Marijuana Eradication is Destroying Everything Except Marijuana
As a child, my folks took me to see the magnificent trees in Sequoia National Park and I'll never forget it as long as I live. It's a precious ecosystem, housing the largest trees in the world as well as countless other unique plant-life not found anywhere else on earth. Not surprisingly, it's also a great place to grow marijuana and that could soon become its downfall:
She's damn right we're letting them do it. We've surrendered the fate of irreplaceable national treasures to these drug traffickers, simply because we won't allow responsible Americans to produce their own marijuana on private property. The consequences of our failure are catastrophic, yet the solution is painfully simple.
It's really amazing to watch the police, the forest service, and the press just cringing and whining about this awful problem, without uttering a word about how we're going to save our forests from imminent destruction. They seriously don’t have a clue. You can read any of the dozens of recently published stories on this topic without seeing anyone even attempt to figure it out. Their only idea is to keep pulling up pot plants, as the growers plant ever more to ensure that some survive.
Fortunately, there exists one perfect solution to this problem. And it offers far more than the salvation of our precious wilderness. When we fix our marijuana laws, I guarantee you, we will solve problems we didn’t even know we had.
In Sequoia National Park, $1 million has been spent since 2006 on marijuana plantation cleanup alone, and the damage done to Crystal Cave will be felt for years to come, said the park spokeswoman, Adrienne Freeman.
"We are continually discovering new species in that cave, and we are letting Mexican cartels threaten to wipe that out," she said. [CNN]
She's damn right we're letting them do it. We've surrendered the fate of irreplaceable national treasures to these drug traffickers, simply because we won't allow responsible Americans to produce their own marijuana on private property. The consequences of our failure are catastrophic, yet the solution is painfully simple.
It's really amazing to watch the police, the forest service, and the press just cringing and whining about this awful problem, without uttering a word about how we're going to save our forests from imminent destruction. They seriously don’t have a clue. You can read any of the dozens of recently published stories on this topic without seeing anyone even attempt to figure it out. Their only idea is to keep pulling up pot plants, as the growers plant ever more to ensure that some survive.
Fortunately, there exists one perfect solution to this problem. And it offers far more than the salvation of our precious wilderness. When we fix our marijuana laws, I guarantee you, we will solve problems we didn’t even know we had.
Looking for the easiest way to join the anti-drug war movement? You've found it!
Club Sierra might be a
Club Sierra might be a vector to spread the word about the harms of prohibition and the pluses of legalization; when our precious world is harmed we are all harmed.
Reply to Primus
I am more than sorry to inform you Primus that with the exception of our public lands,''thank God we do have those, for now'' this world is not ours,''the common home of humanity,as it should be'' but the'' private property'' of a small percentage of the human population who thouraghly believe they should be able do anything with their private property they see fit even if the rest of us is harmed.You must understand that these people are in favor of freedom and human wellbeing only to the extent that they can profit directly from such virtues.When freedom and the wellbeing of the 90 plus percent of humanity that does not belong to the ownership class threatens the power and or profits of the elite those virtues are cast aside in favor of totalitarian and facistic acts which insure that the masses never taste real freedom and wellbeing.
The facts are quite clear;the elite will first destroy humanity and the natural enviroment with their arsenals of nukes and biochemical weopons before they will loose or sucsede power to whom power rightfully belongs'',that is the people''.
Indeed this is not our world but the private property of the elite.This is why we now live in an age when a person can be incarcerated for the personal use of a plant ,''in the name of protecting the public wellbeing'' while ultra wealthy manufactorers of the most deadly of weopons,''even nukes'' walk scott free and enjoy the best life has to offer,all at our expence. It is really quite insane,but yet we still call it civilization !
Anti-patterns in social advocacy
Hi James.
Your post has inspired me to get off my ass and write my first post (in a series) discussing anti-patterns in social advocacy. By this I mean patterns of behaviour that one finds in social advocacy groups that are decidedly counter-productive. If you'd like to read it, you can find it here.
I assume that your intentions are good, but if you take the time to re-read your post, it can be parsed to the following sentence: "Primus, don't bother doing anything. Everything is shit, and will remain shit, so just give up until the planet is destroyed".
I hope that you can see this just isn't helpful. You're telling people who care about ending prohibition to give up, and you're chasing away people who might be making up their mind about the issue. I'm sorry that you feel such a deep sense of despair about the world, and I can certainly sympathise with your conclusions and how you may have arrived at them. However, I can assure you that working a focused and directed way towards our goal is far more likely to have a positive result than giving up and sinking into despair and cynicism.
The goal should be a realistic assessment of the situation and a concerted effort towards improvement. Certainly the reality is sobering and difficult, but your a-priori capitulation enforces the status-quo, and the above post works against the ending of cannabis-prohibition, not towards it.
I actually think contacting the Sierra Club (and other environmental organisations) and trying to get them to take a stance on ending prohibition is a good idea.
www.glenstark.net
Because I bought a $60,000 home I'm an ELITE?
Because I bought a $60,000 home I'm an ELITE?
Does that mean if I buy another affordable fixer... for my daughter... I will become a member of the super-elite? No, I don't think so.. it does make me a member of the super-burdened... paying exorbitant property taxes... 8th highest in the nation!
Like Glen S. says you may be well intentioned... but don't call everyone elite just becasue they bought property... affordable or otherwise.
Sure, there are flaws in our western civilizations class system... powered by consumption capitalism... a hyper-competetive system that seems more ruse... then obtainable dream sometimes!
Your attack on the ever increasing global 'ownership society' makes you sound rather socialist. Are you against owning all 'real property' and suggesting individuals should be limited in cost, living space, and location? Perhaps the tenement housing I'm fimiliar with in NYC should be everyones appointed dreamy domicile?
Are you also against 'owning yourself'' and what you can consume... or should that be further regulated for parities sake?
Choose Legality,
Thomas Paine IVXX
B.S. "Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor, which could be considered as the precursor of the modern idea of citizen's income or basic income. The money would be raised by taxing all direct inheritances at 10%, and "indirect" inheritances - those not going to close relations - at a somewhat higher rate" - Wiki
If you deny property rights you deny freedom
Property rights are the basis from which all other rights derive. The most important piece of property one owns is one's own body and the proceeds of the labor of that body. One has the absolute right to LIVE however one desires to live as long as one does no physical harm to another or another's property. One has the absolute right to defend oneself from any form of assault (physical, economic, emotional). This is what is meant by the "unalienable rights" -- "Life, Liberty and the" Right to Own Property (which was changed in our Founding Document to "Pursuit of Happiness").
No other person/group/government has the legitimate legal authority to take from you the fruits of your labor, tho you have the absolute right to give those fruits away or trade them for other forms of property and sustenance.
No other person/group/government has the legitimate legal authority to tell you what you may do with or to your own body once you have reached the arbitrary age of majority.
Therefore, any laws which ban the use of certain substances, the selling of parts of one's body (prostitution, organ sale, labor), the modification of one's body (tattoos, piercings, scarring, etc.), or the mandating of certain actions or substances (mandatory vaccines, the draft, taxes, etc.) are absolutely a violation of one's most important unalienable Right -- the right to self.
I'm pro-choice on EVERYTHING!
Yet another prohibition-induced harm
I've been reading your site for some time now -- this is the umteenth example of the harms caused by prohibiting marijuana. To me, it seems like everyone should really be quite up in arms about this right now -- at this point in the game there is essentially something to get everyone fired up about marijuana prohibition! Obama needs to start a dialogue.
- George
it's more important to them to make cannabis users suffer
than to protect our national treasures. One more thing history will judge the alcohol supremacist drug war fanatics harshly for doing to America.
Sad
So sad and frustrating.
It's horrifyingly simple.
It's horrifyingly simple. It may already be too late. Amerika is about to become a fascist neo-nazi police state. While we ramble on about our supposed "freedoms" our government and those so called elites, who pulll the strings continue to tighten their hold on us. It is already too late. Our freedoms are gone. Everywhere you go, they know where you are, who you are talking to and what you are doing. You can thank cell phones and gps. Cameras are popping up everywhere I go. Big Brother is watching and plotting their global New World Order. The media, TV, all public education and the internet are pretty much under their control. We have to play by their rules now. Democracy is a joke and the will of the people? Ha! we are like sheep being led to the slaughter.
The plan is to destroy America as we know it. Both financially and politically. When we are done destroying ourselves, those who are left will be only too glad to join the NWO for the promise of peace and safety.
Now they're coming for our guns and our children. Enjoy your weed while you still can. We can't take care of ourselves but the government can.
Wake up people! Stop watching TV, forget about your sports heroes, hollywood movie stars or whatever fantasy world you live in and check out the state of the world around you. If we don't rise up and start making some noise our voices will never be heard. The hour draws late. It's time, past time really, to take our country back.
God save the USA.
John
Of course pulling all the
Of course pulling all the wild marijuana is a bad idea. Think of all the roots you just decided to yank outta the damn ground. Now think about the fact all those roots were holding everything else in place, along with providing mass amounts of nutrients to the soil surrounding it. Does that make any sense? Everyone complains about how we're doing our own environment harm just by pulling trees, so only trees have to be saved?
Go start some civilized protests about it or something. Tell them to stop destroying our forests as a whole, as anything in them is growing wildly there, and to disrupt the ecosystem like that will only lead to more problems.
Engage mind before putting mouth (or keyboard) into gear
Seriously, if you're going to take the time to comment, you could take the effort to read the article. The discussion here is about the harm being done to protected ecosystems by people planting marijuanna illegally on ecologically protected land. They are sneaking into national forests and national parks and illegally planting marijuanna becuase they can't do it legally on farm land, or in their back yard. The point to take here is eliminating prohibition would eliminate this problem.
This isn't just nitpicking guys. Successful advocacy is accomplished through educated activism.
www.glenstark.net
I hear you... erosion control is important...
I hear you... erosion control is important... especially in mountainous terrain. Erosion from poor logging practices, that causes mud to pour mud into the rivers killing precious fish hatcherys, helped the 'greens' to force new and improved logging technics onto the industry.
As someone who trains in mountainous terrain on state land leased by logging companies you would probably be appauled at the gross waste by logging companies when no one can see. Lumber by the acre rots in giant piles because the market makes it cheaper to cut trees down and let them rot then bring them to market.... at least an axeman got a paycheck somewhere?
TPIVXX
Human rights
Why does no one see that the marijuana issue is a basic human rights issue. Anything that nature provides is for the use of anyone. If you let governments tell you you can't have the plant marijuana, then with that as a precedent next week they can tell you that you can't have carrots or pansies or tomatoes. When are politicians going to understand we don't elect them to restrict our most basic freedoms. I sympathise with the forest problem but maybe the only way to finish this argument is for all the marijuana users and growers to grow a bunch of plants just for seed each year and then plant them everywhere they travel just like Johnny Appleseed. Once it is growing wild everywhere , end of the argument. From what I have read about this plant (jack herrers website http://www.jackherer.com/ ) it has so many useful functions it should not harm the enviroment at all but enrich it. So lets all get out on the weekends and get those seeds in the ground all over the world and end this stupid debate . Or have the marijuana legalization lawyers take it to the court of human rights arguing that possession and consumtion of any plant is the most basic of human rights and have it finally enshrined in human rights law .
Don't think this "overgrow them" scenario is realistic
Anything but low quality cannabis needs to be cultivated as far as I know. As it was breed for higher THC content, it lost the ability to compete in the wild. I don't think most people would be interested in smoking 'weed' that still has the ability of growing like a weed. And children would have access to randomly sown cannabis, so that would cause problems.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than myself can address this.
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