Posted on 08/28/2005 5:59:52 PM PDT by freepatriot32
SACRAMENTO, Calif.— Agents have seized more than $2.6 billion worth of marijuana plants this year, already surpassing last year's season total by 20 percent, authorities said.
The state Department of Justice's annual Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, or CAMP, is still a month away from wrapping up operations after the season peak at the end of September.
The raids, many in remote, forested terrain, pit agents against often heavily armed guards protecting their marijuana plots.
About three weeks ago, a grower was shot dead and a state Fish and Game warden was wounded during a raid on a 22,000-plant pot farm in the hills above Los Gatos. It was the fourth death in a marijuana raid shootout with authorities in the past three years and the first time a law enforcement officer has been shot in CAMP's 22-year history.
Of course we're winning the War, comrade!
Only traitors say otherwise!
Ignorance is strength! Let the glorious examples of the DEA vanguard elements renew your faith in the Government.
Now, comrade mvpel, hit the deck and give me twenty push-ups just for asking the question!
This is just what they have found, in one state. Imagine if ALL the crop from ALL the US was taxed and legal. Not only would tax revenue rise through the roof, but law enforcement would have a tremendous increase in available manpower. Police currently used in the WOD could go after crack, heroin, coke and meth dealers and maybe, just maybe, there would be enough manpower to tackle the illegal alien problem. All this for a product that is basically the equivalent of tobacco.
Before any of you guiltless stone throwers start on me, I don't smoke the stuff but don't care if people, free people, smoke pot or tobacco.
Do you smoke tobacco or drink alcohol?
This reveals an ... opportunity ... in the intellectual framework of the War on Drugs, comrade! We should alter the language to remove the outdated bourgeois concepts of "winning" and "losing" from any discussion of the War on Drugs!
If it were taxed and legal, the "$2.6 billion worth" of plants they seized would be worth $100,000 or so, so there's not quite as much tax revenue as it first appears.
What we really need to do is get POISON IVY declared a schedule I drug, so that they can spend billions of dollars a year removing it from my back yard. At least then I'd be getting something useful for my tax money.
I gotta disagree. Your figure works out to only 3%. Local sales tax is more than twice that (here in NC) and that's before income tax on the profit and withholding tax on employees of the growers (if it was legal). The article only lists the seized pot in Ca. for Jan. to Aug. of this year only. I'll look for the estimates for national crop figures but nation wide, pot is our nations leading cash crop.
My point is that pot only costs $10-$12 per gram because it's illegal, and there's a very high risk-offset payment included in the price.
By comparison, premium imported Jordanian hookah tobacco is $2.25 for 50 grams (4.5 cents per gram) or $7.95 for 250 grams (3.2 cents per gram). Cheap "Pure & Natural" brand rolling tobacco is $13.99 per 454 grams (pound) - 3.1 cents per pound. And that includes the goverment-run price supports, tarriffs, and grower quotas for tobacco which drive up its price.
The $2.6 billion figure they quoted is about 217,000 kilograms. At a price-support inflated retail cost of 3.1 cents per gram to match tobacco, that $2.6 billion "value" drops down to $6,683,600.
At a more realistic open-market price in the absence of tobacco's government price-support programs, and considering that pot is a far, far less fussy crop than tobacco - they don't call it "weed" for nothing - I wouldn't be surprised to see that "market value" drop below half a million.
If such people were heavily into gangs, hard drugs, and cultural subversion, then I'd support a war on tobacco and alcohol.
As it happens, those users are a very good fabric of American society, so prohibition isn't necessary.
How do you think Al Capone made his millions? Selling daisies?
The gangs, hard drugs (read bathtub gin, methanol, etc), and cultural subversion that we're seeing today, and which was saw during this nation's first failed experiment with Prohibition, are a byproduct of such policies, not the purpose.
Oh, you mean like during Prohibition?
As it happens, those users are a very good fabric of American society, so prohibition isn't necessary.
You gotta be kidding! Do a ride-along with your local police some evening and get a good look at what that "very good fabric of American society (WTF does THAT mean?)" really looks like after a good night of drinking.
You're a tard.
I don't know how accurate the following is, I'm still looking for reliable sources.
For Ca.
1.Marijuana $3,870,000
2. Grapes $2,627,104
Marijuana is in the top 10 cash crops for EVERY SINGLE STATE IN THE USA except for North Dakota...and it is the #1 cash crop in Alabama , California , Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky , Maine , Rhode Island , Tennessee , Virginia , West Virginia.
When Phillip Morris opens a marijuana division, you don't really think the gangsters and drug lords will suddenly get real jobs?
They will turn to other crimes to supplement their lost drug dealing, we just won't have pot as an excuse to arrest them anymore.
So let me get this straight - an increased supply would offset the drop in price that comes from increased supply?
Huh? 
Exactly, and that's a net benefit for our police, our tax rates, and society in general.
Because now, even if they do arrest someone the system is so overloaded with the average 600,000 annual arrests for simple non-violent possession of pot that they cut cakewalk deals just to get violent and anti-social habitual criminals processed through.
The habitual criminal who shot and killed my friend Officer Dan Niemi - who first introduced me to the shooting sports about five years ago - had been arrested several times, including a drunk-driving conviction, and was on parole through a plea-bargain instead of in prison where he belonged.
The price drops but the number of units sold rises because it's no longer illegal. Just like lowering taxes generates more revenue.
Once them Libs in Cally figure out they can TAX it, they'll legalize the heck out of it.....
Sounds like another failure of a federal government social policy.
Given that labor-intensive tobacco needs price supports and grower quotas to maintain a price point of 3.1 cents per gram, how is it even remotely concievable that fast-growing marijuana, without such price supports and quotas, will maintain a $10-$12 per gram price?
That just doesn't make sense.
They already legalized it in California, but the Supreme Court decided that growing, harvesting, processing, and consuming a plant product entirely within the confines of a single state was "in or affecting interstate commerce" and thus subject to federal regulation.
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