A piece in Mexico's El Universal called illegal drugs the "root of evil for conservationists." From deforestation in Chihuahua's Copper Canyon by marijuana and opium growers to make way for their crops, to cocaine dumping near the fragile reef nurseries in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico by traffickers, writer Talli Nauman laments:

So it goes. No word yet on either the South Dakota medical marijuana lawsuit or whether the Portland initiative made the ballot (although I'm hearing disquieting rumblings on the latter), which were going to be some of my features this week. So I'm now shifting gears and attempting to pull enough material together for two more probable features: The NATO takeover in southern Afghanistan (European politicians are beginning to murmur about the Senlis proposal as NATO troops start getting killed in larger numbers) and the call for a rational drug classification system in Britain.

Your tax dollars at work:

From the The Norman Transcript

A call from a concerned farmer in southeast Norman led Cleveland County Sheriff's Department deputies and Norman police officers to a field of 8,889 "wild" marijuana plants growing on private property early Monday morning. The plants ranged in size from 3 feet to 9 feet tall and would have a street value of up to $1,000 each, or around $8 million total, if allowed to grow and be harvested in the coming months, said Captain Doug Blaine, of the Cleveland County Sheriff's Department.

Now I’m not surprised about the plants. Feral hemp, also known as ditchweed, is indigenous to the region. The shocker here is that these officers, in a fit of unbelievable idiocy, actually attempted to place a street value on it. Ditchweed doesn’t get you high! It’s as worthless as the dirt it was yanked from.

Following the life-without-parole murder convictions of three ringleaders of the Chester, Pennsylvania "Boyle Street Boys," an editorial in the DelcoTimes called on the community to "unite to defeat the criminals." The operation sounds pretty ugly. According to the editorialist, Andre Cooper and brothers Jamain and Vincent Williams ran a lucrative cocaine operation in the Highland Gardens section of Chester until 2003 and "[f]or years... depended on the "Snitch & Die" mentality to ensure the silence of those who witnessed their illegal drug and weapons business... One of their murder victims was a teenage drug dealer whom the gang members suspected of being a police informant... Another was a federal witness, a 33-year-old mother of two, who was executed in her sister’s car the day before she was going to testify against gang members. Her own cousins were among those who plotted her killing."

I've been down with pneumonia, so I haven't talked to my sources yet this week, but I think I will be writing about a lawsuit filed against South Dakota's attorney general over the ballot summary language with which he is describing the state's medical marijuana initiative. And again, I await word from Portland on whether that city's "lowest law enforcement priority" initiative makes the ballot. I'm sure there is another story or two that'll break this week, and I've already got a bunch of other interesting items ready to go.