Posted on 08/31/2006 7:17:17 AM PDT by Marius3188
Washington has promised action against Mexican drug-traffickers who the US says are growing billions of dollars of marijuana in US national parks.
Mexican cartels controlled 80% of the marijuana grown in forest and mountain areas, drugs tsar John Walters said.
He blamed the cartels for much of the expansion of the crop, in particular in public lands such as national parks.
Every American should be outraged that national parks were being turned into centres of drug production, he said.
But growing marijuana in the US is not entirely a new phenomenon, despite it being illegal for more than 70 years.
Cash crop
According to the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (Norml), back in 1998 US-grown marijuana was thought to be among the top five cash crops in the country, with an estimated value of over $10bn (£5.3bn).
Five years later, it was estimated that the value of US marijuana crops could be as high as $25bn.
That figure, if correct, would make it more valuable that the country's largest legal cash crop, which is maize and produces about $19bn in revenue.
Traditionally, most of the trade has taken place in California because of its warm climate, but now American experts say it is expanding rapidly to other states in the north and east and even to Hawaii.
Perhaps more worrying, much of this expansion has been on public lands.
Just using the land we're not allowed to use.
The problem is, nobody knows and at times, it seems like they don't want to know.
The DEA should just seize those parts of the parks. It's not like humans can go in those areas.
Mexican drug cartels in our national parks. Imagine that.
National Parks are now UN World Heritage Parks.... Let Kofi handle this.
Let's burn all the national parks to the ground!!!!
Those are AMERICAN drugs grown by Mexican farm workers.
Is this one of the jobs Bush says americans won't do?
"Roadless Parks" ring a bell? Babbitt and other Hezbocrats set this up to make pot farming and smuggling safer in the Parks.
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