Brazen pot growing operations moving into El Dorado County
By Peter Hecht, Sacramento Bee
SACRAMENTO — Amid dense scrub oak and manzanita high above the Coloma Valley in El Dorado County, the marijuana growers were stocked to subsist in the steep, unforgiving terrain.
They had seedlings, fertilizer and drip irrigation for thousands of high-grade plants. They had solar power, cookware and months of food. And they had a tiny, protective figurine: Jesús Malverde, the patron saint of Mexican drug traffickers.
With a month to go in the growing season, California is shattering records for pot seizures stemming from raids on illicit marijuana gardens. And authorities blame intricate Mexican drug networks that seek remote growing sites, supply and arm workers, and harvest and traffic the product.
If it was legal to grow your own it take the cartels out the picture.
This isn’t new, it’s been going on for a long time.
Legalize it.
These articles never mention how much it costs, in law enforcement salaries and equipment, and in “opportunity cost” – the crimes that went uninvestigated – to assign highly-paid officers to chop down marijuana plants.
It’s a waste of law enforcement resources. Every time I read a story like this I wonder: do we have so many cops that we can squander them on such silly tasks? California cities are overrun with gangs. The officers we send to chop down marijuana plants could certainly be better employed in stopping gangs. Is chopping down marijuana plants really more important than public safety?
Leagalize it and tax it. It would save money on enforcment.
CommonSense, you don’t really make much sense. These people who are doing these illegal grows are very dangerous criminals with ties to the Mexican drug cartels. They are destroying our national parks and forests by dumping tons of pesticides and fertilizers into watersheds and contaminating our water supplies. Down in Sequoia National Park there is a very serious problem with the Mexican drug cartels and every year it gets worse. They leave areas covered in litter and destroyed. Apparently they are just moving more and more north until it may become an issue here in the Tahoe Basin. Do you want them hiding out with guns growing pot in your back yard? That is what will happen if the law enforcement officers don’t try and keep them in check. These criminals have no regard for life or the environment they are killing and need to be stopped.
Heather, no one wants criminals with guns in his backyard. However, we’ve already got that.
Parts of many California cities have been taken over by criminal gangs. Kids aren’t safe in many schools. And yet allocate hundreds of police officers and millions of dollars to chop down marijuana plants.
Prohibition is the problem. Criminal gangs prosper because drug prohibition provides them with a lucrative market, just as alcohol prohibition did in the 1930’s.
We have to prioritize the use of our resources. We don’t have enough officers or money to control all crimes, so we’ve got direct those resources to their best uses. Our goal should be to provide the best quality of life for the greatest number of people.
Look this up: the union that represents California prison guards donates more money to the legislature than any other group. They spend even more each election cycle to promote and defeat certain candidates. The union supports strict drug laws; strict drug laws result in more prison inmates who require more union members to guard them.
Politics such as this is the reason we send cops into the woods to root out weeds rather than send them into the cities to root out gangs.
I understand and agree that prohibition of marijuana is one of the main reasons this happens. I just have to wonder, what if marijuana were legal in California? Would it really stop the Mexican drug cartels from growing it in California’s parks and forests and then transporting it across state lines to places where it is not legal? It is a lot easier for them to transport it across state lines then across the border. The only real solution would be to end prohibition across the country.
HEATHER,COMMON SENSE,YOU ARE BOTH RIGHT.
I’m for total legal pot across the whole nation.
I’ve travel to many different countries,I’ve yet to find a country on the planet that does not have Grass to smoke.
Maybe if we could get the Muslims, the Jews, Palestinian Arabs, Iranians, to smoke, relax a little, “We Just Might Avoid Armageddon”.
No offensive to the Religions.
‘PEACE ON EARTH WOULD BE A WONDER THING”.
KINDA HARD TO IMAGINE?
I agree with common sense full on. If marijuana were to be legalized, so much more money would be pooled in for use on enforcement to stop illegal transactions of marijuana and trade of money for the substance. In which case, anyone doing this legally would have restrictions to the amount of plants being grown, and would have support by law to their procedures in doing so. So you would want to cnsider the fact that a gang industry growing merijuana would have to be legal somehow, in order to prosper, and even then they would be restricted to the number of liscenses acquired. You also need to acknowledge the fact that if merijuana were legal, there would not be so much tension on the use and grow of the subtance, and the ideals around the plant would grow into a much more peaceful and harmonious state of nature. Ina sense that, you see a tree, and realize that is feeding you with oxygen, every plant does, if people grew pot in the mass ammounts, the combination of osmosis and photo-synthesis would create a possible mass effect on our atmosphere. It is also true they use pesticides and other chemicals, if there were more money pooled to be spent on studies, maybe greener ways of growing, without the chems, maybe then your mind would be at ease. In any case, there would be so much more money presant to support or enforce in any aspect of our nation, and i assure you part of that would be put toward the studies of hydroponics, aeroponics, and greener solutions for all things. This would come with a vaster knowledge of our environment, and all plants surrounding us. In turn, this could only impact our nation positively. If you have ever met a pot head who only smoked the grass, you would know the person, for the most part laughs a lot, smiles a lot, or is just happy for the most part. This is not a substance that should be so much considered a hillunigen, for it holds little and no hillucingenic effects, depending on the user. Some have such low tolerances to the thc, that they are overloaded and may have dramatic visual effects in a haze, i once had a friend who calimed he’d see birds flying around that didn’t exist… This is rare however, and is the only possible reason the substance ever was made out to be so terrible. And the fact that it is illegal, and frowned upon by our people due to this. If pot were legal and had been legal this entire time, imagine you would be asking yourself why change it? why make it illegal, as you are unsure whether making it legal now is the correct solution. When really, none of us really know, it is all based upon assumption. However you chose it to be in your preferance, is how it will be in reality in relevance to you. I support my logic using long term contemplation, little studies, and common sense brought up a few aspect of the entire situation i had no considered before, the schooling for kids and the gang violance within them… Without the violance, i imagine the cerriculum of the youth in the united states would uprise dramatically in acedemic activity of the students and the attendance of them…
i’m happy to have found this post, and to let you know heather, i too live i the tahoe basin… And i don’t fear that merijuana growers are going to set up there grow systems in my back yard… Most people would not have such growery of cash crop such as marijuana.