On Not Seeing One’s Own Nose
Item: Marijuana farming rebounds in economic hard times
Marijuana farming rebounds in economic hard times
Growth industry: Recession blamed as marijuana farming increases from California to Appalachia
Machete-wielding police officers have hacked their way through billions of dollars worth of marijuana in the country’s top pot-growing states to stave off a bumper crop sprouting in the tough economy.
The number of plants seized has jumped this year in California, the nation’s top marijuana-growing state, while seizures continue to rise in Washington after nearly doubling the previous year. Growers in a three-state region of central Appalachia also appear to have reversed a decline in pot cultivation over the last two years.
Officers in those areas, the nation’s biggest hotbeds for marijuana production, have chopped down plants with a combined street value of around $12 billion in the first eight months of this year. While national numbers aren’t yet available this year, officers around the country increased their haul from 7 million plants in 2007 to 8 million in 2008.
Let’s stop right there. The police confiscated $12 billion dollars worth of pot? $12 billion dollars worth of something that could, if it were decriminalized, be generating jobs and revenue for our battered economy?
And on top of that, the police are spending their valuable time, which could be used to pursue real violent criminals, on climbing mountains and hacking through forests, in search of a plant?
Talk about your messed up priorities. If the leadership of this country had any brains at all, they’d be running to legalize and tax marijuana.
Instead, they waste time, money, and human resources on an ideological jihad, in a time of economic crisis.
