Pubdate: Wed, 01 Sep 2010 Source: Albany Democrat-Herald (OR) Copyright: 2010 Lee Enterprises Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/HPOp5PfB Website: http://www.democratherald.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/7 Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/Area/Mexico THE CARTELS TOUCH OREGON It's one thing to read about the war among drug cartels in Mexico. It's another to be reminded once again -- by reporting, as the paper did Saturday -- that Mexican drug cartels are reaching into Oregon in a very direct, tangible and dangerous way. Linn County Sheriff Tim Mueller says that a major marijuana plantation in the woods of Linn County was apparently linked to a Mexican drug cartel. The place was raided on Aug. 20. Deputies and other officers found 900 plants along with an elaborate watering system. The men who ran it, though, fled into the brush and got away. In Mexico, the news reports tell us, the cartels are fighting about the drug routes into the United States. If so, what's to keep them from starting to fight about their plantations in Oregon? This is no game. It is not just a rougher side of some harmless recreation. On Aug. 11 in Jackson County, a Mexican national armed with a shotgun, who had been working at a pot plantation, was shot to death when law enforcement raided the place and he made a move as though to fire. Last week a grand jury in Medford took five minutes to find the shooting justified. But for good reasons, authorities kept confidential the names of the deputies who fired at the man. District Attorney Mark Huddleston said officers in California had become targets for the cartels' retaliation in similar circumstances. It goes without saying that stomping out the tentacles of foreign drug operations has to be a top priority of law enforcement, and not just locally. The Oregon attorney general has been eager to conduct himself as the top law enforcement official in Oregon. If he hasn't done so already, let him launch an initiative that finds and destroys all similar plantations in Oregon and catch the men that operate them. This situation seems almost like an armed foreign invasion. That means it would warrant involvement by the National Guard and whatever equipment it has, including helicopters, to locate the pot farms deep in Oregon woods, and then call in units to surround them with enough troops so that the operators cannot escape. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom