Comments on Speaking of Pot Reports
Well said. The drug war was thought up when the Cold War was waning. It's just another way of funneling taxpayer money to munitions manufacturers and corrupt Central American governments.
Around here isn't meth far more dangerous? Until a couple years ago, it wasn't even on the radar back east. When is someone going to be accountable for the cost vs. benefit of this 20+ year war on drugs?
My opinion is that the anti-drug hysteria in this country is directly related to the level of religiosity in this country. There is an underlying motif of oppressive morality policing that is interwoven in these stupid policies of our government. Compare this to more secular counties around the world, and you will generally notice that the more secular they are, the less likely they are to have draconian drug enforcement policies, and less likely to incarcerate such huge numbers of the population. So just like other human rights, religion fucks up this area of human endeavor too.
You forgot to mention that the people busted were Vietnamese with Canadian ties. So also nestled in this story is a little touch of immigration boogie-manism (if Fox news can make up words so can I).
"As in other states, local investigators found the growers usually were Vietnamese, often with ties to Vancouver, B.C."
So remember, the Vietanamese are running Washington's $1 Billion dollar a year industry...and they are all from Canada...and they aren't stoners but rather businessmen which is apperantly more troubling.
I agree with all of the above except the characterization of the busted growers as poor victims. They knew the risks, they took the chance, they broke the law (including stealing electricity in that case), and they got squished by The Man's iron fist. I don't feel sorry for them. Their families, landlords, friends, patients, and all of us taxpayers are the ones suffering the collateral damage without having been given a choice.
$1 billion is a lot that could be regulated and taxed... we could use more funding for public transportation and a more earth friendly city... just saying...
A couple of buddies and I decided to climb Glacier Peak last summer. I was warned by several hunter friends that when parking at the trailhead, I should leave my car unlocked, with the gas tank unlocked, and a container of gas hidden in the woods 1/4 to 1/2 mile away. This so that the Meth Heads wouldn't have to shatter my windows looking for stuff to hock nor cut my fuel line to siphon all my gas out. And then I could retrieve my secret gas stash from the woods and still have enough gas to get to a gas station.
On my way in I stopped at the Darrington Ranger Station and retold this tale to the ranger, thinking they would dispel my anxiety. "No," the Ranger said, "the Mountain Loop Highway is closed between your trailhead and Granite Falls. You only have to worry about that sort of stuff on the other side of the closure."
Meanwhile, my local cops are wasting their time busting harmless dope farmers. Thanks Seattle Times!
I wondered how they got around the $10,000 a month electric bill! Still, seems a bit risky. How about a windmill on the roof? or Solar panels, many of them. Oh, wait, did you notice the dam on the stream? Is it generating electricity?
Pox-
"Their families, landlords, friends, patients, and all of us taxpayers are the ones suffering the collateral damage without having been given a choice."
What are you talking about? What damage? What damage does dope smoking, or growing, or distributing cause? Other than filling up our prisons to the extent that they have to let violent criminals out before their sentences are up to make room for the drug "criminals"?
"Guess that means no one’s gonna be smoking any of that marijuana ‘round these parts for a long, long time, huh?"
Well except for the cops that steal from the pile, make pot brownies, then call 911 because they think they're gonna die.
Thank you Dan Savage. Every voice counts. The silent minority of responsible drug users needs to make ourselves heard. Your voice is loud and not going unheard. Thank you.
@10 -- is that based on a story?
-and-
I forgot the big electricity bill thing being a red flag to authorities (all the power needed for the lights). interesting that they found a way to bypass that AND the bill =D
When is the government going to start focusing on real crimes? Jail time for pot? Are you kidding?
The jails are already overloaded with drug users while killers go free.
daddy@7, was there supposed to be a link that I could follow there?
I'm so horny. Ugh!
The Times and government simply need to accept that what we put into our own bodies is none of their business.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 stated that there is a right to privacy in our beedrooms. Seems that right to privacy should apply to our own bodies and what we choose to put in them.
wait... um.. what?
@4
Their families, landlords, friends, patients, and all of us taxpayers are the ones suffering the collateral damage without having been given a choice.
We're the ones who are stupid. We're doing this to ourselves.
Big Sven @9:
We agree. I meant the collateral damage caused by enforcement of prohibition: the cost, the lost productivity, the waste of effort, the corruption, the increased crime, the overflowing prison system, the seized property, and children and spouses losing their people to prison.
elenchos@18:
Remind me, who were those candidates again? And they got their campaign money from which corporations?
Pox-
Ah.
"My bad", as Optimus Prime says.
I'd comment, but I'm not ready to exhale yet.
They go after pot growers becuz it's not as dangerous as busting meth heads.
THOSE are the drug makers you need to get off the street. THOSE are the people who commit robbery, assault, etc. THOSE are the drugs from which your precious little kids are more likely to suffer, either addiction, violence, or both.
When will this country stop being so ridiculous about marijuana? I think marijuana is more a symbol for them, than a real problem. A symbol of freedom that they can't stand. Why else would industrial hemp be such a problem for TPTB?
And on the sadder-than-shit side:
... While investigating the shootings, Everett police discovered several hundred marijuana plants in the home that Meas and Nguyen shared.
... Nguyen's friends managed to get her into a car with the intention of driving her to the hospital. But the friends got lost ...
@12 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnZb5wi_jsU
"I think we're dead."
The Stranger should demand that EVERY candidate for public ofice sign a sworn statement candidaly admitting all past or current drug use, possession and possession of amounts sufficient to be charged with distribution.
"Have you ever committed a crime" is a job related question for public officials ....it is not "personal."
We would find that MANY of them INCLUDING MOST OF OUR OWN COUNCIL AND LEGISLATORS AND INCLUDING REPBULICANS used to smoke pot, sniff coke, and yes, hand out a few joints/grams here or there.
The reason we still have these antidrug laws is because these politicans hide their own relationship with drugs and what is in their own hearts: that these laws are bad and harmful. Why they don't fess up: they are afraid of not winning the election.
What would happen if they were outed: they would have to come clean (or old friends would out them); then they would have to defend jailing other people for drugs; they couldn't; they would then have to work to end criminalizaton.
It's a bit like gay rights. If all the people who used to do drugs and feel it did them no harm would ADMIT IT they/we would stop acquiescing in the war on drugs.
It is our own acquiescence that is to blame. We can blame the right wing all we want but we have no "left" wing that is actually doing a damn thing on this issue.
How about it Stranger: make them sign a statement revealing all levels and kinds of drug use, including what drug, how many grams -- and did they share or only hand it out for bucks??
Then ask G. Bush the same question.
Dan,
Weren't you going to initiate a "seed the city" campaign to have the stuff growing in every median and park?
@25-
THANK YOU HAHAH
"I think I'm dying. We're dead." lolol
Thank you for this post, Dan!
I've heard of grow ops in our fair city, and most are in business of supplying patients. Of course if they get busted the headline reads "250 plants seized," not "govmint takes medicine away from sick people." But that's a whole other story.
And for JB @ 11 and everyone else who considers themselves a responsible drug user: Make your voice heard! Seattle is host to the largest pot festival in the country. C'mon down to Hempfest on August 18th and 19th.
Once I volunteered to index a newspaper for the local history files. I read the Santa Cruz daily newspaper for 1923. Every week a new story about some Italian or Irish family getting their moonshine still tore up or the cache of wine dumped into Boulder Creek. Exactly the very same thing as now with the pot growers. Except that Alcohol prohibition only lasted, what 14 years? What a disaster that was. People who before only drank beer at the picnic and wine at dinner later invented parties where nothing but hard alcohol was consumed. Prohibition just makes the drug stronger and the criminals richer.
I'll be seeing you all at the fest.
I agree with #18 completely. We have no one to blame but ourselves. No politician will fight for legalization because they know they will not get political support for it. They'll be seen as marginal or weak on the 'war on drugs'. To my knowledge, only one politican in recent years, a Republican governor of New Mexico, (I think) publically sought legalization. He was quickly discredited and no mainstream group supported him.
To make a difference, friends of pot need to have a huge lobby that gives tons of cash to politicians. They don't have to call it "pot" or "hemp" or anything. They can just call it Concerned Citizens of America and make a PAC. Either that or NORML needs all of us to give them just as much money as gun-owners give the NRA.
Way to keep 'em honest. No, really. Up next: "FOX NEWS'S REPUBLICAN BIAS!" Take it to the streets. Couple that with the refrigerator noise of "the war on drugs is wrong. It punishes the harmless preventing nothing, and wastes taxpayer money!" Cutting edge stuff.
Thomas Morton says Legalize It!
Not only are the Red Bushies losing the War in Iraq, they have already LOST the War on Drugs.
Just ask Afghanistan.
Some numbers....
Here in Montreal, weed's street price is $10/g. Which makes $9.4/g in USD. I'll guess you buy it $8/g, just because the CAD is really high these days. Now, a well-grown crop can yield 1kg. So: 950 x 1,000 x 8 = $7,600,000. If marijuana is a 1 billion per-yer industry in the Washington state, that'd mean they just bust 7.6% of the whole production in just one bust!
Obviously, they can't have gotten that much of a share. I guess you can still count on the fact that people might grow bigger quantities to fill the void in case of a demand surge (it's likely, as weed to so cheap to grow and easy to get rid of as well), but that would only account for a portion of the production. Maybe the 1 billion number is based on trade price? Or more likely, I'd say weed is a much bigger industry than we think.
I wish I could agree with all of you. I really wish I could, because I'm very much against pot growing and smoking laws.
But indoor grow ops are seriously, seriously fucked. I've seen more than a few, and every house involved has needed to be torn down. It's not just the trendy diagnosis of "toxic mold", either: the high humidity needed for a grow op can cause structural members to rot, and the batshit wiring can spark fires. Both these problems are especially serious in row housing where the neighbours' lives could be at risk from a collapse and fire. And the cost of repairing or replacing these houses come out of insurance premiums we all pay.
We need pot legislation to be struck down, but not to make indoor grow ops legal: we need it because if farmers can grow pot outdoors legally, there will be no need for indoor grow ops and the problems they cause.
@38
Sadder still is that some landlords just slap a fresh coat of paint over the toxic mold and rent the place out again. It can cause all manner of health problems for the next tenants, especially in young children.
Blethen isn't going to wake up - when he dies his kids might come out as the bong-huffing estate-tax-loving layabouts they are. Then these stories might be balanced, and by that i mean 95% DEA, 5% NORML.
@38
"Indoor grow ops are seriously, seriously fucked." Well, obviously. I don't think anybody posting here thinks that they should be legal. The point is that, like wire coat hanger abortions, they are the result of idiotic laws that are seriously, seriously fucked and seriously, seriously infringe on our autonomy. If lawmakers actually gave a fuck about getting rid of the seriously, seriously fucked up indoor grow ops, they would re-evaluate the laws that are at the root of the problem, because that actually has a hope in hell of changing the situation, as opposed to raiding them one at a time, while ten more spring up. Sigh. Legalize it.
It's your prescription bong; would you prefer the skull, or the wizard?
this type of operation happens all the time in the Vancouver BC area grow ops. are in the news constantly. Hooking directly into the main power on a street was common here until the hydro company started flagging power peaks in certain upscale suburban areas. The people being sent to jail are not necessarily "poor motherfuckers" but part of organized gangs. If the growing of pot was legal and designed to undercut the profit gangs make then they would be out of the pot growing business (and onto something else). But no, Immigration laws encouraged the set up of asian gangs in Vancouver and now everyone is paying for it.
Let people grow their own and put them out of business.
Seems like solar energy would be a good way of bypassing the power grid altogether.
Monkey- whilst I don't consume any illegal drugs (just hate drug laws), I know a little bit about solar. At the equator on a sunny day at high noon, you get about 1000w per square meter. Here at the high lattidudes, with all our clouds, we average around 120w/m2. Affordable solar cells are only about 20% efficient, so you get about 24w/m2.
So to provide, say, 2000w of light, you'd need 82m2 (~800ft2). Kind of a tipoff, in your average Kent neighborhood. And installed costs are ~$4/w. So call it $16k. Also, I suspect the plants need light at night. Storing 8 hrs of power (16kwhr) requires 400kg (1000lb) of batts.
And I suspect you need a lot more power than that. But if there are any green indoor growers out there, feel free to correct me.
burgle @ 38 "every house involved has needed to be torn down"
Sorry. Not true. I don't think you've seen that many houses with grow ops then.
This is another one of those Drug War Urban Legends (DWUL) right up there with Every Meth Lab is a Superfund Site (EMLSS), promoted by cops ranging from the Office of National Drug Control Policy right on down to local sheriffs. And swallowed hook, line and sinker by much of the supposedly critical and independent media.
I have no doubt that some of the really big grows with unscrupulous owners do result in this, but that's not "every house". Folks can peacefully co-exist with well maintained grows for many, many years
amen
There is at least one current presidential candidate who is both anti-drug war and at least nominally of an electable party:
Mike Gravel is also vehemently anti-prohibition.
He's also a major league crank...
Instead of howling at assholes and the print version of Fox networks noose (news), why not help your own publication (and maybe the Seattle Times, too) by posting stories by/for/on behalf of growers and users. And, by the way, if pot were allowed by the narcs, the price would dive and the big growers would either commercialize or die. The parallel to the gin makers during Prohibition is almost one-to-one. When Carrie nation's meddling was reversed, the price of a bottle of gin went from five hours worth of laborer's time to less than an hour's, and the number of wood alcohol poisonings went to zero.
I read this sort of comment & despair. As an utterly unreconstructed old 60s freek, I still have amerikan friends, whom I met in europe, who went back to "The World" with a kilo or 3 of hash, set themselves up for the good life and haven't looked back. They claim that they still vote and enjoy a toke but, how can that be so? In OZ, one state has decriminalised growing & possession, originally for up to ten plants then, due to Federal pressure, reduced it to 3. So who grows it and for whom? Interstate buyers desperate for some sort of quality control. And yet, 200M (potential) voters in amerika, of whom barely 50% can get off their SUV fattened arses to go to the polling stations. I wouldn't care (quite so much) if your bastard country weren't malevolently affecting the rest of the world. When shrub was selected I fervently prayed that he would be true to the isolationism his ignorance mandated but no such luck.
Thanks but no thanks, wanker. At least in Oz, you don't have to live with the fucker every day.
After doing a lot of research on Ron Paul over the last few months, I am going to ENTHUSIASTICALLY support A REPUBLICAN! for Prez. I still find it hard to believe.
For a long time, I was sympathetic to the Greens. But more of an anarchist than a socialist, I've always been suspicious of central planning and egalitarianism, both popular and dangerously misunderstood. I say "more of an anarchist" because I'm against top-down authoritarianism and coercion, and support local community participation & governance, unfettered personal and economic freedom, small business, charity and free expression. What's also surprised me is how our Constitution (there, I'm the first to use the dirty word in a discussion of Ron Paul!) promotes these same values of mine, that is if it is actually followed.
In 2002, I heard Ron Paul on C-Span give an irrefutable argument against the coming war (which he had seen coming since at least '98)and could not believe I was hearing a Republican speak. But I filed this away as someone to check out at some point and never got around to it.
Forward to this year. I had already been engaged by my discovery of the Austrian School of economics and the philosophical roots of the Libertarian movement when I happened upon the recent Republican debates. My jaw dropped to the floor as I witnessed Ron Paul chastise US foreign policy, receive applause, have the whole moment spun that very instant by Guiliani and the moderator, and that receive roaring knee-jerk applause from the uncomfortably baffled in the audience. Without hesitation, Paul then fired back and backed up everything he said. This was the balsiest political thing I'd ever witnessed on tv, and it came from a Republican! I was (almost) sold.
Like I said before, I will be supporting Ron Paul. Shit, I can't believe I'm going to vote Republican. Nevertheless, I urge everyone, to give the guy a chance to defend himself against common ignorance of economics, history and the Constitution, nevermind the defamation from neocons and insults from the media. At first I thought he was a little nuts as well, but in the meantime I've learned quite a bit and mostly agree with him.
Saying that, I'm still an atheist, a cohabitating father, a student receiving federal and state aid, a sort-of anarchist, not wealthy, and not a supporter of the official republican party platform. I definitely don't identify with the typical member of the conservative base that Repubs must appeal to right now.
But I find a lot of what I believe in Ron Paul. And I feel that most people would find him refreshing and maybe inspiring if they were to really investigate him instead of just swallowing whatever pop notion about his ideals comes down the pike from from the corporate politicians - that is, the other 9 repubs who basically support the status quo and feel we can justifiably preemptively nuke Iran, or the majority of the dems stand for very little, would do little to change the status quo, and represent the party which immediately sold out those who restored their congressional power.
Abortion - he sees no problem with things like the morning after pill, but being an obstetrician, finds later-term abortion abhorrent. Ultimately he feels a fetus is a life with personal rights equivalent to a baby born just a few weeks later, and those rights should be protected. HOWEVER, he feels it's the states' place, or better yet local communities jurisdiction, to legislate on the issue, not the FED.
Money - there is nothing crazy about wanting to back our currency with gold instead of....nothing. Even a little research shows the Federal Reserve to be a potentially nefarious institution controlled not by the people but, well, not even the president is privy to that secret. This institution is directly responsible for the weakened dollar which results in inflation and, over time, massive redistribution of wealth from the the less-wealthy to those who fund the banks. Sound black helicopter-ish, I know, but that's the infuriating about this set of documented facts.
"New World Order" - the term left our vocabulary not long after the Clinton impeachment, but now it's back because Bushy and the Council on Foreign Relations have concocted some scheme to create an economic alliance between Mexico, Canada and the US that goes far beyond NAFTA. look it up. It's a strike at sovereignty, and is against the constitution, along with NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc.
Social Programs, corporate welfare, foreign aid, income tax. - WOW, complicated, but going back to the federal reserve, history shows that the income tax coincided with its creation, the Great Depression was the result of its inflating policies, not the popularly believed causes, and the New Deal and later social programs and agencies are not only not constitutional, but are not effective, are too expensive and could be done better.
Libertarians support free markets, which is something totally different from the the state-managed markets we have now. Without the subsidies and and legal power the STATE gives to corporations, corporations would not be able to survive a truly free market that enabled thousands of competitors to chip away at the state-supported quasi-monopolies that the current system produces. Although he does support "block grants" to the states, Ron Paul does want to end many of the agencies and social programs but he admits it would take a long time because generations of Americans are used to relying on government for so much. He would, however, immediately allow for parallel institutions to services the FED provides,which should run them out of business and customers. Finally, much of what the executive branch does would be delegated to states and local communities, as the Constitution says.
For our time, Ron Paul's views are admittedly unfamiliar and even radical. Historically, he's dead on. Some people say a strict interpretation of the constitution is too simplistic for our times, but it's my personal belief that by ballooning government to what it is now and forcing ourselves and our will on the world, the bureaucracy creates the need for more bureaucracy, the police and intelligence and military institutions create the need for their expansion, and all the theft, dirty-dealing, secrecy and and even the size of the government are directly responsible for popular cynicism and alienation from governance among the general public.
In my humble opinion, Ron Paul is a humble man, honest and true to his ideals. His life is consistent with what he promotes, as is his voting record. He is an anomaly in Washington. I don't agree with all his positions, but I don't agree with all of anyone's positions. However, I see much in him that is nearly totally absent in all the other options. That depressing. But if I were to look at the very least positive of him being president, it would be that we wold never be surprised at what he did as president, we would never have reason to feel lied to, sold out, or cheated. We would never go to war unless we were attacked, and we would see corporate control over many industries be greatly reduced or ended. Enough of this,go to LewRockwell.com and read what he has to say.
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