COUNTY STRIKES OVERDUE BLOW WITH 'ALESIA'

Hype about "Operation Alesia" aside, the concentrated effort against
backwoods marijuana growing in the north state is overdue, and Shasta
County Sheriff Tom Bosenko deserves credit for organizing the campaign.

Pot planters have hidden their gardens in California's forests for a
generation or two, but the scale of the illegal operations has
increased dramatically in the past decade and especially in the past
couple of years.

Following an old agricultural maxim -- "Get big or get out" --
growers have hidden networks of tens of thousands of plants out in
our watersheds. In Shasta County, the Whiskeytown and Lake Shasta
areas have become particularly popular.

The figures for seizures speak for themselves. In 2006, the statewide
Campaign Against Marijuana Planting uprooted nearly 1.7 million
plants. That is 18 times larger than the number drug agents found in 1996.

Are law enforcement's technology and tactics better? Perhaps, but the
growers' are, too.

Drug agents say the change in size stems from a change in their
management. Mom-and-pop growers, they argue, have lost ground to
Mexican cartels that find growing marijuana in the United States is
easier than smuggling it across the border.

Those cartels are "terrorists" to John Walters, the federal director
of anti-drug policy, who visited Redding on Thursday.

That language sounds like ridiculous hyperbole until you look at the
Mexican gangs' record of killing news reporters, police officers,
prosecutors and judges, not to mention their criminal rivals.

Has that violence spread to Shasta County? Thankfully no, but if the
cartels find a friendly northern climate, it's easy to predict what
will sprout in the long run.

Not just a criminal problem, industrial-scale marijuana growing in
our parks and national forests is also an environmental hazard, and
the current campaign is placing a new emphasis on cleaning up lands
as well as tearing out pot plants.

It was a shock to learn that drug gardens' messes were often left in
place -- even irrigation pipes, which let growers replant the same
plots the next year.

Bosenko and Forest Service officials said tight budgets have made
cleanup a low priority in the past, but that the problem has grown
serious enough to demand more attention. We hope the focus on
reclamation lasts longer than the two-week run of Operation Alesia.

Not everyone thinks marijuana deserves all this fuss, and in some of
our neighboring counties over on the North Coast, the drug is all but legal.

You could debate priorities and root causes all day, but the bottom
line is there's no reason to let organized crime take root in our
recreational areas.

In Roman times, the battle of Alesia was a decisive turning point in
Julius Caesar's wars against the Gauls in what is now France. No
memorable victory will ever end the war on marijuana, but most north
state residents would happily settle for pushing the front lines elsewhere.