FOREST SERVICE SENDING AGENTS BACK TO WOODS

Our view: The rise in giant backcountry pot gardens coincides with a
sharp drop in the Forest Service's law enforcement staffing in
California. A reversal of the second trend holds promise for
combating the first.

Anyone who loves the north state's forests has to be happy about the
U.S. Forest Service's plans to aggressively push back against
large-scale marijuana growing on public lands.

While pot growers have always taken advantage of our vast open
spaces, plantations with tens of thousands of plants have become
increasingly common in the past decade in Northern California's
backcountry. Fertilized by huge profits and, authorities say, the
organization of drug cartels, the problem has grown like an
out-of-control weed.

The Forest Service plans to approximately double the number of
law-enforcement agents -- to 160 -- working California's national
forests by next year's growing season.

Those 160 officers will still be stretched thin over the 22 million
acres of national forest in the state. (By contrast, the Redding
police department has 119 sworn officers patrolling and investigating
crimes in the city limits.) Still, the new people will make a dent,
and they'll reverse a decline in law enforcement. Back in 1992,
according to Forest Service documents, the region had 175 officers.
It's not hard to connect the dots between the shrinking number of
badges in the past 15 years and increasingly brazen growers.

Critics of the "war on drugs" argue that it's a futile fight, that
someone will find a way to supply illicit smokers' demand. True
enough, but they can find somewhere else to do it than our recreation
and wilderness areas. And the state outlawed marijuana in 1913 --
nearly a century ago. It's only in the past few years that these
massive gardens have started popping up all over.

The high-profile marijuana news this summer has sparked a lot of
debate about our drug laws. Some Californians think the best
resolution would be to legalize pot.

Indeed, in parts of the state that's not a fringe view but well in
the political mainstream. Late last month, the Humboldt County Board
of Supervisors voted 4-0 to send a letter to the North Coast's Rep.
Mike Thompson seeking federal legalization of the herb. Mendocino
County's supervisors approved a similar resolution in June.

Would such a measure even pass the laugh test on our side of the
Coast Range? Can anyone imagine, say, Shasta County Supervisor Linda
Hartman voting to legalize pot?

There's a lot of talk about illegal immigration and border control
these days, but the government ought to have passport control
somewhere along Highway 299. Plainly the Redwood Coast is another country.