Pot Shots

Pot Shots
Posted by CN Staff on August 08, 2007 at 12:33:05 PT
By Mark Honigsbaum
Source: Guardian Unlimited

USA -- What is the most valuable cash crop in America? If you answered wheat or corn then either you've been eating too many Fruit Loops or you haven't been inhaling deeply enough. As any fan of Weeds - Showtime's hit series about a dope-dealing suburban mom - will tell you, when it comes to hard cash these days, cannabis is king.
According to a study by John Gettman of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, marijuana cultivation in the US is now worth a staggering $35bn (£17.3bn) a year, making old Mary J bigger than corn and wheat combined.

And that's just the illegal variety. Cross the Californian state line and search out a sympathetic physician and you can purchase pot and even cannabis-laced Munchy Way chocolate bars perfectly legally at one the state's 600 medical marijuana dispensaries. Little wonder that the White House is up in arms. Never mind the war on terror, scream the neo-cons, what about the war on weed?

Perhaps that explains why last month the Drug Enforcement Agency torched 60,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $30m concealed in a forested preserve in Cook Country, Illinois, as part of a nationwide campaign against marijuana cultivation on public land. Or why two weeks ago the DEA raided 10 marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles and charged four operators with violating the Controlled Substances Act. Or why the DEA has been using the same federal drug laws to target the cultivation of industrial hemp on Indian reservations.

Never mind that hemp, used in everything from rope-making to clothing to car door insulation, is ideal for the dry climate of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, where farmers like Alex White Plume and other members of the Ogala Sioux tribe eke a living. Or that hemp contains only traces of THC - the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gets you high - or that in the 1930s the federal government encouraged the Ogala to cultivate hemp to ease the effects of the Great Depression. According to the DEA, hemp fields could be used to conceal high THC-bearing strains, hence the feds' "zero tolerance" policy.

The crackdown comes as Bush's drug czar John Walters - in a series of statements that recall the Reefer Madness campaigns of the 1930s - has sought to demonise marijuana in the public's mind, claiming the current strains are far stronger than the "mom and pop" varieties popular in the 1960s and 70s. In fact, according to the DEA's own handbook, of more than 4, 600 domestic strains analysed by the government between 1998 and 2002, fewer than 2% were found to contain THC levels above 20%.

But such is the paranoia in the US today about any form of "subversive activity" that now even local law enforcement officials are getting in on the act - hence the raid last month on Dennis "Day" Yusko, a 71-year-old hippy and veteran of the Woodstock festival by anti-narcotics police dressed in Kevlar jackets (Yusko, a leading light in Woodstock's Rainbow Tribe, was charged with possession of just two grams of marijuana, hardly enough to get a hamster buzzed, let alone Fat Freddy's Cat).

The irony is that the crackdown coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Marijuana Tax Act, a law that like the Controlled Substances Act which replaced it, proved a spectacular failure. The 1937 act was conceived as a tax on buyers and sellers, but the penalties for non-compliance were so draconian that it effectively functioned as a ban, prompting the removal of cannabis from the US Pharmacopeia in 1942 (because it required buyers to purchase a stamp, it also clashed with the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination). Unfortunately, the 1970 Controlled Substances Act has proved even more punitive, placing marijuana in the same category as heroin and LSD, with stiff 20-year jail terms for those caught "trafficking" across state lines.

Yet for all that the White House has sort to demonise weed, dope remains as popular as ever. In a survey last year, 28 million Americans admitted smoking pot and approximately 85% of high school seniors described marijuana as "easy to get" - a figure that has remained virtually unchanged since 1975. And this despite a record 800,000 busts last year, nearly all for simple possession.

As Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which has been pushing for decriminalisation of marijuana, puts it: "It's hard to think of a more spectacularly bad, long-term policy failure than our government's 70-year war on marijuana users."

So will the White House roll over and agree to take a hit on this one? Don't count on it. Although California, in common with 11 other states, has deemed the sale of marijuana to treat such medical conditions as glaucoma, cancer and Aids legal and House Democrats are pushing for a ban on the use of federal funds by the DEA to prosecute medical marijuana patients, the justice department argues that the dispensaries are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act and charges the operators with being little better than licensed drug dealers. The result is that the stage is now set for a classic federalist-style confrontation over state's rights, with hundreds of medical marijuana cases pending in the Californian courts.

But perhaps we should take heart from the reaction of medical marijuana patients. Earlier this year, they risked arrest by blockading clinics in Santa Monica ahead of DEA raids. Now, with the first court hearings pending, they're threatening to take their campaign state-wide. Proof positive, you might think, that the new strains of marijuana aren't quite the lifeforce-sapping evil portrayed by opponents.

Note: The US government is waging a Reefer Madness-style war of words and deeds on the country's cannabis growers.

Source: Guardian Unlimited, The (UK)
Author: Mark Honigsbaum
Published: August 8, 2007
Copyright: 2007 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact: letters@guardian.co.uk
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/