Some Comments on AWeeding Out Pot Farms From Aloft@
John Johnson, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times (AWeeding out pot farms from aloft,@ September 6, 2002), apparently was enamored by the leader of the state=s eradication task force known as CAMP (Campaign Against Marijuana Planting). Sonya Barna - a.k.a. the APatton of Pot@ - leads the attack on the Akiller weed@ marijuana. Mr. Johnson took an uncritical view of this part of the Awar on drugs@ (an appropriate name since CAMP is quite obviously put together like an army ferreting out the Aenemy@ right in their own territory), the AShroom Platoon.@ Cute name. If this wasn’t so serious a matter, I would roll over with laughter. But I=m not - and no one with any sort of a critical mind (something Mr. Johnson probably never learned in journalism school - or do they bother teaching critical thinking skills at all in these schools?) should be laughing at such an insane waste of money and human resources.
This reads like an updated version of the classic comedy Reefer Madness back in the 1930s when the first Awar on drugs@ was launched. But Sonya Barna is serious - if not misguided in her gung-ho attitude. She says marijuana is Anot a gateway drug. It=s a drug.@ Period. End of discussion. So insightful, she is. But she, along with all the other storm troupers, plus Mr. Johnson, have uncritically accepted the propaganda about marijuana and other illegal drugs (or as they call them in law enforcement circles - Anarcotics@). They could have asked some very simple questions, the kind we might expect from young children, such as: AWhy are some drugs legal while others are not?@ AWhy are some of the truly dangerous drugs, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year, perfectly legal?@ Perhaps the most important question not asked is this: AWhy doesn't she take her cute-sounding brigade and start raiding the tobacco fields of Kentucky, Virginia and other states where the world=s most dangerous drug is grown, on farms, not unlike the pot farms of California? She is not - and will not - because she is just following orders, like any good soldier in a war. After all, she - along with Mr. Johnson and millions of others - have been taught obedience to the Aauthorities.@ This is the same kind of blind obedience that gave us soldiers willing - for a while at least - to fly half-way across the world to Amake the world safe for Democracy@ in the remote jungles of Vietnam.
Meanwhile, other pressing social problems are getting ignored because Awe don=t have the money.@ Yet we can devote millions of dollars fighting the Awar on drugs@ and spend billions on our prison system. Schools are ignored, libraries are short of books, child care programs are in short supply, and on and on.
Written in September, 2002 and sent to the Los Angeles Times, but never published.