Posted on 11/14/2008 12:06:01 PM PST by 3AngelaD
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.
That's one area where you are wrong. Legalizing marijuana would not bring the whole war on drugs down. The percentage of people who want to legalize all drugs is less than 10%. There will never be enough support to legalize all drugs. There won't be enough support because drugs like meth, heroin, and cocaine really are a lot worse than marijuana. They really do cause us a lot of problems. The drug war at least keeps these drugs expensive enough that price acts as a barrier to entry for a lot of people. People are a lot less likely to share their expensive cocaine with others than their cheap pot. Some people can't afford to buy these drugs to try them, and being so expensive it is less likely that those who do try them will do them enough to become addicted. The drug war actually keeps availability down somewhat for these drugs. It is a lot harder to find cocaine than marijuana, and you probably wouldn't be able to find heroin in my area at least. Most cops I know in my area have never made a heroin arrest. Most lawyers I know in my area who handle drug cases have never had a heroin case. I've handled all sorts of drug cases but the only heroin case I ever had was one where a couple of drug mules were caught passing through on the highway with a couple of pounds of it they were transporting to a big city in the Northeast. I couldn't count the number of meth and cocaine simple possession cases I've had, but I've never had a heroin simple possession case. Keeping these drugs illegal actually does provide us some benefit. There will never be but a small amount of support for making them all legal. It just won't happen. There would be no domino effect.
The war on drugs would still go on if we legalized marijuana. We just wouldn't have to waste our time going after marijuana. I was talking to a state trooper a while back about our drug laws. He works interdiction on the highway. He's not for legalizing marijuana, but he wishes he could just write tickets for it rather than having to take people in and book them. He says that takes a good hour and a half he could be spending pulling over vehicles and searching for big loads of drugs or cash.
When officers arrest people for pot, it does take up a lot of their time. They have to get these people booked into the jail, prepare a police report, show up on the trial date and wait around forever for the case to come up. It's a waste of time for them and it's a waste of time for the judge and the prosecutors and public defenders and so on who are involved. Even the delivery and manufacturing cases are a waste of time because a lot of these people are just doing it because the temptation for easy money exists. They aren't all hardcore criminals, not by a long shot, but we have to spend an awful lot of time and money on their cases and then pack them in our prisons at great expense to us all.
If we take marijuana out of the equation, we'll still have guys on the highway and at border crossings and in airports with dogs, they just won't be sniffing for pot, which will eliminate most of the positive hits and allow our officers to focus on what's important. The no knock warrants and asset forfeitures and probable cause searches and all these other things you are talking about will still go on, just not nearly as much. The government really wouldn't lose much power and the net effect would probably be more power for them as a regulated marijuana industry would be much easier to control than the massive and entirely unregulated marijuana industry we have now.
We're not going to agree on this, so we might as well stop arguing about it.
The will of the people doesn’t matter any more. Forget ALL those silly polls. Remember almost nobody was for the big bail out last month, everybody hated that, and that passed. Forget what the people want, this is about what the GOVERNMENT want, and the government, like always, wants POWER. And the WOD is the gift of power.
If the government admitted ANY of the illegal drugs wasn’t bad the whole WOD falls apart. The whole thing is built on the scourge being worse than the cure, if they admit the scourge, even a small part of the scourge, was a lie the cure if screwed.
We’re not going to agree because you’re wrong. I’ve been on your side of this discussion, 20 years ago. I was wrong. You’re wrong now. Pot will never be legalized. If the states are silly enough to do it the fed just “informs” them that federal law takes precedence and step up their enforcement. That’s what happens when a state passes medical marijuana, at least in the states where the governor didn’t find some cheap excuse to kill the law even when it passed (remember what I said about the will of the people being pointless).
It would be great if you were right. I’m sure the ghosts of the Founder are wishing you were right, I wish you were right. There’s been a hundred year long march to here, and every step along the way the WOD gets stronger against ALL drugs, including and most especially pot. It will not be legalized, not by 2020, not by 2030, not by 2300 if America manages to last that long. That’s the sad truth.
You’re such a pessimist. That’s fine. At least you are probably someone who would vote for something like medical marijuana or decriminalization if it came up on a ballot in your state. I know I’d vote for just about any ballot measure easing marijuana laws if it didn’t contain a lot of other changes I wouldn’t want to see. I’d also vote against any measure to legalize the hard stuff, and would in fact actively campaign against such an initiative. I hate those drugs and what they do to our communities. I don’t think possession of any drug for personal use should be a felony, but I darned sure don’t want to see the hard stuff being sold legally at a fraction of current prices to any adult who wants to buy these drugs.
It’s not pessimism, it’s realism. 1906 was when the first anti-pot laws went on the federal books, and they’ve only gotten stronger since then. The government has too many reasons (like shredding the Bill of Rights) to keep it illegal to allow some silly little thing like the will of the people to change it. Ever wonder why neither of the major parties ever even hints at legalizing? Because they both know the WOD is too useful.
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