me a little better grasp of what’s going on in the illegal drug world than the average person on the street.

Some of these things you say are just silly. Recycling meth from urine? How much of that do you think really goes on? Maybe someone has done it. Maybe a few people have done it, out of million or more people who have done meth in the last few years. It’s not something they all do. It’s not common at all and it’s not something people are doing to make meth for sale to the masses.

You say there was a big shift where pot growers all started cooking meth instead. I say that’s bs. There is no evidence of that. Meth use went up for a while in this country. It’s slowly but surely going down now according to government figures. The number of meth labs shot up over time as meth use became more popular, mostly little tweaker labs. Maybe some of the people cooking dope had grown some pot before, but mostly these were just meth heads cooking up a few grams of dope, and all their little helpers who wanted to share in the batches. They’d meet each other in jails and prisons, swap recipes, talk about where to get the chemicals they need and places where they could go and cook. A lot of them would cook batches up pretty much constantly, usually ten grams or less at a time. Some were cooking bigger batches and selling most of it, but mostly this was all small scale. Most of this dope was being used by the cooks and all of those who would help them, as they would build up tolerances and use more and more dope to get off, often ridiculous amounts that might kill you or me, and of course the more they cooked, the more mooches they’d have who would help them come up with pills and other chemical they’d need, help with some of the labor involved in the cook, provide a kitchen to cook in, etc. Some of them may have turned a pretty good profit at first when they were cooking but invariably it would get to the point for most who would do this that they and their cadre were using almost all of what they cooked. Almost all who would get caught ended up with the public defender and all too often those who did get private attorneys were only able to do that because they had family able to scrape up enough money to help them out. Hardly any of these guys have any money of their own. They tend to be penniless hardcore drug addicts. None of the people who were buying or shoplifting all their pills from retail stores a few packs at a time were operating big superlabs that supply most of the meth on the market. Those labs don’t get their pseudoephedrine from Walgreens and WalMart. They buy it in bulk from illicit sources.

Were some of the meth cooks people who had grown marijuana before? Sure, but most weren’t and there is no evidence that there was any mass shift among pot growers to meth cooking. In either Oklahoma or Missouri, most of your meth was coming from superlabs in Mexico and Western states like California long before the new laws came out. Before the new laws there was a period of years when the number of meth labs increased in states like Oklahoma and Missouri, but there is no evidence at all of a major downturn in domestic marijuana production that coincides with the big increase in meth labs. If the number of pot growers decreased in those states, it happened when the government started flying around in small planes and helicopters looking for patches of marijuana plants, and that happened a long time before meth labs became so prevalent as they were just a few years ago. Most of the pot on the market in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, and surrounding areas comes from south of the U.S. border anyway and it’s been that way for a long time. What we are seeing in these states, though not as much as in some others up North or on the coasts, is a big increase in the number of indoor grows found. Pricey indoor grown pot hasn’t caught on so much down here I think because Mexican pot is dirt cheap in the Southwest and Mid south, and getting cheaper as our Mexican populations grow. There is still plenty of marijuana being grown this part of the country though, and if we see any shift it will be more of a shift to indoor marijuana growing because the product commands a much higher price and because it’s easier for people to get away with growing it indoors than outside where it can be spotted from the air or by hunters or others who happen to come across it.

From your article:

"In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor’s care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. That is twice as many per capita as there are today."

"By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict."

OK. But how many used cocaine or opium? Or is every user considered an addict? Do you consider every cocaine or opium user an addict?

"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts"

No survey? An estimate? Just how did they estimate? Let's see -- oh, here it is. Ah, they interviewed drug arrestees then extrapolated.

"As with cocaine, estimates for the size of the hardcore heroin using population are derived from mathematical models rather than probability-based population survey estimates."

"As expected, given this alternative criterion for truthful reporting, truthfulness by heroin users is greater than truthfulness for cocaine users."

WTF?

"Thus, let TRUTH = 0.73 for heroin and 0.61 for cocaine. Then an adjusted estimate for the number of heavy users equals:"

So they interview arrestees, compensate for their truthfulness with some random number, extrapolate for the entire population, then simply assume three-fourths are addicts.

Well, color me convinced.

The NSDUH survey shows 130,000 heroin users (at least once per month) in 2000 and 1.2 million cocaine users. If we assume 50% are addicts, that works out to .2% of the population, half the addicts of 1900.

DON’T STEP ON THE GRASS, SAM

From the 1968 release “The Second”

Words and music by John Kay

Starin’ at the boob tube, turnin’ on the big knob
Tryin’ to find some life in the waste land
Fin’ly found a program, gonna deal with Mary Jane
Ready for a trip into hate land
Obnoxious Joe comes on the screen
Along with his guest self-righteous Sam
And one more guy who doesn’t count
His hair and clothes are too far out

While pushin’ back his glasses Sam is sayin’ casually
“I was elected by the masses”
And with that in mind he starts to unwind
A vicious attack on the finest of grasses

Well it’s evil, wicked, mean and nasty
(Don’t step on the grass, Sam)
And it will ruin our fair country
(Don’t be such an ass, Sam)
Well, it will hook your Sue and Johnny
(You’re so full of bull, Sam)
All will pay that disagree with me
(Please give up you already lost the fight, alright)

Misinformation Sam and Joe
Are feeding to the nation
But the one who didn’t count counted them out
By exposing all their false quotations
Faced by a very awkward situation
This is all he’d say to save the day

You waste my coin Sam, all you can
To jail my fellow man
For smoking all the noble weed
You need much more than him
You’ve been telling lies so long
Some believe they’re true
So they close their eyes to things
You have no right to do
Just as soon as you are gone
Hope will start to climb
Please don’t stay around too long
You’re wasting precious time

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