REEFER MADNESS

Recently, more than 200 federal, state and local law enforcement
officers launched a huge marijuana-eradication effort in the mountains
of Shasta County. The strike, dubbed Operation Alesia, was so big that
even President Bush's drug czar, John Walters, flew out to Redding on
July 12 to kick it off.

"America's public lands are under attack," Walters said, charging that
heavily armed Mexican drug cartels had turned the national forests
into "ground zero for drug cultivation. These violent drug traffickers
are endangering America's outdoor enthusiasts and sportsmen, and the
sensitive ecosystems of our wilderness."

The week-long operation was a big success, if success is measured by
the number of plants seized--283,397 in this case.

But will all that expenditure of manpower and resources do much good
in the long term? Probably not. Marijuana gardens are low-investment,
high-yield ventures. If they don't produce a crop, little is lost, at
least as far as the cartel bosses are concerned. If some low-paid
workers end up spending 10 years in prison, as well could happen to
the 16 Mexican nationals arrested during Operation Alesia, the cartels
don't care. They'll just try again next year. There are a lot of
forests in California.

Not that long ago, most marijuana growers in California were local
people living in the woods who cultivated the herb on their own land.
Gradually, law enforcement drove most of them out of business, but
demand for the product didn't go away--nor did the lure of high
profits. Well-financed Mexican operators moved in to fill the void.

All the pot seizures in the world aren't going to stop them. According
to an October 2006 press release issued by former state Attorney
General Bill Lockyer, the number of seizures increased by more than
1,200 percent in the past decade--and yet marijuana remains
California's No. 1 cash crop, worth almost $14 billion annually.

For more than 30 years government has been trying to convince people
not to use marijuana and spent billions of dollars trying to catch pot
growers, and yet marijuana is still big business. It's crazy to keep
doing something that doesn't work, especially when it's so expensive.
It's time for a new approach, one that acknowledges reality.

We believe marijuana should be legalized and regulated. That's what we
do with wine, for example, and it seems to work. As Bruce Mirken, of
the Marijuana Policy Project, notes, "There's a reason you never hear
about clandestine vineyards hidden in national parks and forests. If
we regulated marijuana as we do wine, the problem Walters denounces so
vehemently would disappear overnight."