Theft of water during a drought. The exploitation of immigrant laborers. Intimidation of residents by armed criminals.
A Democratic state senator from southern Oregon said his region, awash in illegal marijuana farms that are protected by gunmen, is starting to look more like a failed state.
After hearing him and others testify this week, the Oregon Legislature dedicated $25 million to help police, sheriff’s offices and community organizations pay for the ballooning costs of cracking down on the thousands of industrial-scale, illegal cannabis farms. Residents said the assistance is welcome but not enough.
Awash in illegal cannabis farms, Oregon plans millions for relief – OPB
Damn it! This si what the War on drugs has brought us. If we would only legalize pot and allow for the farming of it under government control, we would not be seeing stuff like this happening.
Seven years after Oregon voters passed a ballot measure legalizing the recreational use of marijuana and its regulated cultivation and sale, the state is grappling with an explosion of illegal marijuana farms that have brazenly cropped up, primarily in Josephine and Jackson counties in the south.
How’s that possible? /end sarcasm>
I am still amazed that government and potheads in general thought crime cartels would just go away with their heads bowed in defeat. You go ahead and allow a demand to be increased tenfold by legalizing a drug habit and you thought only those you allowed because you make them pay “legal” extortion money will produce the Devil’s oregano? And the farmers rather than point out the idiocy, go after other farmers.
The farmer also blames landowners for selling or leasing property to bad actors.
“If somebody walks onto your property with a suitcase with $100,000 in $20 bills, you kind of know they’re not on the up and up. And if you take that money and allow them to do something on your land, you should probably anticipate that they’re there to break the law,” he said.
Dude, if some Mexican enforcer show up with a shitload of cash for my land (rental or buy) I’d take the money too. They still run under the directive of “Plomo o Plata” (Lead or Cash) and I enjoy breathing pretty much to risk it because you were dumb enough to buy in the Legalization fairy tale and now you are butthurt and soaked with debt.
The Law of Unintended Consequences never fails to impress me.
Only the government can legalize drug selling and cultivation but do it so inefficiently and bureaucractically that it literally is still more profitable to do it illegally.
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” – Milton Friedman
Unintended consequences? Yes … But this was foreseeable, to some extent at least.
Do you think this is only happening in Oregon?
Look hard enough and I bet you find this in California, Washington, Colorado and every other state that legalized “pot.” Add in Canada too.
I bet the next step will be counterfeiting all the state tax stamps and raising their profit margins by selling at the Government Approved Prices. Just like liquor and cigarettes,
Just saying, if the Oregon and Californian governments had allowed that region of southern Oregon and the northern regions of California to join together as the State of Jefferson, they wouldn’t have that problem.
But, if formed, Jefferson would be a very Red state, and would have federal representation in the House and Senate, which in many years (including this one) would tip the balance of power away from the “Progressives”. The Blue States cannot allow that.
(Note the dates on those: the proposal for the State of Jefferson has been around for over 80 years; it is not a new idea, but unfortunately isn’t likely to go anywhere anytime soon.)
Only if by “anytime soon” you mean “at any point in recorded human history.”
How long before someone decides the fix for the illegal pot “farms” might be a planeload of something nasty.
“But they didn’t try real legalization.” – every True Believer Libertarian
If you thought a
WarSlapfight On (Some) Drugs, With Collateral Damage was expensive, wait until you try making peace with them.Aesop- they literally didn’t try real legalization. There is nothing different between tobacco farming and marijuana farming – except the later is highly illegal. Why aren’t there armed criminals protecting tobacco crops? Because anybody can make it without interference from the government, and because of that its available cheap.
So if you make tobacco and marijuana on the same level, there will be no collateral damage.
This is real easy, and only people like you who love to ignore all the damage to liberty caused by the HARD War on “BAD” drugs – which in no way was “a slapfight” – just ask the 1 year old baby who was seriously injured when he had a grenade thrown in his playpen by government tyrant agents because some people might enjoy a different intoxicant than you!
This.