cannabisnews.com: Illegal Crops on Forest Land Likely Go Up In Smoke





Illegal Crops on Forest Land Likely Go Up In Smoke
Posted by CN Staff on October 30, 2003 at 22:24:09 PT
By Jacob Quinn Sanders, Staff Writer
Source: San Bernardino Sun 
San Bernardino -- The scythes of flame ripping through the San Bernardino National Forest tear more than looming trees and lives long sheltered in the houses of the mountain communities. Among the ashes are likely the hulks of a significant share of what has been one of California's largest cash crops: marijuana.Some of the nation's highest-grade pot comes from the 660,000 acres that comprise this national forest, site of the fourth-largest pot-plant seizure among 55 U.S. Forest Service parks last year.
Raids here since 1998 have netted more than 100,000 mature marijuana plants, assigned a value of at least $200 million."We haven't gotten any serious reports that any farms have burned up there,' said San Bernardino County sheriff's Deputy Heidi Hague, one of five members of the agency's Marijuana Eradication Team. "But I like to think we got them all already.' No one can say for sure how much pot grows in these mountains, where rescuers searching for a lost Boy Scout in 1991 stumbled across a stand of thousands of marijuana plants. Recent years have seen datelines from Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake on stories of huge multi-agency raids the same places now bracing against a seemingly uncontrollable fire.Nearly 2,400 firefighters struggled on Wednesday to contain the Old Fire that seared San Bernardino's Del Rosa neighborhood and sprinted uphill into the forest to threaten 50,000 homes.With evacuees numbering 60,000, most of what is left is homes, roads and vegetation and the latter can be quite valuable.Reports from the National Drug Intelligence Center show pot grown in the San Bernardino National Forest as worth $1,000 to $4,000 a pound, compared with $250 to $400 a pound for its Mexican counterpart.So far in 2003, the county Sheriff's Department has raided five farms for a combined 30,000 plants."That's a down year for us,' Hague said. "Last year it was more like 60,000.'Across California, state and federal investigators say, outdoor marijuana cultivation is down this year because of drought."There were a couple of grows this year we found abandoned because the creek they were using went dry,' Hague said.Ann Melle, the assistant director of the U.S. Forest Service law enforcement and investigation division, said California is historically and routinely among the nation's largest producers of marijuana on public land.The 420,900 plants seized in 2002 on Forest Service land in California 70 percent of the take nationally almost matches the 452,330 plants the Forest Service confiscated in the United States in 1999."The last few years, it has exploded, and primarily in California,' Melle said in a telephone interview from her Arlington, Va., office. "We used to deal with small gardens, maybe 1,000 plants. Now a common garden out there is 10,000 plants or more.'Marijuana growers in national parks tend not to be small-time smokers farming pot for personal or medicinal use. In the last decade, Mexican drug cartels supplanted the hippie stereotype with veritable plantations of marijuana, using public land as an escape from asset forfeiture laws. Drug lords pay day laborers to watch the crops, often arming them with assault rifles.The county Marijuana Eradication Team joins often with a parallel agency in Riverside County, home to part of the Cleveland National Forest, from which the Forest Service seized the most marijuana plants in 2002. Both also align with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, Forest Service, National Guard and U.S. Customs Service sometimes as much for protection as added investigative thunder.The result is large finds and few arrests."The risk to us in an enforcement capacity has increased tremendously,' Melle said.This year in California, 75 percent of seized pot farms were on public land, an increase of 20 percentage points over last year, according to the state Campaign Against Marijuana Planting."Season-ending statistics show that public land has once again proven to be the commercial growers' area of choice,' state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.Little of that matters as the San Bernardino National Forest burns, especially because of uncertainty about how much pot actually grows in these mountains."I can't confiscate what I can't see,' said Hague of the San Bernardino County agency. "So I don't know what they're finding up there. Who knows, after this fire's over, I could have been very wrong. We'll find out, won't we?' Complete Title: Illegal Crops Often Seized on Forest Land Likely Go Up in Smoke Source: San Bernardino County Sun (CA)Author: Jacob Quinn Sanders, Staff WriterPublished: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 Copyright: 2003 San Bernardino County Sun Website: http://www.sbsun.com/Contact: http://www.sbsun.com/Stories/0,1413,208%257E24927%257E,00.htmlRelated Articles:Marijuana is County's No. 2 'Crop'http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17699.shtmlPot Police See Shift To Large Plantationshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17697.shtmlPot: Anti-Cultivation Program Kicks Off http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17007.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by Rev Jonathan Adler on November 01, 2003 at 15:14:01 PT:
Look for the Blessing....
Aloha, Sad state for California and it's economy. I suggested that California join Hawaii as a legal source for medical and religious cannabis. Weeds grow quickly, so look for the blessing. Maybe now they can take us seriously and establish a legal reciprocity betweeen our states for supply of this mutually legal medicine. Peace. Hope the fires stop, but the spirit of freedom still is burning. Rev. Jonathan Adler/ Tell Governor Schwarzennegger to give us a call. We can help. A new source of income and freeedom to boot!
Hawaii Medical Marijuana Institute 
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Comment #1 posted by Virgil on October 31, 2003 at 07:08:07 PT
The fires are a good thing
The upside down people must think the fire a blessing if it wipes out the dreaded evil weed. There is no price to high to rid the world of just one plant. It is an addictive and dangerous drug and a non-medical drug at that. Get some lions and open the jails.
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