Mexican Gangsters Converting America’s National Parks Into Gigantic Marijuana Patches

Vast tracts of our most treasured public lands, supposedly set aside in perpetuity for Americans, are no longer controlled by the United States government. Instead, they have been invaded and taken over by Mexico’s violent criminal drug organizations to grow marijuana.

Even more shocking: Mexican cartels have been growing marijuana for at least 10 years in Sequoia National Park, one of the crown jewels of the system. Nature-loving hikers are compelled to accept that parts of Sequoia are "no go zones" during the growing season.

These Mexican marijuana messes are an ecological disaster. They are not innocent little plots that leave a minimal footprint. They are industrial grow sites, toxic stews where the gangsters use dangerous and illegal chemical herbicides, pesticides and growth hormones that result in long-lasting environmental damage....The Mexican gangsters (who are often illegal aliens) routinely cut down trees, divert streams with systems of PVC pipe and poach wildlife for food....

In addition to the pollution, there is the danger to hikers of wandering into a booby-trapped pot grove guarded by Mexican thugs with full-auto weapons. Several law enforcement officers have been injured in altercations with growers. No hiker has been killed — yet....

Unfortunately, the environmentalists who should be defending the parks don’t care that our natural heritage icons have been invaded and despoiled. The flagship green organization, the Sierra Club, has said that it has "other priorities."

The Sierra Club was once a stalwart non-partisan defender of the planet and enemy of pollution....

Interestingly, an October 9 article in the Santa Barbara Independent nailed the current nature of the Sierra Club by characterizing it as "a left-leaning organization that focuses on environment and nature conservation issues."[Sierra Club, PUEBLO Announce Endorsements, By Jenny Pedersen and Shannon Switzer] That description is perhaps more polite than calling Clubbers "socialists in hiking boots" ...

In order to build a bigger left wing (with help from puppetmaster moneybags George Soros), the Sierra Club has moved in recent years to partnership with Open-Borders extremists. Speaking out against Mexican criminals poisoning our protected lands doesn’t fit with the organization’s current politics.

...the Sierra Club has been deeply engaged in fighting against the US-Mexico border fence, despite the tons of trash left every year by illegal crossers. Obviously, the environmentally appropriate position would be pro-fence. But the leading organization of the environmental movement has gone over to the dark side.

The Sierra Club cashed in its conservationist integrity when it secretly accepted a donation of over $100 million on the condition that the organization not mention massive immigration/population growth as being environmentally harmful. The donor, Wall Street investor David Gelbaum, stated, "I did tell [Executive Director] Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me.”

As a result of environmentalists’ corruption, no powerful voice prods Congress to stop Mexican crime syndicates taking over parklands...p>

Ifthe parks are to be saved from destruction by foreigners, far more policing will be needed. That might alter the basic nature of the parks, but it may be too late in the day to worry about that. America’s borders have been open for too many years.

As things are, probably it will take the death of an innocent hiker to convince Washington to do what’s necessary and to do it soon.

"Pot is a really easy plant to grow, it’s really easy to grow well."

At these big Mexican grows they usually leave at least a couple of people camped out to tend to the grows, more for the bigger grows. I don't know why everyone thinks growing pot is so easy. They have to clear out a growing area, plant seeds or clones, take care of these plants, water them, fertilize them. Take care of pests and plant diseases. If they are going for seedless plants they have to either start with clones or inspect the plants often to see if any are turning male so they can pull them before they pollinate the females. When the plants flower they have to watch them and pull those that are ready to dry when they are just ripe enough, not too early and not too late or they won't be as potent. Then they have to dry them just right avoiding mold, and those growing premium grade stuff will actually cure it after they have it dried most of the way. They have to remove each bud from every dried plant and trim the leaves off them for sale, all by hand. This is all no small amount of work, especially when you consider that these grows are generally done in rugged terrain miles away from any roads. They don't get to use tractors and combines and all those other modern farm implements that making farming easier and more productive today. From all I've read and heard about the process it seems a lot harder to grow pot in the woods than it does to have big fields of other crops you plant and harvest mechanically. Of course they make a lot more money per acre of pot than they ever could with legal crops, so I guess that makes all the work worthwhile to them.

They have to put a lot of work into if they are serious about making money on it. You can throw a some grains of corn out and you might get a few corn plants to grow. You can spit watermelon seeds on the ground and watermelon plants will sometimes grow where you spit the seeds. You won't produce good crops though if you don't put the work in though. These guys that go out deep into the forests and clear out areas and plant thousands of plants and raise these plants and harvest them, dry them, remove the buds and trim them for sale are working their butts off. There is no way in the world what they are doing in the woods miles from civilization is easier than it would be to grow similar sized standard food or feed crops on farms with modern agricultural equipment.

And I chucked a few seeds out when I was a kid too and none of them grew. Only the ones I planted and took care of grew, until the deer and rabbits and bugs and whatnot got to them, or I cut them down because I was paranoid. I know a lot of people who planted some pot seeds, but very few who ever harvested buds. It is probably easier today now that people have the Internet where they can buy whatever kind of pot seeds they want, any equipment they might need, and find all sorts of information on how to grow pot indoors and outdoors, from seeds or from clones, in soil or nutrient rich water, etc. I'm glad they didn't have all this crap when I was a kid or I probably would have been successful at growing and I might have ended up in a lot of trouble. Go to a couple of these websites and look at how much effort these people are putting into growing a couple of plants, with all the lights and exhaust fans odor removers, giving the right nutrients for each stage of growth and timing everything just right, constantly tying branches down to keeo them shorts and bushy, looking at the trichomes with a jewelers magnifying loop to see that the right percentage has turned the right color so they'll know when the perfect time has come to pick the buds, drying them not to little or not too much and curing them in mason jars “burping” the jars each day until “green taste” is gone and the buds have just the right flavor and aroma. Those indoor growers can put and incredible amount of effort into growing their small crops.

My bet is marijuana will be legalized sometime in the not too distant future. Everything will change as more and more people who grew up before marijuana use really took off in this country retire and die off and are replaced by younger folks likely to have at least tried pot before. According to the government surveys more than half of all people in their fifties have tried it compared to less than 9% of those 65 and older. Around 40% are responding on polls now that they think marijuana should be legal and regulated like alcohol and that percentage keeps growing by close to a point or so every year on average. By about 2020 probably more than half of all Americans will be for legalization and hardly any of the old geezers most opposed to legalization will be left in the Senate or in Congress. My bet is that it is legalized some time between 2020 and 2030. Then farmers will grow it on a huge scale with modern agricultural methods like they do other crops and the only thing that will keep retail prices anywhere close to what they are today is massive taxes. People will go buy it at a store similar to a liquor store that checks ID’s and they'll be able to choose from a wide variety of high quality product at reasonable prices. Hardly any will grow their own like hardly any brew their own beer or grow their own tobacco.

Yes if you want to make big dividends you need to put work into it. That’s pretty much universal regardless of what you’re talking about.

But that doesn’t change the fact that you CAN grow large quantities of pot with basically no work. Plant ‘em, water ‘em once, go away, come back in a few months and see what you’ve got. Like I said they might CHOOSE to put all that work into it but they do not “have to”. Pot is really easy to grow, large quantities of pot is really easy to grow if you’ve got the space and the seeds, large quantities of pretty decent pot is really easy to grow if you’ve got the space and the seeds and the weather co-operates. It really is a weed, it’s a very hearty plant that wants to grow large.

Going out into the national parks (which doesn’t actually have to be a forest with woods) isn’t about easy, it’s about a large quantity of readily available land that has no traceable ownership so if the field gets spotted you don’t get arrested.

Sorry but pot will never be legalized. There’s too much money in it being illegal. And I’m not talking about the guys growing and selling. The government makes way too much money with the war on drugs. Our third generation of nationally illegal pot smokers (let’s not even discuss the generations that came before) and the drug laws are just as severe as always. The people might not like it, but the people haven’t really mattered that much in our laws for a long time.

The government as a whole does not make money on the war on drugs. Some prosecutors and law enforcement agencies make good money on asset forfeitures, but people will listen to them just so long. Every prosecutor in the state of Massachusetts came out against their voter initiative to decriminalize marijuana and the thing passed with 65% of the vote. Private prison corporations make lots of our money and their lobbyists will always lobby against any deescalation in the war on drugs,but they can be drowned out too. A narcotics officer might make his living from the war on drugs, but it's not like he would be fired if the drug war ended. He'd just go to a different department. On the whole, the war on drugs costs us a lot of money. It's not a money maker for the government. It's a money pit and we rarely have anything good to show for all the money we waste on it.

I'm not talking about legalizing all drugs. I don't think that would ever happen because not enough people would ever support that. I sure wouldn't. What the people want does matter still to politicians. They avoid coming out for things the vast majority of their constituents are against, and if they think most of voters in their districts are for something they'll often come out for it too if they think it might win them votes. Right now when politicians come out for legalization it doesn't win a lot of votes in this country, but I'm sure it turns a lot of voters off. For the most part only politicians on the fringe come out for legalization. I think that will change later on as more voters support it and we start thinking about ways to cut costs, save money and generate some tax revenues. The more data that comes in from around the world from countries with all different sorts of marijuana laws, ours make less and less sense. People are hearing about this. It is clear that the laws make little difference in the percentage of people in a country who will use marijuana. I think we are likely to see changes not only here, but elsewhere in the world as well. Some other country will probably legalize before us, and a lot will be talking about doing it. We're already seeing that. People's attitudes are changing about it right here in this country and that's going to continue.

In the coming years we will see more states decriminalize like Massachusetts just did with 65% of the vote. We'll see more get medical marijuana as we just saw happen in Michigan, with 63% of the vote. We'll see more of these useless resolutions passed like we saw happen in several cities around the U.S. this year where people in cities voted to make marijuana possession offenses the lowest priority for law enforcement. And eventually the feds will back off and several states are going to just legalize it and regulate it like alcohol.

I think legalizing pot would make a huge difference in the greater war on drugs. Americans consume more pot than all other illegal drugs combined. It's the drug that is making these Mexican cartels rich. They supply thousands of tons a year to the U.S., both grown here and in Mexico. They only supply a few hundred tons of all the other drugs combined and for the most part they are just middlemen in those transactions. Marijuana is their big money maker because they sell so much of it and because they make all the profits from production to wholesale sales and in some cases retail sales. The distribution networks for marijuana are massive. It's easily available in just about every corner of America, and this makes it so easy for organized crime to move their other far more dangerous drugs through the existing pipelines. If we take marijuana from them, not only will we be depriving them of billions of dollars every year from marijuana sales, but we'll make it harder for them to move their other more dangerous drugs. We'll save a fortune we would have spent going after marijuana. We'll rake in a fortune in tax revenues, and we can focus on going after cocaine and meth and heroin dealers who will be a lot easier to spot when we don't have so many pot dealers selling a little of this or that too.

The war on drugs is not a money maker for the government. What they bring in in asset forfeitures pales in comparison to what is actually spent. That asset forfeiture money isn't even spread around much. Only certain agencies will get any of it. The prosecuting attorneys office in my town and local law enforcement rake in lots of money and would fight to keep that money coming in. They make so much because we are on a major interstate highway on a state border and they pick off lots of vehicles on the interstate headed east with loads of dope and several headed west with loads of money. Most counties in my state barely bring in anything in asset forfeiture money though. And the prosecutors in my country spend it on crap like plush offices, memberships to the gym for everyone in the office, fancy all expense paid continuing legal education trips for all the attorneys, “company” cars for all the attorneys and several in law enforcement, cool cell phones with internet capabilities and all sorts of expensive techno gadgets. they blow that money like crazy. They'd fight against anything that might take their cash cow from them but prosecutors offices in most counties in my state barely seize enough property to make it worth their while, and mostly it's seized in connection with the hard stuff, not pot.

I've been working in the criminal justice system for a lot of years. I've handled thousands of pounds worth of pot cases and millions of dollars worth of asset forfeiture cases. What I'm seeing in the system in my area is that they care less and less about pot. Younger judges tend to be a lot less likely to be gung how about it than the older judges they replace. A lot of people in law enforcement have done it now and they're a lot less gung ho about in on the whole. Our local drug task force barely goes after pot anymore. They go after the powder drugs and narcotic pills for the most part. Prosecutors are less gung ho about it. There is one nearby small town for instance where they used to have this old geezer city prosecutor that still referred to marijuana as a “narcotic” and he was always pushing for jail time even in simple possession cases. He retired and the new lady has been much easier to work with. Not only does she never push for jail for possession, but I can almost always work out a deal where my client won't even have a conviction showing up on his record unless she really wants to nail him for some reasons or another. I knew her in law school and I can remember going to a party at her house back then where people were smoking weed in a bedroom. Privately, she thinks it ought to be legal. She wouldn't come out in public and say that because she's an elected official in the Bible Belt and she'd like to keep her job, but I doubt she'd fight legalization much if at all. There are people like her everywhere working as cops, prosecutors, judges, etc.

I don't believe that marijuana will be legalized in 12 years. I said I think that is possible, but I think it will probably happen between 2020 and 2030, maybe a little later. What I'm looking at are national polls on attitudes about legalization which now put the percentage for legalizing marijuana and regulating it like alcohol at around forty percent and the trend has been for the percentage for it to increase by close to one percentage point a year. You said you remember talking about this twenty years ago. In the last twenty years the percentage for legalization has more than doubled.

I'll link you to one interesting poll that goes back to 1976. They've been asking whether marijuana should be legal and recording the responses and keeping data on the demographics of the respondents. What you'll see is that in 1988 only 17% were for legalization but by 2002 when this survey was last done 34% were for it. Where you'll see a huge amount of the change taking place is in older people. Those born before marijuana use took off are most afraid of it and most opposed to changing the laws. What is happening though is that they are dying off and being replaced by younger people who have smoked pot. That's where the biggest part of the change is occurring, but not all of it. I think the will to go after pot smokers is waning because more and more people in positions of power are people likely to have smoked it themselves or at least know people they like and/or respect who have done it. And confidence in the “war” on marijuana which clearly doesn't do much good is waning as well as we see the supply remain high and prices remain low and use stay high and merely fluctuate a little regardless of our efforts. I think more people are realizing that our laws are keeping precious few who want to smoke pot from smoking it. I truly don't think use would go up that much if it were legal. We'd just save a lot of money we are blowing now and rake in billions in tax revenues. Most people would still leave pot alone because there are so many good reasons to leave it alone that have nothing to do with its legal status.

Here's are a couple of links to ongoing marijuana legalization surveys:

http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t268.pdf

http://www.gallup.com/poll/19561/Who-Supports-Marijuana-Legalization.aspx

I'm not certain marijuana will be legalized by 2030. I just think it is very likely to happen by then. Again I'm looking at the survey results, and I'm also looking at how Americans who grew up after pot became popular are aging and replacing people who grew up before marijuana really hit the scene who are much more afraid of it and much more opposed to it being legal.

The average age in Congress is 57. The average age in the Senate is 62. The average age of a senate committee leader is 67. I don't know what the average age of a committee leader is in Congress but it's going to be up there in the 60’s as well. Age matters in our legislative bodies. Older legislators have seniority. They get the more powerful committee positions. They've been there long enough to develop relationships that help them get things done. Right now the majority of the real power brokers in our federal legislative bodies are people who grew up before marijuana became popular. People in their forties and early fifties were more likely to have smoked than people in a lot of the younger age categories. Around half of those in their late fifties have smoked it, with those closer to 60 being less likely to have done it than those closer to 55. Compare this to those 65 and older. Only 8.4% of them admit on these government surveys to even having tried marijuana in the past.

When we see these people now in their forties and early to mid fifties taking the most powerful positions in our legislative bodies, I think the whole debate will change. At the same time this is going on a similar change will be taking place among senior citizen voters. Just looking at the statistics well before 2030 in all likelihood we're actually going to get to the point where we have millions of retired Americans who still actually smoke a little from time to time, and many more millions of retired folks who have at least smoked it before in their lives. That's going to change the debate because these people will be the contemporaries of our most powerful legislators and they're going to be a lot more open to legalization than any seniors in the past. And of course older Americans actually exercise their right to vote, unlike younger Americans. Especially in mid term elections they'll outvote young voters by huge margins. Politicians listen to them and that's probably one of the big reasons why the war on drugs escalated so much in the past couple of decades even though the people as a whole have been losing faith in it.

We'll see what happens. My bet is that we legalize pot in most states at least by 2030.

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