http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/letters/ci_10857268

Pubdate: 30 Oct 2008

Source: Ukiah Daily Journal, The (CA)

Referred: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n936/a09.html?1360

To the Editor:

It's commendable that Mendocino County Sheriff, Tom Allman isn't targeting cannabis (marijuana) patients or their caregiver's cultivation sites (Letter: Sheriff Discusses Policies, Oct. 10, 2008). It is important to note however that the sheriff is partly responsible for his list of negative aspects of cannabis cultivation. Police unions across America lobby, support and perpetuate cannabis prohibition and its discredited laws.

Damaging the environment, contaminating soils, stealing water, killing wildlife and livestock, trespassing, threatening law abiding citizens, draining natural resources and not paying taxes is all due to prohibition, not honest plant cultivation.

The original prohibition of alcohol had the same associated problems which don't exist today because alcohol is legal, and regulated. There is reason to believe legalizing and regulating the relatively safe God-given plant cannabis would have the same results.

Millions of responsible adult citizens choose to use cannabis and demand its availability; cannabis is here to stay.

Does Sheriff Allman even realize by supporting cannabis prohibition, He insures all those associated ills will remain until cannabis is re-legalized?

And "public safety?" Murder rates declined for 10 years after repealing the original prohibition.

S. W.

Dillon, Colorado

October 13, 2008

I am pleased to see from Senator Jim Webb's website that he will be hosting this Wednesday morning at George Mason University a symposium entitled "Drugs in America: Trafficking, Policy and Sentencing." The symposium details are set out on this official flier, and the event is described on Senator Webb's webpage: "Moderated by Senator Webb, three panels of experts will examine drug distribution in the U.S; law enforcement practices; and punitive vs. public health responses to drug abuse."

As regular readers know, I have frequently praised Senator Jim Webb for being one of the few national politicians giving serious (and much-needed) attention to mass incarceration and criminal justice policies connected to the "war on drugs." And, after reading this interesting recent post from the TierneyLab titled "The Drug Czar's Report Card: F," I plan to step up my criticisms of other national policy-makers for failing to give these issues the serious attention they deserve. Here is the start of Jon Tierney's post:

In 2002, the Bush administration’s National Drug Control Strategy set a goal of reducing illegal drug use by 25 percent in five years. This was followed by an unprecedented campaign of persuasion (more than 100 different anti-drug advertisements and commercials) and law enforcement as the number of annual arrests for marijuana possession climbed above 700,000 — higher than ever before, and greater than the combined total for all violent crimes.

Now that the first five years’ results are available, the campaign can officially be called a failure, according to an analysis of federal drug-use surveys by Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at the George Mason University School of Public Policy. The prevalence of marijuana use (as measured by the portion of the population that reported using it in the previous month) declined by 6 percent, far short of the 25-percent goal, and that decline was partially offset by a slight increase in the use of other illicit drugs. As a result, the overall decline in drug use was less than 4 percent....

In 1991, [Dr. Gettman] noted, the official National Drug Control Strategy’s goal was to reduce number of illicit drug users in America to 7.25 million within a decade. But a decade later, in 2002, the number was actually 19.5 million, and by last year it had risen to 19.9 million, Dr. Gettman said.

Whatever else one might say about the "war on drugs," it clearly has been a very costly battle measured in either economic or human terms. And there seems to be little evidence that the considerable costs of this war are producing significant and lasting benefits. I continue to hope that the next president might try a different kind of surge in the drug war — a surge focused on public health realities rather than criminal justice rhetoric. I also hope that Senator Webb can and will be committed to leading a new battalion of troops in this seemingly never-ending war.

The Ass Press spews out stuff like this. Like they are helping perpetuate the dirty deed.

-0-

This is a related letter in the Ukiah Daily Journal from Tom Allman Sheriff of Mendocino County where He speaks about all the ills... He doesn't understand that He causes the ills because He helps perpetuate the problem that causes the problems.

US CA: LTE: Sheriff Discusses Policies

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n936/a09.html?397

Sequoias are a cousin to the redwood. They grow hundreds of feet tall, providing a forest canopy where hardly anything but ferns and grasses grow in the shade. Though there was once a great hippy movie made concerning 'cannabis sequoia' a mythical marijuana plant so big you had to cut it with a chainsaw, and haul with a logging truck - called 'Ganjasaurus Rex' growers did not grow around the sequioas themselves because there is not enough light.

Not all of the national forest is filled with sequoia trees, but the areas where one could grow a better crop than in mexico, or a competing crop to the Humboldt growers (just over the sequoia hill) are known by every pilot that has flown over the area, and any grows in those areas would stick out like lights in the darkness. Again these prohibitionists are playing on the ignorance of amerikans who believe what their big brother tells them.

Its just not logical to assume that the mexicans would continue to plant these crops year after year, and then just as they are ripe, they disappear so the cops can come raid them? Now I know where all the bunk pot has been coming from in the cities. The cops sell it to teenagers, then bust them, making their parents pay many dollars in fines and fees, so they can pad their funding for more cops, more guns, more tech, and more laws stripping away our rights and freedoms- and keep filling the ranks of the 'criminal population' so that all those new prisons won't go to waste. The cops are bigger dealers these days than any bust they've made in years.

Oh by the way, since the statute of limitations has run out, -about 20 years ago- Tulare county never got my $50. I got arrested twice for it, did 3 days in jail 2 times for the same ticket, but they could kiss my ass then, they can still kiss it... I drove all over the country for 23 years without a drivers license because of it, but its just the principle of the thing, I don't pay thugs and thieves, no matter how high up the socio/political scale they think they are.

They won't take responsibility for the fact that this paradise never arrived and we've been heading instead in the other direction.

This is supposedly been going on for over 10 years? Where's the pictures of the " miles of drip irrigation pipe, tons of human garbage, volatile propane canisters, and bags and bottles of herbicides and pesticides."?

How about the 'carcases of animals'? Surely the cops have cameras?

And in 10 years hardly any 'mexicans' (if any- none that I heard of) in the so-called 'mexican cartel' have been caught doing it?

The prohibitionists have gotten so used to lying, and thinking that people believe them, they'll stop at nothing in their pack of lies.

Oh I bet they got plenty of pictures of helicopters hauling plants - the ones they planted themselves, or busted the americans grows ( a new tactic) without going after the growers. That way they can claim "The Mexicans did it!"

"..officials say, tighter border controls after Sept. 11, 2001, forced industrial-scale growers to move their operations into the United States." So they "stopped the smuggling" but couldn't stop the smugglers, who obviously don't have green cards or visas'? Why bother trying to stop them then if it doesn't work? Why not go back to letting the 'mexican cartel' grow in the better suited climate of mexico? And then use their 'million-dollar-dope-dogs' to find it as they come across the border?

There are so many holes in the boat of prohibition its a salvage operation to bring the sunken ship back into the air.

The "Mexican Cartel" is a US government invention.

Have every American grow their own organic 'victory garden' of cannabis!!!

No more dangerous, imported, Mexican herbicides and pesticides, no more miles of drip irrigation lines in the wilderness, no more rat poison to keep pest away, no more garbage from crop tending crews.

It will put the Mexican cartels, growing on US public lands, out of business.