Probable Cause
Another pot season in our national parks...
The 2010 pot growing season will be gearing up soon, and in the middle of California’s redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants, and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.
Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year. Statistics show that agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and an estimated 75 percent to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs. In 2008 alone, according to the DEA , agents across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from about 20,000 outdoor plots. Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they’ve now gone to mega, monster gardens. Some say it’s a testimony to how well we are protecting our borders, but it’s just diversification on the part of the cartels.
Growing marijuana in the U.S. saves traffickers the risk and expense of smuggling their product across the border and allows gangs to produce their crops closer to local markets. Distribution also becomes less risky. Once the marijuana is harvested and dried on the hidden farms, drug gangs can drive it to major cities, where it is distributed to street dealers and sold along with pot that was grown in Mexico. About the only risk to the Mexican growers is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.
The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Park, or hidden high in the rugged-yet fertile Sierra Nevada Mountains. Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranch land. All of the sites are far from the eyes of law enforcement, where growers can take the time needed to grow far more potent marijuana. Farmers of these fields use illegal fertilizers and pesticides to help the plants along, growing cloned female plants to reduce the amount of seed in the bud that is dried and eventually sold.
Mexican gang plots can often be distinguished from those of domestic-based growers, who usually cultivate much smaller fields with perhaps 100 plants and no security measures. Some of the fields tied to the drug gangs have as many as 75,000 plants, each of which can yield a pound of pot annually. The Sequoia National Forest in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, most of which are hidden along mountain creeks and streams, far from hiking trails. It’s the same situation in the nearby Yosemite, Sequoia and Redwood national parks.
Our elected and non-elected
officials i n Washington need to stop coddling these illegal aliens with promises of amnesty in exchange for votes to get them re-elected. The same people who are ignoring us with their power grab hostile take over of the health care industry have given our national parks away to illegal foreigners. It’s time to check a different box at the ballot the next time we vote.
