cannabisnews.com: 800,000,000 Marijuana Joints





800,000,000 Marijuana Joints
Posted by CN Staff on July 27, 2004 at 23:26:34 PT
By Joel Miller
Source: WorldNetDaily 
Cops in both the U.S. and Mexico scored three major drug busts last week. Behind wooden panels in a semi-tractor trailer, on Wednesday authorities discovered 134 bundles of pot weighing more than a ton and a half. Nabbing the truck at a Nogales, Ariz., inspection station, Border Patrol estimated the value of the 3,100-pound load at $2.5 million.
Across the border and further west in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, local authorities found about 2,000 pounds of marijuana in a Ford van Thursday morning. Presumed en route to San Diego, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency estimated the haul's value at between $500,000 and $750,000 if it had arrived -- possibly thrice that had the load made it to East Coast buyers. The two drivers might have been very rich men if they could keep from running red lights. And back in Arizona, Border Patrol grabbed nearly a thousand pounds of weed in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge right near the border. The load -- estimated street value of $727,000 -- was found in an abandoned truck. Unlike the suspects in the first two cases, in this instance the smugglers escaped arrest. Sad to say, it's just as well. The arrests of the others were basically meaningless. So were the seizures. For all the high-fives and hullabaloo that accompany the capture of large amounts of contraband, there is very little actual value in the practice. What, after all, would we ultimately hope to see with successful interdiction? No drugs, right? Even if we interdicted it all, there'd still be plenty of pot for scofflaws to smoke stateside. Government Pulse Check survey data puts homegrown weed ahead of Mexican-grown in terms of availability (amazingly, of course, considering the supposed deterrent effect heavy enforcement creates). Still, the reality is we cannot snag it all, and vast sums of cannabis come from Mexico. In 2003, Customs confiscated more than 880,000 pounds of Mexican marijuana. Fathom that for a few seconds: 880,000 pounds is 400,000 kilos -- that's enough pot for 800,000,000 half-gram joints. And that's not what gets smoked; that's what gets seized. Interdiction estimates usually hover around 10 percent of the total supply, so tag on another zero to see how much is getting smoked -- just from Mexican-grown weed. Anyone know how to count to 8 billion? With numbers like that, doing the math is a more a mindjob than doing the drug. If those numbers sound absurd, consider that, despite the best efforts of the drug warriors, marijuana “is the most readily available and widely used illicit drug in the United States,” according to the Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment 2003. Further, says the assessment, “96.9 percent of state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide describe the availability of marijuana as high or medium -- just 1.8 percent describe it as low … Every DEA Field Division and HIDTA [High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area] throughout the country reports that marijuana is available in its area.” And editorializing about the relative threats Canadian and Mexican pot crops pose to America, the Ottawa Citizen recently highlighted a "survey of American teenagers," 89 percent of whom "say it is 'very easy' or 'fairly easy' to get pot." Drugs are far from hard to get. And will remain so both because people want to use them, and suppliers are so richly rewarded for risking legal jeopardy. We may find dope morally reprehensible, but by relying on interdiction and other drug-war tactics to stem the flow of pot and other mindbenders, we act in profound stupidity. Interdiction has clearly failed, and we're not stopping the local growers. As a policy, prohibition functions like a marshmallow speed bump in slowing the locomotive of drug entrepreneurialism and trade. Dollars have always spoken louder and more eloquently than laws. Arguing against the folly of alcohol Prohibition, Harry Anderson said in the famous 1931 Wickersham Commission Report, "These principles of economic law are fundamental. They cannot be resisted or ignored. Against their ultimate operation the mandates of laws and constitutions and the powers of government appear to be no more effective than the broom of King Canute against the tides of the sea." For those not up on their medieval history, instead take note of how well Soviet Communism flourished against market forces. "These laws cannot be destroyed by government," Anderson continued, "but often in the course of human history governments have been destroyed by them." That is, in a nutshell, the argument of my book "Bad Trip," which explains how in this way (and many others) the drug war is simply unworkable. If only we caught on, we could spend our tax dollars on something less foolish and futile -- like, say, tax breaks and catching terrorists.Joel Miller is senior editor of WND Books and author of "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America." His own company, Oakdown, recently published "Drinking With Calvin and Luther! A History of Alcohol in the Church." Source: WorldNetDaily (US Web)Author: Joel MillerPublished: July 28, 2004Copyright: 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Inc.Contact: letters worldnetdaily.comWebsite: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/Related Articles:Marijuana Prohibition: Who Does It Protect? http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19221.shtmlDARE To Kill Families http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19179.shtmlWhy Drug Cops Can't Winhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19030.shtml
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Comment #14 posted by kaptinemo on July 28, 2004 at 13:50:07 PT:
Don't have to tell me about 'hospital error'
And much of that from improper administration of legal prescription drugs used to aleviate pain. Needless to say, if they'd been given a cannabis derivative, they'd probably be alive today.Look up the word 'iatrogenic' and you'll understand why I try to avoid hospitals as much as I can.http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=iatrogenic
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Comment #13 posted by billos on July 28, 2004 at 13:38:13 PT
195,000 U.S. deaths blamed on hospital error...
news from Reuters.Much to say, I'm just speechless.
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Comment #12 posted by mamawillie on July 28, 2004 at 13:29:27 PT
Ya know
My friend just found out she is pregnant. It was unplanned, but they are happy about it nonetheless. She was drinking occassionally, smoking cigs every day several times a day, and also toking up daily.She stopped the toking the minute she found out that she was pregnant-- with never an urge to take another puff. She stopped the alcohol the next time the situation came around. What is she having the *hardest* time quitting: yes, the cigarette. She's down to 1 a day, and she's trying everything to quit. She bought a baby rattle to hold on to when she gets that nicotine urge.Just goes to show you.. the most persecuted past time is the one that is least dangerous to people.Mama
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Comment #11 posted by cloud7 on July 28, 2004 at 13:23:27 PT
...
"Unlike the suspects in the first two cases, in this instance the smugglers escaped arrest."Good news.
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Comment #10 posted by Max Flowers on July 28, 2004 at 10:41:16 PT
Let them seize shwag
If the Mexican mafia want to keep trying to smuggle their lame ragweed in, I say go ahead, and when it gets busted, fine, as it just attracts the cops' energy and resources away from our domestic product which is far better, and is our own business. When foreign countries smuggle things in they get whatever they may have coming. That's how I feel about it.
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Comment #9 posted by Hope on July 28, 2004 at 10:26:38 PT
E_Johnson
You asked Kaptinemo, "were they caught doing it elsewhere too."I know you didn't ask me...but, If I may, I'd like to comment that I think they (government and law enforcement) do it everywhere at every level. It's about the budgets, and grants, and numbers, and whose "worse" off than whom and "needs" the money the most.Ultimately, it looks to me like it's about money, and greed and 'who cares who's being crushed at the bottom of this money pyramid?' The people's woe is widespread.
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Comment #8 posted by kaptinemo on July 28, 2004 at 10:02:46 PT:
E_J, To answer your question
"DEA Figures for Drug Operation Exaggerated" from 2001 http://cannabisnews.com/news/8/thread8533.shtml*The Drug Enforcement Administration used inflated figures to tout the success of a 36-nation "major takedown" of drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Latin America last fall, a Knight Ridder investigation shows. 
The DEA's score card on Operation Libertador reported 2,876 arrests, but the investigation found that agency officials have no evidence to support hundreds of them. Hundreds more were routine busts for marijuana possession, and some drug eradication figures are double counts of a State Department program to burn marijuana plants.*They were such great successes that they had to fudge the numbers. Because the OMB has been looking over their shoulders for the longest time, with a budgetary axe waiting.
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Comment #7 posted by dididadadidit on July 28, 2004 at 08:06:21 PT
Florida: Counting Drug Busts: Counting Felons 
Sounds like the same old stuff coming out of Florida. They count black felons the same way as overstating drug busts. Any black with a remotely similar name to a real felon may be wiped off the registered voting rolls. That way, tens of thousands may be accidentally removed and thus push the state vote totals close enough to steal an election. Same same.Cheers?
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Comment #6 posted by E_Johnson on July 28, 2004 at 07:40:32 PT
That's right kaptinemo
The DEA was counting drug busts that were also recorded by other agencies as their drug busts, so each bust was being counted two or three times.That was in Florida I believe, were they caught doing it elsewhere too?
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Comment #5 posted by Richard Paul Zuckerm on July 28, 2004 at 07:17:20 PT:
WHAT ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION?
They should set priorities commensurate with their budget. I have no dispute they had probable cause to search every nook and cranny in every person and thing coming across the international borders. But they cannot search everywhere, everyone, and every maritime container. They should more concerned with combatting terrorism, not petty legalistic law enforcement. That is what Marihuana laws are, petty legalistic law enforcement. The Southern Border is perhaps our most vulnerable route for terrorists.
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on July 28, 2004 at 05:21:22 PT:
Mr. Miller is being generous
*Interdiction estimates usually hover around 10 percent of the total supply...*If I recall correctly, there was a major stink a few years ago about the DEA padding its' estimates about how much contraband was being interdicted. They were forced to cut their estimate at the time - 5% - to half that: 2.5%Billions of dollars...and only 2.5%. If that much. It was on the basis of this that the OMB gave a thumb's-down on the DEA, calling it 'ineffective'. As if the DEA could be anything BUT ineffective. "Squeeze the balloon..."In my time as a Fed civil servant, I saw rank incompetence excused and initiative punished, rampant nepotism, managers who belonged in rubber rooms for injecting their sick mental aberrations into the work environment, gross political pandering and horrendous waste. The smugglers are like streamlined and well-oiled machines by comparison. They may have their screwups, but they are dealt with in a way that would make Darwin smile. So the 'breed improves' in both efficiency and ruthlessness. And of course, they have the greater monetary incentive to do a 'good job'. And they are, for the most part, unfettered by ideology; they really are in it for the money.It's the very pinnacle of absolute capitalism at work, a pure, unalloyed, naked, raw form of the 'real McCoy'. You'd think that, as the old saying goes, "Like knows like, blood knows blood". Our governmental system is purportedly based on almost religiously preached capitalism. Those who actually run it function it's high priests, sending their missionaries out to 'the heathens' around the globe to proselytize and convert them to the Gospel of Saint Adam Smith. Yet they fail to recognize how well those 'heathens' have used their own tenets of faith against them. Or, they blindly refuse to. While the market forces they espouse so much aid their enemies and make their own efforts at interdiction pointless.In any event, so long as a single packet of contraband reaches the US, Uncle loses. It's that simple.
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Comment #3 posted by billos on July 28, 2004 at 03:35:54 PT
Bush delivers response to 911 report......
"Well,Uhhhh."
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Comment #2 posted by billos on July 28, 2004 at 03:34:58 PT
The DEA is finding that they......................
bit off more than they can chew. Same goes for the whole Bush admin.It's just a matter of time before they choke. May everyone forget what the Heimlich maneuver is when they do.
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Comment #1 posted by gloovins on July 28, 2004 at 00:39:23 PT
So, ahh, when DOES the madness stop?
It is totallly irresponsible for the DEA and the US Gov't to try to stamp out a plant they know they will only catch approx 10% of. They are bought and sold by the pharmecutical companies and the alcohol and tobacco lobby and each day I read these articles, it sickens me more.Tobacoo and alcohol are two of the most deadly substances (drugs) out there, yet we have realized they can be controlled and used in moderation. (Not to much success however given the U.S.'s over-indulgence tendencies). Yet the benign, relaxing cannabis is still demonized and federally illegal!?It's only because the DEA has to justify it's exsistance and it's sad, because they are using our tax dollars to fund this shit and let me tell you if most American's would "Wake UP!" -- it would likely stop, but alas, the majority keep their heads in the sand."We're proping up the governments of Columbia and Peru...You ask any DEA man, he'll say there's nothing we can do.."-- Glenn FreyMy, how those words/lyrics still ring true today.Say, anyone remember that song?...Smugglers blues??I do.
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