DEA Lays An Egg In Washington State: 5-Day Copter Patrols Net 20 Pot Plants

NORML has one of the largest cannabis-related archives in the world and it is replete with headlines that are hysterical, funny, shocking, propagandistic, dumb, witty, ironic and in the case of the front page splash of the September 14 Peninsula Daily News (Port Angeles and Sequim area of Washington State), revealing.

Click here for scanned story: copters.pdf

5-Day Copter Patrols Net 20 Pot Plants?!

Wow and with gas being priced such as it is, along with additional personnel and equipment costs, at what cost to the taxpayers is this folly? And, but of course, like most outdoor eradication efforts, no one was arrested for the cultivated cannabis found by the government’s eyes in the sky. Like me, don’t you want to know the per/plant cost to taxpayers for this kind of ineffective eradication efforts? According to the article the DEA funded the helicopter searches and it is unlikely to replicate this scale operation on the OP in the near future because of the paltry amount of plants eradicated.

By the way, the effort to eradicate cannabis plants growing in the OP was hampered by mountain and sea fog (Can you imagine that on the OP in the early fall?), which is important to note because most years five to six law enforcement personnel unfortunately perish nationwide in ill-fated and totally unnecessary domestic cannabis over flights with fog being cited as a major source of the crashes.

Let’s all work together to turn these anti-cannabis cowboys in the skies into revenue officers whose only job is to account for cannabis plants (and industrial hemp plants) as a source of regulated commerce and tens of billions annually in tax revenues.

In fact, the public and politicians should consider replacing an ineffective DEA with FACT:  Firearm, Alcohol, Cannabis and Tobacco, an updated division of ATF at the US Treasury.

So Where Did All The Ditchweed Go?

Who among us doesn’t like to brag after a job well done? It’s human nature, right?

I mean, even the DEA enjoys boasting about their so-called ‘accomplishments.’ They even have their own (taxpayer funded) museum.

Given this fact, it’s both curious and notable that the DEA has suddenly ceased publicizing data regarding how many millions of feral hemp plants (aka ‘ditchweed’) law enforcement eradicate each year.

In previous years, upwards of 98 percent of all the pot seized by law enforcement was categorized as ‘ditchweed’ — a term the DEA uses to define “wild, scattered marijuana plants [with] no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending.”

For instance, in 2005 the DEA reported that cops destroyed some 219 million feral hemp plants versus only four million cultivated marijuana plants. DEA data for the year 2004 tells a similar story. Of the estimated 265 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement that year, more than 262 million (roughly 99 percent) were classified as ‘ditchweed.’ In 2006, roughly 84 million plants seized by law enforcement (and more than 94 percent of all the marijuana eradicated) were ‘ditchweed.’

So, how much ditchweed did police confiscate in 2007? That would be anyone’s guess.

Upon referencing Table 4.38 (Number of marijuana plants eradicated and seized, arrests made, weapons seized, and value of assets seized under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, by State, 2007) in the latest version of the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, visitors will discover that the column that previously reported on ‘ditchweed’ seizures (in prior years’ tables, it was seventh column from the left) is now conspicuously missing.

So why would the DEA abruptly want to cease taking credit for destroying hundreds of millions of pounds of marijuana each year? Perhaps it’s because unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC — the primary psychoactive component in cannabis — and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.

Or perhaps it’s because the public was finally beginning to smarten up to the fact that they’ve been paying their police millions of dollars each year to do nothing more than pull a few weeds.

Drug Warriors May Run, But They Can’t Hide

UPDATE!!! UPDATE!!!

Speaking of debate, my recent appearance on Dr. Drew Pinsky’s nationally syndicated radio show is now archived here. (Click on ‘show audio’ for July 31, 2008.)

Dr. Drew and I spent 30 minutes discussing HR 5843 and whether the federal government has any business legislating what substances adults put into their bodies. By the end of the segment it appears that even the good doctor concedes that the answer is “no.”

Anyone who follows this issue closely knows that paid prohibitionists like John Walters and Scott Burns refuse to engage in debate with marijuana law reformers.  

In fact, several years ago the US Drug Enforcement Administration actually published and disseminated a publication, “How to Hold Your Own in a Drug Legalization Debate,” that recommended its employees decline invitations to publicly debate drug policy issues.

Given this environment, it’s refreshing to see the creation of a website like OpposingViews.com.

The new site, recently profiled by the Washington Post, faces off experts head-to-head on various hot-button political issues, including drug policy.

Ever wonder why drug warriors steadfastly refuse to debate reformers on drug policy issues? Just click here, here, and here, and you’ll have your answer.

Is The US Government Arbitrary and Capricious When It Comes To Pot As Compared To TV Standards? You Have To Ask?

In the seminal legal case challenging the US government’s mis-scheduling of cannabis under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act (CSA), NORML vs. DEA, at a crucial junction in 1988, which would have readily ended most administrative law challenges, NORML, et al (Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, Drug Policy Foundation, etc…) won the re-scheduling argument before Drug Enforcement Administration Law Judge Francis Young.

This past week the Federal Communications Commission ruled in the infamous Janet Jackson ‘wardrobe malfunction’ that the $550,000 fine levied by the FCC against CBS was excessive and “arbitrary and capricious”.

Hmmm…“arbitrary and capricious”…where have I heard that phrase before regarding the actions of over-reaching government agencies?

On September 8, 1988, after 16 years of legal challenges from NORML and company, Judge Young ruled:

“…the marijuana plant considered as a whole has currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II.”

“The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record.”

The DEA ignored their own administrative law judge’s ruling, appealed the decision to the US Appeals Court in Washington, DC, and ultimately won their only phase of the case—the final phase of the case—in 1994 in a 2-1 decision, which in effect permits the DEA to in fact be ‘arbitrary and capricious’, and I’d throw in malevolent for good measure, in respects to cannabis.

Thanks to Ellen Komp at veryimportantpotheads.com for alerting folks to this interesting juxtaposition of the recent FCC decision and the DEA’s long tortured position on medicinal cannabis.

Lastly, Ellen points out that the ‘Lectric Law Library’ provides the definition of ‘arbitrary and capricious’ to mean: Absence of a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.

Drug Czar Has No Clue

Granted, those of us who work in drug policy reform knew this already.

Nonetheless, it’s doubly satisfying when a former longtime White House employee states the obvious.

The Failure of the Office of National Drug Control Policy
via Huffington Post

As an insider in the nation’s war against drugs, I spent almost fifteen years in the executive office of the President. Eleven of these years were in the Office of National Drug Control Policy where I served four of the nation’s so-called drug czars preparing the federal drug control budget, writing many of the national drug control strategies, and conducting performance measurement and analysis of the efficacy of those strategies. I left government in 2000, but continue to be highly involved in shaping drug policies and measuring performance in drug policy both nationally and internationally.

In the latest 2008 National Drug Control Strategy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) — the federal executive office agency charged with shaping this nation’s national drug control strategy — claims that America has reached a turning point in the war on drugs. In reality, we have little reason to believe a significant change has occurred.

… Though Congress created ONDCP to formulate research-driven and performance-based policy, assess and modify policy through performance measures, and give a precise accounting of the federal drug control budget, ONDCP fails at all of those tasks. In the 90′s ONDCP created a performance measurement system for evaluating the effects of its policies on drug use, drug availability, and the negative consequences of drug use; however, this decade, no such performance measurement system has been utilized. As a consequence, policy is now flying blind resulting in lost opportunities for more success.

Naturally, the author ultimately fails to suggest any significant changes in US drug policy — such as legalizing cannabis for adults, or disbanding the DEA or the Drug Czar’s office — but, hey, it’s a start.