AMERICA'S NO. 1 CROP AIN'T CHRISTMAS TREES ...

'Tis the season for the state Department of Agriculture to crank out
press releases reminding us that Pennsylvania is a national leader in
Christmas tree production.

The latest yearly numbers -- 1.7 million pine trees worth nearly $14
million in sales to their growers -- sure sound impressive.

But $14 million is chicken feed next to what some Keystone State
"farmers" are pulling in each year by growing America's No. 1 cash
crop -- marijuana.

The state Ag Department's press corps doesn't send out releases on
annual pot sales.

But NORML, the national lobby that fights the good but so far futile
fight to reform America's talibanical marijuana laws, estimates on
its Web site (NORML.org) that in 2005 Pennsylvania's lawbreaking dope
farmers rang up somewhere between $70 million and $111 million in
sales -- wholesale -- for their modest 22,000-pound crop.

Those production and sales numbers -- drawn from government data but
obviously estimated -- make Pennsylvania the 32nd highest pot
producer in the union. The No. 1 dope state, naturally, is California
with an annual marijuana crop value of nearly $14 billion.

The claim that pot is the country's top cash crop is old stuff. But a
new study released by former NORML head and public policy researcher
Jon Gettman concludes that Americans grew $35.8 billion worth of
marijuana last year -- more than corn ($23.3 billion) and wheat
($7.4 billion) combined.

The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy is too embarrassed to
confirm or deny Gettman's finding, which relied on government
figures. But Gettman arrived at his conservative $35.8 billion figure
by multiplying the country's 2005 marijuana crop -- about 22 million
pounds -- by an average producer price of $1,600 per pound, about
half of its street and high school parking lot price.

Gettman admits smoking pot is an "inherently harmful activity" with
serious physical and mental health consequences. Nevertheless, he
sensibly thinks it should be legalized, taxed and regulated like
alcohol and tobacco -- more-harmful drugs that are socially acceptable.

His study quantifies what has been a fact for nearly four decades:
marijuana "has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of our
national economy." Not to mention culture.

Government numbers back Gettman up. According to the 2002 National
Survey on Drug Use and Health, about 26 million Americans -- nearly 1
in 11 -- reported using pot in the last year. About 72 percent of
users are white, about 60 percent under 26. Roughly 1.7 million
teens between 13 and 17 become new users every year.

About 4.5 million people sold it at least a few times per month,
mostly in small quantities. On average, about 2,000 Americans were
arrested every day in 2005 for possessing it alone -- most between
ages 15 and 24.

The marijuana market thrives in every corner of America and everyone
knows it's not going away. In the last 30 years, a government
eradication program has destroyed 103 million marijuana plants and
arrested millions of Americans for possessing or peddling marijuana,
yet it is more potent, easier to get and less expensive than it was
in 1981.

Gettman's study reinforces what long has been obvious to everyone
except the American Talibans who continue to write and enforce our
immoral, un-American drug prohibition laws:

The government war on (some) drugs has been a costly failure for
three decades. The mindless war on marijuana -- now almost 70 years
old -- is an even bigger bust.