E-MAIL ON MARIJUANA BUST DESERVES A RESPONSE

From the e-mails, voice mails and other sources:

GONE TO POT - I rarely react to letters to the editor regarding my
columns, but this one merits further comment:

"Arresting local marijuana growers just helps Mexican drug
cartels."

The author criticized law enforcement for busting the largest indoor
marijuana-growing operation ever discovered in Stanislaus County - so
sophisticated that it was capable of producing roughly $8 million a
year in finished product.

"Eliminating local marijuana growers only to have them replaced by
Mexican drug cartels that sell cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is
not a good thing," wrote Robert Sharpe, a policy analyst for the
Common Sense for Drug Policy organization in Washington, D.C.

Some thoughts about his thoughts:

That's the worst "buy American" argument I've ever read. And I've got
news for him: The Mexican cartels have been here for decades,
trafficking in everything from drugs to people to drugs inside people.
Busting that warehouse in Crows Landing won't create a void for the
Mexican drug runners to fill. At best, it merely shut down one of
their competitors.

Marijuana is legal only for medicinal purposes in California. If you
advocate legalizing it for recreational use, too, you have every right
to organize, lobby, campaign and exercise your free speech rights
toward changing the law. Until then, though, you can't manufacture,
sell or possess it.

If we had reported that authorities, say, had long known about an
operation and hadn't busted it, they'd get criticized for that, too -
and rightfully so.

"Taxing and regulating marijuana, the most popular illicit drug, is a
cost-effective alternative to never-ending drug war," Sharpe wrote.

Maybe so. Maybe someday marijuana will become legal. Companies would
be required to make their employees file W-2 forms. They'd have to
withhold federal, state and local taxes and Social Security and pay
for workers comp. The owners themselves would pay income taxes as well.

Until then, these operations are burdened with none of the
restrictions other small-business owners must follow.

So there might be a day when marijuana is legalized for all to toke,
and its manufacturers will have to play by the same rules as other
businesses. Until then, it's illegal, meaning against the law.

Busting an operation like that is what authorities are supposed to
do.