I remember years ago when long-time locals around the Santa Cruz mountains discussed that drug cartels were moving in and setting up huge operations in the parks as the state enforced stronger border controls and reduced spending on park rangers and enforcement.
It made sense. With the cost and risk of importing drugs increased by a closing border the cartels arranged for low-risk domestic operations. Apparently one of the side-effects of this trend has been a rash of forest fires. Law enforcement blames these fires on accidents by those tending the drug farms:
“No pun intended, it’s a growing problem,” U.S. Forest Service Special Agent Russ Arthur said.
Arthur said an unspecified “cooking device” left at an encampment by suspected drug traffickers sparked the blaze on Aug. 8 that has scorched more than 137 square miles of brush and timber and briefly threatened two dozen ranches and homes.
That’s the worst pun on an incident since the a DEA Special Agent said world-champion downhill mountain bike racer Missy Giove had gone “downhill fast” into drug trafficking.
Anyway, it also seems plausible to me that fires are intentional and meant as a cheap way to smoke out defenders or destroy operations. Anti-drug agents? Warring drug cartels? They both have motive that fits. The article says in this case the drug plants didn’t burn and were instead pulled out by hand, so apparently the massive fires somehow avoided the crops.
Arthur said an unspecified “cooking device” left at an encampment by suspected drug traffickers sparked the blaze on Aug. 8 that has scorched more than 137 square miles of brush and timber and briefly threatened two dozen ranches and homes.
About 30,000 marijuana plants and an AK-47 assault rifle were found near the origin of the blaze in a remote canyon in Los Padres National Forest, authorities said at a news conference. Arthur said the plants’ quality is similar to marijuana linked to Mexican drug cartels, though he acknowledged the investigation into the link was ongoing.
Why would that rifle be left behind? The article even mentions that someone returned to the origin spot of the fire several days later. 30K plants is small, in terms of California farms, but not so small that it would avoid a giant fire. Strange story.
In Santa Barbara County alone, sheriff’s investigators have recovered more than 225,000 pot plants in the past five months, Brown said. The plants have an estimated street value of about $675 million.
In the Sierra Nevada, an ongoing search has resulted in dozens of prosecutions and the destruction of more than 400,000 marijuana plants.
$675K divided by 225K is 3, so that gives each plant a street value of just $3. The Sierra Nevada operations have thus destroyed $1.2 million in drug value, but there is no estimate given for the percentage of total operations or impact.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the political spectrum in California, Oakland has passed a 1.8 percent tax on medical marijuana sales.
“It is important because the city of Oakland is facing a massive deficit like many jurisdictions in California,” said Steve DeAngelo, a leader of one of the city’s cannabis clubs. “And we decided to step up to the plate and make a contribution to the city in a time of need.”
DeAngelo, one of the people who led the effort to get the tax approved, said his business will now have to pay more than $350,000 from the new tax next year.
Would this tax revenue cover the cost of destroying illegal farms? Perhaps even more interesting would be to try and figure out if the rate of forest fires would decrease if parks were policed more carefully for drug farms and farming was regulated instead of banned. It all makes for interesting risk versus rewards calculations.
The money spent closing the border to drug traffic did not reduce the flow of drugs but instead created many more complicated and dangerous headaches for law enforcement. Let this be a reminder that a firewall is only the first step in security controls. There are many more elements of prevention as well as detection that should be in budget.