Thread: California's pot plants earn Mexican drug gangs billions

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... lions.html

California's pot plants earn Mexican drug gangs billions

Mexican drug traffickers are growing millions of marijuana plants in California's vast national parks, exploiting the embattled state's sweeping cutbacks in its police forces.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 6:45PM BST 29 Jul 2009

The authorities have already seized more than a million cannabis plants this year – worth up to $4 billion (£2.4 billion) – and the growing season is not even half over.

Officials concede that for every plant they find, dozens of others escape detection.

There have been several gun battles already this year, in one case involving local people who fired on marijuana growers fleeing police through their back gardens.

"The whole state is overrun, it's an epidemic," said Michelle Gregory, a special agent with the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.

She said: "Everywhere we go, it seems we find more plants growing. And something we've seen for the first time this year is that the growers are becoming a lot bolder and more daring."

Official "clean-up" teams visiting plantations, some boasting as many as 40,000 cannabis plants, are finding the armed growers already replanting as little as a day after the site has been raided, she said. California has 20 million acres of national or state parks, much of it forest.

The bright green patches of cannabis – planted and harvested by illegal immigrant workers – are frequently so large that they are visible from a helicopter.

However, a dwindling number of law enforcers are there to spot them. California is facing a $24 billion budget deficit and has slashed the number of park rangers and sheriff's deputies. When officers are available, they often find that the helicopters are too expensive for them to use.

Drug gangs have been growing marijuana in California parks since the 1980s, a multi-billion dollar industry that has grown as increased border security made it harder to smuggle narcotics in from Mexico.

Officials say the income from what is now a multi-billion dollar business is often used for drug cartel operations such as smuggling guns and harder narcotics into the US.

Some police chiefs insist the growers have ratcheted up their activities to take advantage of California's public spending crisis, which has seen tens of thousands of workers lose their jobs.

In one area, Shasta County, police have already seized nearly 400,000 plants this year despite only having one full-time officer and five part-time staff available to look for them.

In adjacent Trinity County, there is sometimes nobody free to patrol its 3,200 square miles of forest.

"We just don't have the manpower to go out and chase them all down, and they know that," Lorrac Craig, the local sheriff, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Officials complain that the drug gangs are also causing substantial environmental damage, cutting down trees, damming creeks and spraying pesticides.

Even if police do capture the plants' caretakers, they are low-level labourers – often earning less than $100 a day – who are frequently doing it simply to pay off the criminals who smuggled them into the US.

Some state politicians have supported a call to legalise and tax marijuana in California as a way of raising public money.

Anti-narcotic officials point out that most of the growing is being done by foreigners who wouldn't pay US taxes anyway.

They lost money on this operation, and 82 people.

Agents seize $1.2 billion worth of pot in Calif.

The Associated Press
1:59 p.m. July 23, 2009

FRESNO, Calif. — Federal and state agents have arrested 82 people on suspicion of growing more than $1.2 billion worth of marijuana in California's Sierra Nevada range.

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims says several Mexican drug cartels are involved in the operations.
All but one of the people arrested was from Mexico . . .

http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-928639-.html#928639

Marijuana Production in the United States
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Using conservative price estimates domestic ...

www.drugscience.org/Archive/bcr2/MJCropReport_2006.pdf

Marijuana Called Top U.S. Cash Crop - ABC News
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I wonder if Ahnold has considered "nationalizing" this industry as a measure to eliminate his state's deficit. Perhaps he'd consider paying some of the IOUs with pot.

Officials complain that the drug gangs are also causing substantial environmental damage, cutting down trees, damming creeks and spraying pesticides.

Where is the Sierra Club on this??

Kris Eggle was killed in a national park by cartel members who were growing pot

i think that was his name

Originally Posted by jamesw62

Kris Eggle was killed in a national park by cartel members who were growing pot

i think that was his name

kriseggle.org
Dedicated to the memory of Kristopher William Eggle,
a victim of the escalating violence along our southern border with Mexico.

www.kriseggle.org/

now lets reward some of the most ruthless, heartless people on the planet by legalizing pot in California.