ENOUGH

Yes, Humboldt County loves its outlaw self-image. We all enjoy doing
our thing and flaunting it in The Man's face. We're the spiritual home
of freaks and rebels and dropouts everywhere, and we like it that way.
We've got hundreds of square miles of wilderness and four or five of
the prettiest, most human towns in the state, along with a couple that
may yet be redeemed.

Partly by design and partly by accident, we've largely resisted the
tidal wave of vapidity that has swallowed the landscape of almost
every other part of the country. Let's raise our glasses and hope it
stays that way for the next hundred years.

I'm right there with you.

Still, it's long past time to do away with the soul-deadening
hypocrisy that arises from our big cash cow -- marijuana prohibition.
It's time for us to wholeheartedly lend our voices to a rapidly
growing national movement demanding that the United States raise the
white flag on the very stupidest front of the War on Drugs, a set of
colossally idiotic and failed policies bequeathed to us by Ronald
Reagan and his predecessors. Remember Peter Tosh? Remember that song,
"Legalize It"? That should be Humboldt County's national anthem.

They should play it before every Crabs game, and fans should rise and
place hands on hearts.

I don't expect this to become official policy overnight.

Why not? It's not that Humboldt County's tattered conservative
establishment stands in the way -- the Good Ol' Boys of yesteryear
have been out of the picture, politically speaking, for quite some
time now. No. The Humboldt County residents who would most fiercely
resist legalization today are the dope growers themselves. They're not
making money off of marijuana, after all. They're making money off
prohibition. With every step we take to ending this counterproductive
war -- as with Prop. 215 -- they will make less and less. And yes,
it's true -- all of us, we residents of Humboldt County, will make
less and less.

Tough. We can live with a little less cash in the bank -- we're
rebels, remember? -- but we can't continue to abide the damage that
the drug war does to our soul and our spirits.

Those who root for it to continue out of self-interest aren't real
Humboldt County people, and they are welcome to haul their asses out
of town.

On Monday night, 21-year-old local resident David Fields and a
19-year-old associate from the Bay Area arranged to buy a mass
quantity of weed at a McKinleyville intersection. (Fields' city of
residence was unavailable at press time.) When the deal was ready to
go down, Fields and his associate allegedly drew guns on the sellers,
forced them to lay down in the middle of the road and drove away
firing shots into the air, 14 lbs. richer.

The Sheriff's Office got a report and caught up with the assailants on
Giuntoli Lane. A chase ensued, during which the assailants fired on
sheriff's deputies and the CHP. Finally, after driving over a spike
strip, their car veered off the road and went over an embankment.
Somehow, both of them ended up with gunshot wounds to the head, though
according to a press release law enforcement personnel never fired
their weapons.

Fields was dead, the associate survived.

This strange case is just the latest episode in a long series of
murder, "disappearance," arson, accidental fire, diesel spillage, home
invasion, etc., etc. that marijuana prohibition has inspired in
Humboldt County. This is the fruit of our agricultural industry.

This and the cash. There are people in our county who tell you to shut
up about legalization, that it will blow their game. This -- Fields'
stupid death, triggered by God knows what visions of escape -- is what
they are arguing for. That and the murder of Reetpaul Rana, the murder
of Sean Akselsen, the probable murder of Chris Giauque, the poisoning
of Hacker Creek, and on and on.

What we have to understand is that too many of today's growers have
nothing to do with our parent's age, when growing a cash crop out in
the back field was a way of bringing on the Age of Aquarius. For all
their goofiness, the original back-to-the-landers had some sense of
purpose beyond driving a new car and buying vacation property in Costa
Rica. There's a whole new crop of growers for whom American mass
culture is their mother's milk. They simply do not give a shit. These
are the thuggish types who boycott and slander the Arcata Eye for
reporting the facts about grow houses in that town, and whine whenever
this paper publishes anything that threatens to give away the big
secret that people grow weed in Humboldt County. ("Thuggish," I say --
mercifully, their post-slacker lack of balls mostly prevents them
being thugs in fact.)

Meanwhile, none other than Gov. Schwarzenegger -- like our last three
presidents, an ex-toker -- is calling for an open debate about
legalization. Let's take him up on it, and do him one better.

This is Humboldt County, for fuck's sake.