IS CURRENT MARIJUANA ERADICATION POLICY EFFECTIVE?

Editor:

Is the sheriff's current marijuana eradication policy effective? After
reading the Daily News article about the first big marijuana raid of the
season, a number of facts and quotes therein caused me to ponder that very
question. Sheriff Parker's quote stating, "We're going to continue to be a
little bit different than most counties, and we will look to arrest people
and not just pull plants." makes me wonder if he has completely thought
this strategy through. While this may have been an effective deterrent when
most of those growing pot were bleary eyed hippies who were also citizens
of this country, the problem lies in the efficacy of that policy which
chased out most of the locals, caused the price of marijuana to skyrocket,
and thereby caused the unintended consequence of those crops now being
tended by armed Mexican Nationals placed there by large international drug
cartels.

The newspaper article states that last year a total of 28 people were
arrested during those raids, more than any other county, according to
Sheriff Parker. At first blush this looks like a pretty impressive
statistic. The fly in the ointment however, is that almost all of those
arrested were easily replaced peasants that were recruited by the cartels
to do their scut work. The very notion that arresting these braceros would
cause the drug kingpins to alter their course of action is tantamount to
trying to get the president of General Motors to shift corporate policy by
arresting the janitor at a Red Bluff auto dealership.

The time spent laying in wait to bust virtual nobodies is not only cost
ineffective and highly dangerous to those law enforcement officers
involved, but it also fritters away precious time that could be used in
hitting the drug lords where it hurts most, i.e. locating and pulling their
valuable plants in as many locations as possible. This could be
accomplished in an expeditious manner as most of the gardens are on public
land and no search warrant would be needed.

Despite pulling 40,000 plants last year, Sheriff Parker admitted that they
got less than half of what was out there. If the plants destroyed were
worth the $210 million that the sheriff claims, that means that an amount
somewhat larger than that was garnered by the cartels last year in Tehama
County. No wonder they're back this year. Indeed, according to Sheriff
Parker: "We already know of at least six or seven other gardens that we'll
be visiting." My advice? Stop trying to build a meaningless arrest record,
and "visit" those gardens now.

Van William Washburn
Gerber