Thread: Marijuana in your national park

Marijuana in your national park
John Driscoll/The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 09/28/2008 01:34:04 AM PDT



It looked something like slash-and-burn agriculture -- in a national park.

Trees hacked, pot-holed ground, bare slopes, and hundreds of yards of black pipe, fertilizer, and a camp with propane stoves, cooking oil and food. In Copper Creek in the Bald Hills between Orick and Hoopa, last week, a Redwood National Park crew went to survey the damage from a major marijuana grow busted earlier this month.

Local, state and federal agents broke up the operation and seized nearly 9,600 plants. Five illegal aliens were detained nearby during the operation, and while suspected of involvement were not arrested.

The work that went into the grow was enormous. About 5 acres was cleared of dense brush -- most of it done by hand -- and large areas were terraced and planted. A trail network connected the five distinct sites and the “hooch,â€

That's what we get for letting our government leave our borders wide open. With the NAU we get all the crap from other countries. All in the name of globlaization. What a deal. And they tried to say we couldn't carry a firearm in our national parks. It's ashame that we feel the need to protect ourselves in our own national parks. I can see the headlines now "Family shot as they stumbled across an illegal marijuana field."

Five illegal aliens were detained nearby during the operation, and while suspected of involvement were not arrested.

This bothers me - really bothers me.

This has been going on for some time. In the 2005 National Drug Threat Assessment it mentions illegals from Mexico brought to rural or remote areas of southern and central California to produce meth and then they return back to Mexico. It also mentioned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service reported that at least 5 separate drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) were linked to cultivation operations on California public lands. I will see if I can provide links or look up for the latest updates. I think I need to post more of this law enforcement stuff involving illegals as the media won't look for it and bring it to people's attention.

This is the update in the 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment that can be found online.

The involvement of Mexican DTOs in outdoor cannabis cultivation within the United States is expanding to eastern states--an apparent attempt to avoid heightened law enforcement pressure in western states. A number of Mexican DTOs that cultivate cannabis in the United States have relocated some of their operations to states outside of their principal operating areas in California, Washington, and Oregon, seemingly to avoid improved and intensified aerial detection and eradication in those states. This practice--first observed in 1999, but becoming much more prominent since 2005--initially involved relocation from northern California to remote areas of other western states. However, in 2005 Mexican DTOs greatly expanded their cultivation sites in Arizona. In 2005 and 2006, Mexican DTOs further expanded their operations, establishing outdoor cultivation sites east of the Mississippi River in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, often in remote areas where cannabis had not been previously cultivated. Mexican cannabis growers operating large-scale grows east of the Mississippi River are increasingly being linked by law enforcement officials to Mexican DTOs15 operating in California and Mexico, suggesting a coordinated effort with respect to cannabis cultivation by Mexican DTOs that now spans the United States. Many of these groups maintain direct contact or affiliation with larger DTOs in the United States and Mexico and maintain a level of coordination among operating areas, moving labor and materials to the various sites as needed.