HOW TO END THE POT BATTLES

Last month the Marion County Sheriff's Office issued a report of a
type that has become almost routine in the mid-valley. And it will
remain common unless the country makes a change in its laws.

The department's street crimes unit had ripped up more than 300
marijuana plants from a field in remote Silver Creek Canyon between
Sublimity and Silverton. Deputies found four different pot
plantations on privately owned land in very rugged terrain. The
plants were from 1 to 7 feet tall. If they had been left standing
until harvested, deputies said, they would have had a street value
estimated at nearly a million dollars.

A few days before, in Linn County, deputies reported finding a
smaller marijuana field and arresting the alleged grower. This one
was not all that remote.

Since then, Linn County raided at least one other pot plantation. And
just a few days ago, the Oregon State Police reported stopping two
vehicles on I-5 in Southern Oregon with hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of marijuana in bags.

Evidently, the legalized growing of small amounts of allegedly
medical pot has not put a dent in the illegal side of the trade.

One unusual thing about the August raid in Marion County was that
when the street crimes unit and a SWAT team got there, they startled
two young men, one with a rifle over his shoulder, who fled into the
woods. The men were caught a while later and jailed, and the
sheriff's office said they were from Mexico. (Just the other day
Attorney General John Kroger announced getting a federal grant to
fight Mexican drug gangs in Oregon.)

It doesn't take much of an imagination to fear that turf battles
between rival pot farmers might end in gunplay and bloodshed.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office had some advice: "If you are in
the woods or a remote location and come across what you believe to be
a marijuana grow, you should immediately leave the area and contact
law enforcement. If possible make a note of the location and GPS
coordinates if you have them available."

The situation is not likely to get better any time soon. When there's
a crop that grows well in the soil of Oregon's forests, and when a
mere 300 plants can eventually be worth close to a million dollars,
it doesn't take a genius to predict that criminals are going to try
to grow and sell it even though it's illegal.

Over the years, suggestions have been made that Congress and the
legislature should change federal and state law to make marijuana
legal and tax it, kind of like alcohol or tobacco.

As long as those suggestions are ignored, criminals will continue to
see their chance, deputies will continue to uproot fields they find,
troopers will continue to stop the occasional couriers, and the woods
will remain a dangerous place.