DOPE GROWERS BLAMED FOR WILDFIRES

Huge Blaze in California Is Traced to Cannabis Farm and Prompts New
Calls for the Drug to Be Legalised

Marijuana has been accused of causing depression, triggering cancer
and turning sparkly teenagers into apathetic couch potatoes. Now it
is being held responsible for a heinous new misdemeanour: setting the
state of California on fire.

Police investigating a vast wildfire that burned almost 90,000 acres
of the Los Padres National Forest around Santa Barbara last weekend
have announced that it was started by a group of marijuana growers.
More than 30,000 plants were seized after the vast blaze, which had
filled the sky with orange smoke as far south as Los Angeles, 150
miles away, was traced to the cooking area of a cannabis plantation
on public land in a remote corner of the Sierra Madre mountains.

Six drug traffickers, apparently from Mexico, are believed to have
been responsible for the farming operation, which relied on diverting
a stream into a sophisticated irrigation network. Propane tanks,
water tubes, fertiliser and a semi-automatic weapon were also
recovered from the area.

In a region suffering acute water shortages, and where wildfires
destroy hundreds of homes and cause several deaths each year, police
have been quick to portray widespread rural cannabis farms as the
latest great threat to public safety. "No pun intended, but it's a
growing problem," said US Forest Service Special Agent Russ Arthur.
Cannabis farmers are suspected of starting five or six smaller blazes
already this year, he said.

Any activity - illegal or otherwise - that encourages people to camp
out in the tinder-dry wilderness is likely to result in accidental
fires, he added. Last weekend's blaze, which saw dozens of homes and
ranches evacuated, was caused by a faulty cooking device. Police say
that a recent crackdown on urban marijuana growers has prompted drug
gangs to step up their operations in remote areas. In the past six
months, in Santa Barbara County alone, police have recovered 225,000
pot plants, with a street value of UKP675m.

The news is fuelling debate over the status of the drug, in a state
where some regions never quite emerged from the Summer of Love.
Medicinal marijuana use was introduced in California by a majority
vote in a 1996 referendum, but the drug remains officially proscribed
under federal law. In practice, this means that cannabis is readily
available to any Californian able to find a doctor who, for a small
fee, will sign a piece of paper asserting that they suffer from a
condition such as insomnia or anxiety.

However, so-called "dispensaries" that supply the drug are in a
trickier legal position. In some areas, they are tolerated, but in
others, owners have been prosecuted for committing a federal offence.
In July, a series of TV advertisements appeared supporting a bill by
a Democratic assemblyman, Tom Ammiano, to legalise the drug
completely, introducing a new "weed tax" that would raise an
estimated $1bn (UKP600m) a year for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's
cash-strapped administration.

Pro-legalisation campaigners say that last week's fire, together with
the proliferation of illegal farms in other tinder-dry rural areas,
strengthens the case for legal reform. "With any other agricultural
product, farmers must obey environmental laws and labour laws that
prevent things like fires happening," Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana
Policy Project said. "None of that applies to an illegal industry. In
fact, illegality merely incentivises them to farm in remote and
ecologically sensitive areas.

"You don't hear of fires being started by Mexican beer cartels. This
is a clear example of law enforcement making a problem worse -it has
literally driven marijuana growers, which at present include some of
the most unsavoury people on the planet, into California's hills."