cannabisnews.com: Marijuana Found Thriving in Forests





Marijuana Found Thriving in Forests
Posted by CN Staff on November 15, 2002 at 21:52:50 PT
By Nick Madigan
Source: New York Times 
Three Rivers, Calif. — Wearing camouflage and armed with machetes, a dozen police officers waited in the gathering heat of morning for a helicopter that was to drop them into a marijuana farm, in the hills two miles distant.Rattlesnakes, poison oak and bee stings would be the least of their concerns, the officers were warned before the raid: They might be welcomed with gunfire.
"You've got to take care of yourselves," Sgt. Richard Matthews, a SWAT team leader for the Tulare County Sheriff's Department, told the officers in a briefing near here, at the western boundary of Sequoia National Park.Almost every day through the marijuana harvest season, which recently ended, federal agents and the local police descended on the increasingly large pot farms in California's national forests, looking for the growers and their possible connections to Mexican drug traffickers."The Mexican cartels have taken over the industry, and when they do something, they don't do it in small amounts," said Sonya Arriaga Barna, operations commander for a California Department of Justice task force, Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP, which coordinates some of the law enforcement teams that conduct pot raids around the state. The Drug Enforcement Agency says that 935,680 plants, worth about $3.7 billion on the street, were seized in California this summer and early fall, the most ever.Almost half of the plants seized in California were uprooted from national forests. Seizures in California — where Mexican drug organizations appear to have concentrated their cultivation and the leader, by far, in the national marijuana stakes — have more than doubled in the last four years. Of the top 10 forests around the country where pot was seized last year, six were here.About 720,000 plants were eradicated nationwide from Forest Service lands in 2001, more than twice the 1997 figure. This year's numbers are still being compiled.Law enforcement officials in the Sequoia National Forest and in others across the West say marijuana groves are an increasingly frequent and often undetected feature of the vast terrain. Far from places usually visited by tourists, the plantations thrive.This year's crop continued a trend of huge growth in the size and number of pot farms run by Mexican traffickers, officials say. Facing tighter border controls and more effective policing in Mexico, they have switched from smuggling their crop to planting it on United States soil."Why take the risk of smuggling marijuana over the border when you can come here to grow it?" asked Sgt. Marsh Carter, who until recently led the SWAT team for the Tulare County Sheriff's Department, which covers much of the Sequoia forest.Laura Mark, assistant special agent in charge of the Forest Service's drug eradication effort in the West, said: "Ninety to 95 percent of the marijuana in California is now grown by Mexican nationals who work for the drug cartels. The dynamics of it have changed. This isn't about hippies anymore."Mike Delaney, who oversees marijuana eradication for the Drug Enforcement Agency in Northern California, said it appeared that "command and control" of at least some of the plantations originated with "organizations based in Mexico." "The majority of these growers are armed, and that poses a threat if someone is hiking or camping in the wilderness," Mr. Delaney said. While no campers or hikers are known to have been harmed, several law enforcement officers have been injured in shootouts. At least two suspected growers have been fatally shot in raids. No growers were in the plantation near Three Rivers, 80 miles southeast of Fresno, when the 12 law enforcement officers flew in. The growers may have been scared away by a raid on a nearby plantation a week earlier. Still, 3,846 plants were hauled out in nets by the helicopter and destined for burning.Planting on federal land leaves no property owners to prosecute; the traffickers cannot be identified unless they are caught visiting their crops.In June, nine men with ties to what prosecutors called the Magaña cartel pleaded guilty in federal court in Fresno to a variety of drug charges. The men were arrested in October 2000, with more than 30 others, after they were connected to more than 100,000 marijuana plants in the Sequoia National Forest. The authorities said the cartels were responsible for about 80 percent of the pot grown in the Sierra Nevada.Sergeant Carter, the former SWAT team leader, said detectives had identified four other organizations in the area. "Ninety-nine percent of the people we arrest or investigate are from Mexico," he said. A report by the law enforcement and investigations unit of the Forest Service said that organizations in Mexico were supplying workers to tend marijuana on Forest Service lands in California and in Arkansas, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Investigators in the Magaña case said cartel leaders brought in illegal workers from the Mexican states of Michoacán and Jalisco. Others were recruited from California street corners, where they gather in search of day jobs. The recruiters often tell them they will be working in "agriculture" or "cutting wood." The men are generally taken to remote places, given equipment, seeds, fertilizer and tents and sometimes weapons — and told to stay there, sometimes for months. They might earn $5,000 or $6,000."A lot of these guys don't want to be there," said Doug Babb, a recently retired Tulare County deputy. "We've talked to guys who say they're basically forced into slave labor."The garden tenders are often violent. "These guys shoot people," said Ms. Mark, the Forest Service official. "They do not distinguish between police, hunters or campers. As far as they're concerned, everyone is a pot thief."Officers investigating pot workers' camps have found elaborate treehouses, makeshift showers and, invariably, trash and pesticides, much of which ends up in streams and creeks. The crops are often surrounded by barbed wire, and sometimes irrigated with water from nearby streams.Wildfires this summer in the Sequoia forest destroyed several pot farms and flushed many of the tenders from hiding."When the big burn happened, a lot of guys came out of the hills," said Jan Barnes, a resident of Springville, 20 miles south of here. "They looked like they were starving, and they were filthy."People are getting accustomed to the pot farms. They are still talking about the smoke that wafted over town two summers ago, when plants were burned at the county dump south of Springville.Firefighters for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection were exempted from random drug tests for three months because of their exposure to the marijuana cloud."The town loved it," Steve Kelley, a California Highway Patrol trooper based in Springville, said, not entirely seriously. "They asked for more."Source: New York Times (NY)Author: Nick MadiganPublished: November 16, 2002Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company Contact: letters nytimes.com Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Related Articles:27,000 Pot Plants Seized as Raids Begin http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread13632.shtmlHow Green is The Crop?http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11568.shtml
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Comment #8 posted by bgoget on November 19, 2002 at 13:46:07 PT:
IRS missing the boat
Hey Mr.TAX Man: Imagine how much tax monies you could be
hauling in from all the marijuana projects growing in the
country. I myself wouldn't mind you taxing my plants, or
I should clarify, my former plants, hymm: maybe by doing
so you might let me keep some more of my over-time pay.
I doubt it, however taxing marijuana would generate billions
of revenue, but it looks like you would rather waste our
monies and destroy hundreds of thousands of families by 
arresting responsible marijuana smokers. Lets face it, they
could not stop people from drinking during prohibition, how
in Gods name are you going to stop people from growing 
Earth's greatest medicine indoors. 
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Comment #7 posted by VitaminT on November 16, 2002 at 11:14:11 PT
Patrick
to be exact they're saying that the crop has a value of $3,954.00 per plant.Somebody's been sneaking into the evidence locker again!That's a big stretch even at New York prices.
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Comment #6 posted by VitaminT on November 16, 2002 at 10:52:11 PT
unresolved contradiction
I guess the writer didn't see the need to challenge the police statement in direct contradiction with established fact. Sensationalizing this stuff lets cops come off looking like heroes when in fact they're the ones initiating the violence and according to this story, doing all the killing.The actual evidence:While no campers or hikers are known to have been harmed, several law enforcement officers have been injured in shootouts. At least two suspected growers have been fatally shot in raids.The Police lie:The garden tenders are often violent. "These guys shoot people," said Ms. Mark, the Forest Service official. "They do not distinguish between police, hunters or campers. As far as they're concerned, everyone is a pot thief."How many people have been shot Ms. Mark? Hell, how many people have reported being shot AT? This story doesn't identify any instance of civillians being shot or shot-at in spite of what you say! Oh, I know you want it all to sound so scary! We know how your bread gets buttered.
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Comment #5 posted by Patrick on November 16, 2002 at 10:05:26 PT
The math?
The Drug Enforcement Agency says that 935,680 plants, worth about $3.7 billion on the street, were seized in California this summer and early fall, the most ever.If you round this number off to 1 million plants and the dollars down to a $3 billion estimate then that puts the value of a cannabis plant at about $3,000 each? (if my math isn't too rusty) Does this mean the high school kids in my poor neighborhood can afford dime bags to kill judges or can only the children living in the elitist homes afford three thousand dollar weeds???So here is today's math lesson kids:
Government prohibition + Cannabis plants = Bullshit
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Comment #4 posted by The GCW on November 16, 2002 at 06:14:49 PT
eradication = extermination.
Our Father gives, as He has said on the very 1st page of the Bible. Gen. 1:11-12 & 29-30.The leading prohibitionists are UNTHANKFULL.At the Christians for Cannabis forum, http://www.drugpolicycentral.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?forum=16&0 someone pointed out the scripture of Malachi 1:11 and I thought I would share it with Cannabis News, for it is revealing. (use the NASB version [which uses English that Americans are used to] http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=MAL%2B1&showfn=on&showxref=on&language=english&version=NASB&x=16&y=9 )This section of the Bible is not only another Cannabis prophecy but is quite on target with many bulls-eyes.The section of Malachi 1:6-14 is subtitled: SIN OF THE PRIESTS, which it seems is the Biblical phrase that describes the prohibition of cannabis. So We then may refer to the war on cannabis as: the SIN OF THE PRIESTS.7= ..., 'The table of the LORD is to be despised.' 10 = "Oh that there were one among you who would shut the gates,...I am not pleased with you," says the LORD of hosts, "nor will I accept an offering from you. (The sin of the priests is an issue that in effect, keeps the family of The Christ, from entering into the promised relationship of the Holy Spirit of Truth / it shuts the gates)& (the Lord doesn't like the offerings, including the incense of the wicked and in fact does not accept them).11 = "For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name,... (realize that kaneh bosm is mistranslated in the Bible in 5 locations and is now known as the Biblical origins of cannabis, and is now mistranslated to among other things as, incense!)12 = "But you are profaning it, in that you say, 'The table of the Lord is defiled, and as for its fruit, its food is to be despised.' (cannabis as described on the very 1st page of the Bible is good, but the sinning priests here insist the "table of the Lord is instead defiled and claim that the fruit from cannabis is to be despised, even though it is GOOD.)13 = "You also say, 'My, how tiresome it is!' And you disdainfully sniff at it," (PRO'S claim it makes You tired and lazy and even to get a whiff of cannabis they smell it with disdainful bias). What OUr Father gave Us and said was all good, the pro's wish to take away, completely in an extermination way of thinking.Christ is what they need, not the evil they feed.Cannabis IS GOOD, it is not to be despised... 
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Comment #3 posted by billos on November 16, 2002 at 03:35:34 PT
eradication
I wonder how much money it's actually costing me for the Drug Nazis to run into the woods and chop down weeds. Future generations will wonder how such A-holes like Walters, Hutchinson,` and Bush ever got into power in the first place.
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Comment #2 posted by Naaps on November 15, 2002 at 22:51:09 PT
Propaganda
It is hard to argue with growing outdoors. The cops make it seem that every plantation is enormous, guarded by armed desperados. Yet no hikers or campers have been hurt. The cops glowingly mention the fire that drove the grower out of the woods, yet didn’t mention it was sparked by a helicopter used by CAMP flying too low, colliding with power lines. The cops cite the use of pesticide, but in comparison to grapes, cannabis needs very little.No growers are interviewed directly, but in a sense living the rustic life for 6 months, tending to the plants, living in the woods without electricity, the pattern of day and night, the fresh air and changing weather, the comings and goings of animals, birds singing, contributing to the cannabis culture, all has some appeal. Especially, if one is getting paid.  It sounds like an adventurous life, being a member of the SWAT team, rappelling down from the helicopter fearing getting shot, then harvesting the plants. This fun costs the taxpayer hugely. It is a despicable waste of money.
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Comment #1 posted by The GCW on November 15, 2002 at 22:50:59 PT
Reason to fear police and other news.
Shot in head http://www.hempbc.com/articles/2685.html Police claimed that Officer Tony Gonzalez's drawn 9-millimeter submachine gun accidentally fired when he was bumped from behind by another officer.Cannabinoids help learning http://www.hempbc.com/articles/2689.html Mice without cannabinoids retain fear response longerQuebec Cannabis and Hashish Cup cancelled http://www.hempbc.com/articles/2690.html Founder Alain Berthiaume to be sentenced to one year in jail.
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