Busted! (Mexicans growing dope in our National Forests)

Time,com ^ | Sunday, Jul. 27, 2003 | Margot Roosevelt

[FrancisHopkinson]

Busted!

Drug dealers are planting pot farms all over our national parks, and the Park Service is struggling to root them out.

Armed combat is hardly what families hope to encounter as they head for their summer vacations in America's national parks and forests. But drug smugglers, methamphetamine cooks and cannabis cultivators are invading federal lands as never before. A U.S. Park Service ranger in Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was gunned down by a Mexican pot smuggler last August. In Missouri's Mark Twain National Forest, 192 meth labs have been dismantled over the past three years. And marijuana farms are infesting Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest and Alabama's Talladega National Forest.

But the most explosive conflicts—and the biggest hauls—are taking place in California. As enforcement tightens along U.S. borders, especially since 9/11, it is getting harder to transport drugs into America. So Mexican traffickers have turned to creating vast marijuana plantations Stateside, that much closer to their main customers. Thanks to a mild climate, rich soil and a lengthy, March-to-October growing season, California cultivators routinely produce 10-ft.-high specimens worth up to $4,000 each. Some of these California pot farms stretch over several hundred acres and have as many as 50,000 plants. Last year 420,000 pot plants with a street value of $1.5 billion were eradicated from the state's 18 federal forests, a tenfold increase from 1994.

[FrancisHopkinson]

Are these the hard working, otherwise law-abiding "undocumented workers" that the liberals want us to grant amnesty to? Hmmmmmmmmm?

[Satadru]

You mean liberals like Bush.

[FrancisHopkinson]

I know. It's soooooooo depressing. : (

[MileHi]

Oh, no. They are growin pot? The horror, the horror.

Jerk, get oer it, if there was no drug war this would be a "so what."

[MileHi]

oer - can I buy a vowel, like a"v" as in "over"

[xrp]

I don't know, but the legalization and commercialization of some/most/all drugs would put these people out of business.

[gcruse]

They're planting the Ponderosa!!

[Thwip, thwip] Here, try this, Little Joe.

[A. Goodwin]

You can buy all the vowels you want, it still won't get you a 'v'...:-)

Actually, you shouldn't have said anything, I for one thought you were being poetic.

[lonewacko_dot_com]

From the TIME article:

"Beyond the safety issue, the ecological damage from large-scale farms in parks and forests could take years to repair. Tree cutting and terraced slopes are causing massive erosion. In addition, the pot farmers leave a mess. At the Tahoe grow, 20 rangers and sheriff's deputies dug up the cannabis and stuffed it into paper bags as evidence. But propane tanks, coils of irrigation hose and food cans were left behind. "We don't have the manpower to get the garbage out," says Mark as she rips open plastic bags and tosses tortillas into the bushes."

I'd say something more about this, but, as we know, opposing Mexican crime syndicates growing pot on our own public lands it racist, xenophobic, bigoted, and mean-spirited.

[B Knotts]

They are growing the pot that Americans don't want to grow.

[B Knotts]

Enforcing immigration laws wouldn't hurt, either...

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Why the hell do you think the liberals are so hard pressed to keep the snowmobilers and hikers out of the forests TO SAVE THE FORESTS? NO ! to save their meth labs and pot farms of course.

Whats really funny about this is its been reported over and over and nothing ever happens i would not be surprised to find the UNITED NATIONS is financialy backing some of these operations!

[Rebelbase]

My parents homeplace adjoins a couple of hundred acres of agricultural fields. 20 years ago the harvesting was done by locals and the perimeter of the fields around the shade trees was a park like setting, nice and clean.

15 years ago the farmers started using Mexican migrant harvesters who completly trashed the perimeter with plastic bags, wrappers and drink bottles. The farm road that used to be a nice walking trail now looks a woodstock festival the day after.

[Rebelbase]

"They are growing the pot that Americans don't want to grow."

Tell that to the boys in Kentucky.

[sheik yerbouty]

"Hold mu joint..."

[The Shootist]

Jerk, get oer it, if there was no drug war this would be a "so what."

Dude, if there was no drug war you couldn't give cannabis away and no one would be growing in a National Forest anyway. Back yards, basements and closets are so much more convenient.

Stupid drug war - stupid authoritarian politicians. I will say it again, "There is no Constitutional basis for the Federal government to have any jurisdiction over the cultivation of a flowering plant". There I said it, If any of you who would gladly impose your will, your worldview, upon others would find the passage in the US Constitution authorizing Congress or the Courts or the Executive Branch jurisdiction over the cultivation and use of cannabis I'll eat my monitor.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

[MileHi]

Ditto your comments.

FReegards

[jetson]

Mexicans are now the new anointed ones. They pretty much are doing whatever they want now. In Calif we have street corners crowded with Illegals waiting to be picked up for cash work( Loitering. Breaking employment laws). We have illegals doing all kinds of jobs without licenses and insurance( breaking consumer affairs laws). We have houses that are occupied by way too many people violating fire and health codes( city and county housing codes). We have illegals driving drunk without licenses and insurance( breaking DMV laws). The authorities don't seem to care.

[Gritty]

Only seven drug-enforcement agents are assigned to police California's 20 million acres of federal forests. Rangers estimate that they discover as few as a third of the pot farms growing on public lands—and more than half of those are left untouched for lack of personnel to investigate them.

Not enough feds to go around?

Put out big cash rewards for shutting these operations down and let the bounty-hunters and "militias" take care of them for a fee!

[FrancisHopkinson]

The "authorities" are either too busy pimping votes or pandering to business interests to give a damn about the citizenry that they swore to protect. Congressman Tancredo seems to be the only one with any sense of duty and the balls to stand up for it. We need to support that man.