POT CALLED TOP CASH CROP IN AMERICA

Study: Market Value Exceeds $35 Billion

SACRAMENTO -- For years, activists in the marijuana legalization
movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop.
Now they're citing government statistics to prove it.

A report released Monday by a marijuana public policy analyst contends
that the market value of pot produced in the United States exceeds $35
billion--far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as
corn, soybeans and hay.

The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold
in the past quarter-century.

Jon Gettman, the report's author, is a proponent of the push to drop
marijuana from the federal list of hard-core Schedule 1 drugs, such as
heroin and LSD. He argues that the data support his push to begin
legalizing cannabis and reaping a tax windfall from it, while
controlling production and distribution to better restrict use by teenagers.

"Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid
of it," Gettman said.

But Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy, cited examples of countries that have struggled with
drug crops.

"Coca is Colombia's largest cash crop, and that hasn't worked out for
them, and opium poppies are Afghanistan's largest crop, and that has
worked out disastrously for them," Riley said.

Gettman's report cites figures in a 2005 State Department report
estimating U.S. cannabis cultivation at 10,000 metric tons--10 times
the 1981 production.

Using data on the number of pounds eradicated by U.S. police, Gettman
produced estimates of the likely size and value of the cannabis crop
in each state.

His methodology used what he described as a conservative value of
about $1,600 a pound compared with the $2,000- to $4,000-a-pound
street value often cited by law-enforcement agencies after busts.

Nationwide, the estimated cannabis production of $35.8 billion exceeds
corn ($23 billion), soybeans ($17.6 billion) and hay ($12.2 billion),
according to Gettman's findings.