LAX VIEWS OF POT GET SMOKED

It's not that I was joking about marijuana.

I just said that Anaheim Angels broadcaster Rex Hudler shouldn't lose
his job after being arrested for possessing it and admitting that he's
been an occasional user over the years. In truth, though, I was a
little glib. I wrote that pot-smoking and personal character weren't
necessarily linked and that we should bust "real criminals" and not
seemingly decent guys like Hudler. A number of readers didn't like my
brand of charity.

Their argument that pot was more serious than I suggested convinced me
to touch base with someone on the law-enforcement side of things and
get the current lowdown on marijuana. That led to Val Jimenez,
operations commander for a state pot-busting program that searches out
and eliminates marijuana gardens.

Business is booming, Jimenez says. The program seized 354,000
marijuana plants last year, a little more than one-fourth of the 1.2
million seized statewide by all law-enforcement groups, he says. So
far this year, Jimenez says, the program (Campaign Against Marijuana
Planting and operated out of the attorney general's office) has seized
370,000 plants. I invoked a picture of nice-guy Rex Hudler relaxing
with a joint in the privacy of his home. Jimenez - while not
necessarily going after Hudler - doesn't have nearly as warm and fuzzy
a view of Rex in his den. Jimenez's view is colored by raids in which
agents see big-money marijuana manufacturers, armed and protective of
their operations, battling to the finish.

In the last two weeks in Northern California, Jimenez says, two raids
resulted in agents fatally shooting four suspects. The stakes are high
because producing pot makes business sense to criminals.
"Realistically," Jimenez says, "when you think about it, there's not
that much cost in it compared to buying chemicals if you're making
methamphetamines." However, he adds, "the return could be up to $4,000
a plant.

One garden we eradicated up in Shasta County, we're talking about
33,000 plants.

Imagine at $4,000 a plant how much money you can derive." Jimenez also
talks about the damage pot producers are doing to public lands, which,
he says, have become increasingly favorite growing sites. To maintain
the sites, growers are diverting streams, putting dangerous chemicals
into the ground and illegally cutting brush.

And that's in addition to the threat they pose to unsuspecting campers
or hikers, he says. I remind Jimenez that his arguments are touching
on everything but the pot smoker and the traditional harangues of the
dangers of smoking it. He concedes the point, but says, "It all goes
hand in hand. If people weren't buying it and there wasn't a market
for it, these guys wouldn't be in business." He says, in effect, that
if the public isn't moved to quit smoking pot by anti-drug
pronouncements - and a Rand Corp. researcher tells me that upward of
18 million Americans may be smoking it - maybe people will tune in to
the reality of how marijuana gets to their doorstep. In other words,
Jimenez says, the public seems to accept that cocaine cartels pose
dangers by staying in business.

He hopes people will begin linking that same kind of unpleasantness
with big-business pot producers. Still, I can't help but notice that
Jimenez isn't preachy about marijuana use. He simply reiterates that
it's illegal and that users are keeping dangerous people in business.

He says the "forensic people" know that enhanced technology has made
pot more potent than in the past and that some studies - but not all -
suggest that pot smokers move on to harder drugs. So, no, Jimenez
didn't take the bait to rail at Rex Hudler for being a menace to
society. But I get the feeling he'd love to sit him down and have a
nice, long conversation with him.