Pubdate: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 Source: Arizona Daily Sun (AZ) Copyright: 2005 Arizona Daily Sun Contact: http://www.azdailysun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1906 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis) WAR ON WEED REQUIRES NEW TECHNIQUES, MORE FUNDS Who would have thought it: Hot, dry Arizona has become a prime location for illegal marijuana farming. But for those in the know, Arizona makes perfect sense. It has high-elevation pine forests with remote, protected valleys that get plenty of rain in the summer. And it's close to Mexico, where drug cartels have the money and the muscle to undertake major, cross-border marijuana-growing operations. Not all the details of the latest pot farm bust in the national forest near Strawberry have been released -- the U.S. Attorney's Office has scheduled a press conference today in Phoenix. But the fact that the feds are involved makes it a good assumption these weren't just a bunch of good 'ol boys up in the hills growing some weed for their own enjoyment. The trend in recent years has been for drug cartels from Mexico and Colombia to dispatch workers loaded with fertilizer and armed with AK-47s to remote U.S. public lands in the spring, then work the farms through the summer, often setting up water lines from creeks, well-equipped camps and garbage dumps. One estimate has a typical pot farm developing 180 acres of wilderness for every five acres under cultivation. The size of the farms -- one bust in California yielded 79,000 plants and there have been an equal number of plants pulled from the Tonto National Forest so far this year -- makes it hard to believe they can escape detection. But most national forests, including the Coconino, cover millions of acres yet have only a handful of patrol rangers who spend most of their time near high-use areas like campgrounds and trailheads. It's unrealistic to expect federal land managers to know exactly what's going on in every square mile of their territory, especially if those on public lands don't want to be found. What the public should have a right to expect is a more sophisticated approach by law enforcement to match the sophistication of the criminals. These are multi-national, billion-dollar "corporations" that should be policed as white-collar criminals. Who, for example, is supplying the funds and laundering them? Why isn't the U.S. Justice Department pressuring the Fox government to issue search warrants and turn over evidence of U.S.-based crimes by Mexican drug lords to U.S. authorities, the better to produce local indictments and extradition orders? Locally, who is supplying the labor for the pot farms? Undocumented workers don't just suddenly show up in the middle of a wilderness looking for the work. If there are U.S. nationals involved in supplying transportation and protection, where are the funds and guns coming from? It's bad enough that our national forests are so understaffed that it's impossible to prevent the replanting of vast stretches in high-grade pot. But now that word is out about how our public lands are being exploited by foreign drug cartels, it might be time to redirect back to the United States the billions of dollars the federal government has spent to eradicate coca plantations in Colombia. Monday's bust in the Coconino National Forest shows that the war on weed is right in our back yard, and it's no longer acceptable to conduct business as usual. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth