FEDERAL DOLLARS HELPING FIGHT DRUG WAR? GOOD

Is Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko a mercenary, taking federal cash
to pursue marijuana growers while his department's budget cuts leave
more serious crimes unaddressed?

A front-page Wall Street Journal story this weekend didn't say that,
but its exploration of the financial dynamics that have left the
sheriff cutting routine patrols because of falling local taxes even as
teams prowl the backcountry for illegal plantations fed that line of
thinking, especially among drug-war skeptics. In a typical takeaway,
the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project's Mike Meno wrote in an
online commentary that "it really all comes down to money."

Now, there's no denying that the sheriff can pursue marijuana
eradication because of the money. Without the federal cash, systematic
local anti-drug efforts would shrink as surely as day-to-day sheriff's
services have. But in that respect, it's no different from similar
grants to fight elder abuse, computer crimes or drunken driving.

The underlying question is whether illegal pot growing in Shasta
County's forests - especially on remote public lands - is worth fighting.

Let's see? Growers illegally divert water, pollute pristine streams
with fertilizers and pesticides, poach wildlife, periodically shoot at
hunters or hikers unlucky enough to stumble on their plantations - all
without so much as a wilderness fire permit.

Oh, and that's without mentioning the illegal crop itself and the
criminals whose pockets it lines. Growers have planted marijuana in
the north state's woods for decades, but the scale of recent
operations, such as the 40,000-plant farm near Oak Run that the
Sheriff's Department raided last month, is on an entirely different
scale. Last year, in Shasta County alone, authorities uprooted more
than 600,000 plants - approximately the total that the Campaign
Against Marijuana Planting seized in the entire state in 2004.

You don't have to be a die-hard drug warrior to see our national parks
and forests being hijacked by criminals and think it's the
government's job to push back. And indeed, the anti-marijuana money
didn't just drop from the sky. Local authorities and federal land
managers lobbied hard for the resources to address a plainly
mushrooming problem. And much of this growing is on federal land,
which makes it a federal problem.

Is this a doomed battle so long as users demand the illegal drug?
Would we be better off if growers could plant their crops legally
between the olives and walnuts of the Sacramento Valley instead of
clandestinely in the backcountry? Maybe so, and California's voters
will have their say in November on an initiative to legalize marijuana
in the state.

In the meantime, it would be insane to surrender Shasta County's
majestic forests to ever more ambitious pot growers. And if federal
money helps the struggling county Sheriff's Department keep an
out-of-control problem from growing even worse, it's hard to see cause
to complain.