She's a hack, but I am not a fan of growing drugs in our national parks. People who are growing that much weed are often rather nefarious sorts who like to protect their shit with guns. Even if we legalized pot I would still not want it grown in a national park.

Mostly becasue its an invasive species.

I don't want it grown in national parks either, Giffy. And the quickest way to make sure it stops happening, or all but stops, is to legalize pot, regulate it, tax it, and let farmers grow it (legally--they already grow the stuff) on farms, where God intended us to grow it.

dan, that was the best slog post in months! Thank you.

Sounds like you took an extra dose of pissy pills this morning.

Sure, legalize and tax the sale of pot. But until then, what should be done about illegal grows on public land?

I'm just glad it hasn't affected my supply.

I get ribbed by my friends for being a conspiracy theorist with some regularity; By way of a defense I often answer that if you want to see a perfect illustration of how a concerted misinformation campaign could be waged for decades with willing cooperation by the media, look no further than the War On Pot. I'm sure reporters like the one you're currently raking over the coals don't have to be issued secret instructions on how to report these stories from the offices of some shadowy cabal of drug dealers, pharmaceutical companies, and DuPont (makers of nylon rope!) in order get the message that they are expected to continue writing this sort of story. Any reporter who bothered to follow the career of Greg Palast would be able to figure out for themselves what the career consequences of routinely questioning the status quo would be for them.

The main difference with the deliberately slanted reporting on this story and the slanted reporting on a host of other stories is that there are millions upon millions of Americans who know perfectly well what the actual effects of pot are and can see clearly that prohibition only serves to drive up the price of pot, enrich organized crime and fill our prisons with nonviolent offenders. So unlike a story on, say, Afghanistan, people don't need to fly around the world to see that the "facts" they are being presented with don't add up. Pot law has helped to create an enormous counterculture of people who are distrustful of the government and the media by providing a clear illustration of what propaganda wrapped around bad policy looks like.

Of course, I'm sure weed's paranoia-enhancing qualities don't hurt either.

But Dan: You're a stupid credulous hack, too. Take a pill and relax. There are more important things to worry about. If only you could work up this much energy about something that really matters ...

..you know, on the domestic front, about the only more important thing to worry about than a "War on Drugs" that has made the USA the country with the highest incarceration rate IN THE FUCKING WORLD is the fact that Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Oil basically own our government.

And, oddly enough, there is a link to marijuana prohibition for all three of the aforementioned bad actors.

Worry away, Dan!

This thing you care about? I don't care about it. And your caring about this thing about which I don't care reveals you to be a deeply un-serious person.

All serious people care only about the things I care about and don't care about the things that I don't care about.

well fucking said.

I'm a capitalist pig - but at least I know that - and every time I read about a bazillion-dollar drug bust, I am only sad because that's a bazillion-dollars not going back into the economy.

@2, or in our backyards, closets, and well lite basements.

@10

I often feel this way myself, Mr. Savage. Don't you also tend to notice that the daily headlines are filled with one story after another that validates your politics? I do. The huge, dramatic news stories that grip the nation are the ones that most often -- virtually always -- serve as exemplars of the rightness of my positions on the issues most dear to me.

just another example of out of touch 20th century media in their long slow march towards irrelevance.

hey jackass (jenkins), national parks aren't just for americans.

lots of weird foreigners on those trails. most aren't tending to their grow ops.

Prospero,

Overflowing jails don't matter? People losing housing, school grants, jobs, for something less malevolent than alcohol? Putting people in jail just makes them more hardened. This is an issue that does affect everyone.

I love it when you give it to those incredulous hacks good, Dan. I always wonder, though, if and how they respond to these posts. Certainly they read them, or at least hear of them.

Are they offended? Open to criticism? Defensive and huffy? My bet is unresponsive and aloof.

I agree whole-heartedly with the legalize it plan, but I thought Dan got a wee bit shrill about the children and the bunnies. I am an actual park ranger in California and these huge grow operations are doing serious ecological damage to our parks. The number-one mission of the Park Service is to "protect and preserve for future generations". I think the loss of irreplaceable native habitat, for the benefit of future generations, was what the park superintendent was referring to. Not that pot is endangering the kids.

Just sayin is all.

Who's the SFCH here?

Ms. Ho seems to have properly attributed the statements provided by her sources, and avoided conflating these statements with her personal beliefs and/or "the facts". (You documented that rather well.) She did not claim Mexicans were responsible for this grow-op. (Apparently you misread that.)

And the fact that she failed to write the opinion-piece you would have preferred to see in place of this straight piece of reporting is ... not her problem, is it?

Wonderful, beautiful blog post. Thank you for articulating this Dan.

"I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex. " - Jack Handey.

@20 V'Ho's problem is that she does not provide context or balance, while parroting the company line, which is what Dan is commenting on. Perhaps if people started a letter writing campaign/ staged a few protests (a smoke-in would be amusing) to complain to the paper regarding their lack of context and balance, they might budge a little. Otherwise, they will keep writing the company line.

boo fucking hoo. She wrote a story and didn't include my viewpoint. It's a story about a pot bust. Period. It's not some in-depth 6-part investigative piece on marijuana growing. I thought weed was supposed to relax you. Go smoke some, Dan.

The drug war is not a good idea. The laws you cite do indeed lead to grow ops in the woods.

This does not mean that these grow ops are benign. They are usually run by the most violent and well organized of the drug gangs. If resources are to be spent on the war on drugs, this is the correct place to spend them. Among their other problems they are territorial and protect their "territory" from innocent people who are using the parks in a legitimate way.

Even were drugs to be legalized, these guys should be stopped. Legalization would reduce the price and efficiency of these operations, but might well not do so enough to make these operations uneconomical.

As we say in the legal community, bad cases make bad law. These guys are the least deserving of sympathy of any one I can think of in drug production or distribution. I mean, I guess you could nominate the Mexican border drug gangs, who have made government impossible in border Mexico, but these grow ops are often run by the same people.

Even were drugs to be legalized, these guys should be stopped.

Does anyone get the fucking point? If mj was legal, these guys WOULD BE STOPPED!!!!!

It is 1000x times easier (read: cheaper) to grow a legitimate crop than it is to do it surreptitiously on some remote patch of a Natl Park.

So by parroting the War on Drugs bullshit without questioning anything, the SFCHOTD only helps ensure more illegal grow ops. Are they as complicit as the fuckwads that make the laws or the filthy souless pigs that enforce them? No, but they sure don't help.

Word.

For generations, there has been a quid-pro-quo: journalists get access (tips, leads) to cops and prosecutors in return for unquestioning coverage of staged events (weapons seizures, drug busts). No MSM reporter or editor is going to say "bullshit" the next time the cops trot out a pile of plants; daily journalism survives thanks to this quid-pro-quo.

Meantime, the bigger picture: pot remains demonized because hemp is superior to cotton. Southern states, to protect their cotton industry (which required slaves, don't forget) promised their votes to the Democratic Party--the so-called Bol Weevil democrats--with the understanding that the national government would protect cotton-growers.

Leaving aside that the federal gummint's revenooers had to do SOMETHING after the repeal of Prohibition in the early 1930s ... so the Treasury Dep't sic-ed them on marijuana.

The war on drugs really is a full-employment program...for cotton-growers, federal anti-drug agencies, local police forces...and, yes, unsuspecting hack journalists like Vanessa Ho.

Wow...you sound really grouchy...just like a person who...didn't have his smoke today.

You see, that's the "Reefer Madness" they don't tell you about. Sure, smoking it (seems) harmless, but working with people who are coming down from their high the night before? Sheesh...take a nicotine addict w/o a smoke, a coffee drinker w/o a latte and a mainliner w/o a fix, roll them all up and you'll have a pothead who hasn't yet lit up today.

@25: "Legalization would reduce the price and efficiency of these operations, but might well not do so enough to make these operations uneconomical."

Right, as evidenced by all those enormous tobacco grow operations and massive moonshine distribution networks that keep making headlines.

Actually her story was fine. It just doesn't fit with the Savage jigsaw puzzle view of the world. Who the fuck cares? You're an idiot and one who somehow gained the use of a newspaper to foist your idiocy on the public. You are an appallingly illogical and irrational writer and the very second you step outside of your alleged area of expertise, sexual advice for candle fetishists, you fail miserably.

Seriously, if you ever remotely approached the quality of her article in any of yours, I might treat you seriously. As it is, you're a joke. But you're fun to watch flail. You're like the car accident I saw on I-5 South this evening, spotted some nasty oily black flames from a mile away, got closer and saw the flames burning up the dry grass on the media, then it boomed as the gas tank exploded and blew a big fireball out the back.

Shorter Savage:

Weed is cool. Grow it wherever, man. Until it's legal cops suck.

Let he who owns glass house cast first stone. Or be stoned. Alas, one important factor left out of Dan's article: William Randolph Hearst is the MAIN culprit as to why weed was demonized and criminalized so heavily and thorougly in the 1930's. And guess who Ms. Ho works for? Right. Hearst's own P-I.
Vanessa is no hack. She's a veteran journalist doing the good work of Americas fourth estate. Long live the American newspaper. Please.
But Dan's right. The continuation of this anti-marijuana climate perpetuated by a rich timberland owner and newspaper czar is ... silly, wasteful and a sign that corporate interests trump the little people like us who might want a nice little farm where we could grow a little patch of hemp.

Here is a link to an Examiner.com post about William Randolph Hearst's war on pot circa 1937.

Peace!

http://www.examiner.com/x-221-Seattle-People-Examiner~y2008m8d16-Hempfest-smoke-gets-in-Hearsts-eyes-under-Seattle-PI-globe

@30:

Your post is made of fail.

@30:

Just listen to yourself.

Pot grow ops might analogized to moonshine and it might be analogized to cutting timber on public lands. I understand the temptation to compare it booze and tobacco, because it fits the conclusion you want it to fit.

It may be true that grow ops would fade away with legalization. I support legalization, and would be thrilled if that happened. I don't think it is an inescapable conclusion though. The economics of legalization might cause grow ops to no longer be desirable, but then again, they might not.

It depends a lot on the final price of legal pot (which will depend a lot on the amount of tax that is levied) as well as the costs of doing business legally and illegally. Obviously a big advantage of a grow op is that you don't have to own the land, you don't have to pay property taxes, income taxes or excise taxes or permit fees. Nor do you have to be a legal resident. These might be enough to keep the grow ops in business. They might not. In any case, wishing doesn't make it so.

I am against legalizing marijuana. It would imperil my job.

I think the general climate of the US would be greatly improved if everyone got stoned a little more often.

I don't believe pot should be regulated, taxed or any other type of governmental restriction. It should just be left alone. Anyone who desires to smoke it should be able to just grow it in the garden with the tomatoes and carrots and anything else they wish to grow. That would of course have an impact on some peoples quarterly profit and loss statement. And anywhere there is money, there will be politics.

Farmers can profitably grow wheat at $4 for 60 pounds. Thats slightly less than 7 cents a pound. That includes the cost of the land, their taxes, equipment, labor, fertilizer, etc.

If pot could be grown, legally, on farms, like any other crop, I guarantee all these illegal pot growing operations would stop almost overnight. There is no way that gun-toting thugs growing pot in National Forests can compete with 7 cents a pound. Even if you assumed that it cost, say, 5 times as much to grow pot as wheat on a farm, that's still only 35 cents a pound.

Seriously, if grown legally as a normal farm crop, pot would be uber cheap to produce. No need for illegal grow ops of any kind.

Yes, national parks are for the children—think of the children!—and not, you know, all those damn plants.

Thanks for clearing up a point of confusion I've had for a long time. Hiking through a nature preserve in Austria years ago, I was amazed to see fields of corn growing in the meadows. (I don't know which aspect was more incongruous: agriculture in a nature preserve or obviously non-native plants growing in a nature preserve.) Now I realize how narrow-minded I was: "plants are plants," and it's all good.

I would suggest legalizing pot in Seattle, first. Imagine the spectacular kind and nature of accidents once motorists, pedestrians, and the dreaded fixie riders can cause once they start toking outside the home.

Yeah, I hate it when I'm camping with my family in the National Forest in one of those public campsites that resembles a parking lot and dirty Mexicans won't stop encroaching on our family trip with their grow-op. Happens all the time.

Of course, if people didn't keep buying and smoking pot supplied in part by large criminal organizations trashing our national parks, creating the demand for this product, that would also help stop the problem.

To offer an analogy, because we don't have solar powered cars yet, we should use public transportation or bikes to reduce our carbon emissions, instead of just complaining that "things should be different" while not changing our behavior at all.

In the meantime, I can't believe anybody would want to put this sort of shit, grown with pesticides and industrialized fertilizers, in their bodies.

@41: "industrialized" = "industrial"

@41,

Actually, I'm pretty sure that outdoor grow operations of this magnitude don't relay much if at all on pesticides and/or industrial fertilizers.

BTW, you never consume produce with those same aforementioned chemicals, right?

Concern troll.

I do not get Dan's rant at all. How is the reporting of what police officers say bad reporting? Yes it's the job of reporters to contextualize these quotes. But to attack her for even reporting what cops say really misses the point, and personalizes things in a childish and unhelpful way.

When the police say "our gang unit is really effective," the press will go and check to see if the stats bear that claim out. Is gang violence down? Is what the police are doing really working?

When the police say that they're seizing tons of pot and they are, by implication (or, as is typical in these stories, by assertion), making strides in the War on Drugs, the press does not ask the same sorts of obvious follow-up questions, which I laid out in my post. Questions like, "Hey, after all of these seizures, is anyone having trouble getting their hands on pot?"

Just relaying what the police are saying to readers isn't reporting. It's propaganda.

Dan Savage is an asshole, according to a review of his writings and the rag he edits.

For Savage to criticize any one else's journalism is just plain laughable. Apart from any standards of balance, fairness or just plain ethics, the Stranger just makes stuff up.

Dan Savage is an asshole. And a potty mouth.

I'm a bad, bad man. Please don't read my blog.

But we're not suggesting that Ho fell short of Stranger standards, but of the standards set by daily journalists for themselves. All that impartial, objective, fair, balanced, blahblahblah, get both sides of the story -- all that crap that goes right out the window when there a press releases arrives from the DEA.

But, yes, I'm an asshole. Totally. And a potty mouth. Make stuff up? Nah, too lazy for that.

Now stop reading my blog, Editor's Note, as that only encourages me.

Oh no, Dan, you do make stuff up -- that's the hallmark of Stranger journalism.

The Stranger staff is quick to spot hypocrisy in everyone but themselves-- and you are the hypocrite in chief when you go after other writers.

Accept your role, Danny Boy, you are a clown not a media nanny. Doesn't become you, dear boy.

And gee, if you don't like this comment, you don't have to read it!

Dan, you are so wrong.

It is TOTALLY because they don't like the bunnies.

Dan's trash talking the dailies could be why Josh Feit got stiffed when he tried to get hired at the Seattle Times.

Mr. X @ 43:

The PI article says the growers had fertilizers and pesticides at the site.

I try to avoid eating non-organic produce with that stuff on it as much as possible, but at least non-organic produce has some limits as to how much pesticide and what types of fertilizer can be put on it. Any idea how much of either of those things the illegal growers are using? I bet it's a lot.

Also, do you even know what a "concern troll" is? I think "concern troll" would be "Gee, maybe we pot smokers should be worried about what we put in our bodies," not "I can't believe anybody's stupid enough to use this stuff."

Mr. X: Cheerfully disregarding facts that don't fit with his world view.

The sumptuary laws of the US do more damage - physically, psychically and financially - to its citizens than anything else in our arsenal of religion-driven dictates. They will never be repealed as long as the Aristocracy of the Haves prevail.

Sumptuary laws (from Latin sumptuariae leges) are laws which attempt to regulate habits of consumption. Black's Law Dictionary defines them as "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures in the matter of apparel, food, furniture, etc." Traditionally, they were laws which regulated and reinforced social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. In most times and places they were ineffectual.

As someone said awhile back. It was just an NW news story of a marijuana find and reported on. Maybe it should not have been mentioned that it resembled other marijuana discoveries in other geographic areas that involve our favorite Mexican cartels. At least it is still America for now. Don't like the story? Simple. Don't read it.

Move it up? Because ... it was so constructive? Are you in a pissing match with Chelsea Alvarez-Bell to see who can get the most comments on a story?

Remember the Tragedy of the Commons folks.

If we start growing pot in our national parks, then they'll come up with even more ways to bring guns and armed security (pro or con) in the parks.

Just decriminalize and ... holy smokes, i just saw lightning and now hear thunder!

is it really necessary to try and tear down fellow reporters and don't you see that such language might come back to bite you one day?

oh, and @49 for the win. Bunnies rule!

We pointed this crap out over and over again, and we were polite. Got tired of it, stopped being polite.

Dan,

Still waiting for that in-depth story on decriminalizing marijuana from one of your reporters.

When is it coming? Not on the budget yet?

Let me know, ok?

Maybe the problem is the reporters Dan, maybe it's the editors who wouldn't allow such an article.

Well said, well said.

Shit's gotta stop. We're getting tired of it. Sometimes you just have to call someone like Vanessa Ho a stupidfuckingcreduloushack even if it's not nice because we're all responsible for the choices we make in our professional lives. Letting yourself become a "reporter" and not a reporter, even when the system you're in rewards "reporters" and punishes reporters, is still morally wrong and something we can hold you individually accountable for.
Sorry, Vanessa. And thanks Dan.

P.S. I think it's funny that so many Stranger-haters spend time reading SLOG.

I wouldn't have a problem with it if The Stranger weren't being such rank hypocrites with the condescension towards hacks. Dan Savage's stupid fucking credulous support of the war in Iraq? ECB on everything? Theres only a few topics in which The Stranger has a winning hand in thought/opinion, and to trot it around like this seems childish and pathetic.

Won't pot have to become legalized at some point? I mean the governments-- state and federal-- live on taxing things americans love and refuse to give up-- tobacco, beer, spirits etc...they'll need something else to tax right? The anti smoking movement has given way to a generation who is pretty anti-smoking, and demonized smokers to the point they can't leave their houses to enjoy a smoke without glaring looks ( at least in the northeast)-- they'll need a way to make up tax money right? As much as everyone wants smoking to go away if it actually did taxes will go up on something else-- and maybe it won't be something anti-smokers don't like--maybe they should tax the hell out of bottled water and soda -- after all soda is evil-- its feeding the fat epidemic. Lets demonize soda drinkers! Tax a bottle of soda by $2 and see what happens...

Course I'm neither a smoker or potsmoker and this is just a random opinion.

Dan, "son and the pot"? Last weekend I enjoyed the sun, and my sons, but I don't ad pot into that particular mix as a matter of principle. Assume the same applies for you and your son and the yet-to-be legalized stuff.....

Savage criticizing other journalists is a bit like Thomas Kincaid mocking Vincent Van Gogh's work.

It's funny, but not much more.

@64 Yes. I've read The Stranger (off and on) since the first issue. There's lots of good reasons to read The Stranger. It is often entertaining and informative.

But what are the big lessons I remember learning from The Stranger in the past few years? The war in Iraq is good, Hillary is a saint, and Obama is an evil, sexist, gay-hating loser. No, everybody who's "progressive" doesn't have to believe all of the exact same things -- but come on.

Taking the lead in using vulgar language to insult wage-slave reporters on any issue when your own record is less than sterling is not a good idea. Sure, I care about the police state and jail over-crowding and I think the War on Drugs is wrong and bad and marijuana should be legal. But childishly attacking working people who don't control the contents of their own reporting? No.

Lastly, I'm not a pothead. I can't know what that's like. But it's frankly weird to watch a middle-aged man get this worked up over something that's not even denying him the pot that he feels so passionately about in the first place.

The news story and the coverage is what it is, but this thread is hilarious.

Speaking of SFCHs, ECB *just today* reposted something that Joel Connelly blogged about a week ago (on Dino Rossi), with no credit given to the journalist that originally wrote about this. Now who's the hack?

@51,

I missed that - and stand corrected.

She's still a credulous hack, though.

THIS is Dan Savage's blog? THIS? Whoa. That's pitiful. I thought this was a group blog by Stranger writers. Do you strut around your desk singing, "If I were king of the forRRrrRRest" like the Cowardly Lion whenever you throw out click-bait like this?

Honestly, Savage, you are so fucking lame.

I wholeheartedly agree with your points, Dan. They are grounded in logic, research, human rights and social justice.

On the other hand, I found your use of the words fucking stupid distracting and disturbing. Were they meant to express your passion? I share your passion for this issue, and think that the drug prohibition laws are fucking stupid, but would hesitate to direct those adjectives at a person (even one who deserves to be called on her journalistic failings and ignorance, which i applaud you for doing).

It may be worth considering if being less agressive is actually more powerful, and more in line with the world you are ultimately trying to create.

Dan needs his own You Tube channel, to be named "This Channel is NOT for the stupid Archie Bunkers of the Slog Comment Gallery."

X at 71:

Gracious of you.

I concede that the corporate media spends a lot more time covering drug busts than it does covering the arguments in favor of legalization, and that it could do a much more evenhanded job.

How about a compromise: the PI should do evenhanded articles on busts that take place on private property, and credulous rah-rah articles when drug gangs crap all over the national parks?

Vanessa Ho and other reporters should think carefully before they publish "narc math" that inflames hysteria and pushes prohibition as the unchallenged response. They promote the idea that growing pot is an easy way to make tens of millions of dollars. The subliminal message is: "Get rich quick by growing on public lands." Lots of people are facing financial hardship right now, so I don't see how that is supposed to discourage them from growing cannabis.

Here's some real math: $48 million divided by 16,700 plants = $2874. per plant. Current market value is $2000-$2500 per pound (for outdoor sinsemilla; seeded sells for less), so average $2250 per pound (often less when sold in bulk) or 1.27 pounds of sinsemilla bud per plant.

Growers know that half of those plants were probably males that had not yet been pulled, as they are just (in August) showing flowers. So at a minimum, narc math inflates the real value by a factor of 2. More likely, there would be 8,350 female plants, if they all survive (not likely). That means each plant would have to produce more than 2.5 pounds of bud each to sell for $48 million. A web search shows http://www.safeaccessnow.net/ that the federal DEA published a study on pot yields and found that an average mature female plant grown in full sun produces 4 ounces of bud (the seized plants were in a forest, so most likely the growers would get 2-3 oz each), and it's not easy work. Using 4 ounces each, 8,350 female plants x 4 ounces = (33400 oz) 2087.5 pounds x $2250 = $4.7 million. That's good money, but less than 1/10 the claimed $48 million reported in the article. The reporter should have questioned the narc math, and checked with recognized experts in the field to provide balance.

The bottom line is that the Drug War is causing these problems, and cannabis is the nation's number one cash crop. By any calculation, it is long past time to allow personal adult cultivation and use, and to tax and regulate the commercial market. Americans need to learn and pay attention to math.

@77 Ignore Dan Savage - he just thinks he plays newspaper better than all the other kids on the block. And that's because he's let his vast land investments go to his head while he pretends to be "down with the peeps, y'all."

Jeff @59, in your spare time at the daily, go check the archives for pieces by Dominic Holden, Dan Savage, David Schmader, and Christopher Frizzelle, to name a few. Been there, done that, now it's your turn.