NORML has one of the largest cannabis-related archives in the world and it is replete with headlines that are hysterical, funny, shocking, propagandistic, dumb, witty, ironic and in the case of the front page splash of the September 14 Peninsula Daily News (Port Angeles and Sequim area of Washington State), revealing.
Click here for scanned story: copters.pdf
5-Day Copter Patrols Net 20 Pot Plants?!
Wow and with gas being priced such as it is, along with additional personnel and equipment costs, at what cost to the taxpayers is this folly? And, but of course, like most outdoor eradication efforts, no one was arrested for the cultivated cannabis found by the government’s eyes in the sky. Like me, don’t you want to know the per/plant cost to taxpayers for this kind of ineffective eradication efforts? According to the article the DEA funded the helicopter searches and it is unlikely to replicate this scale operation on the OP in the near future because of the paltry amount of plants eradicated.
By the way, the effort to eradicate cannabis plants growing in the OP was hampered by mountain and sea fog (Can you imagine that on the OP in the early fall?), which is important to note because most years five to six law enforcement personnel unfortunately perish nationwide in ill-fated and totally unnecessary domestic cannabis over flights with fog being cited as a major source of the crashes.
Let’s all work together to turn these anti-cannabis cowboys in the skies into revenue officers whose only job is to account for cannabis plants (and industrial hemp plants) as a source of regulated commerce and tens of billions annually in tax revenues.
In fact, the public and politicians should consider replacing an ineffective DEA with FACT: Firearm, Alcohol, Cannabis and Tobacco, an updated division of ATF at the US Treasury.
Right on as usual Allen.
I wanted to add that they may be using satellite/aircraft mounted multispectral imagers to spot pot now, and small ( a few plants or widely dispersed ) plots are easy to miss. Big plots stand out like a sore thumb.
I’m not advocating growing. I just hate to see people going through what they do when they’re caught growing a little weed. Really professional how “they” cut off the balls of the guy at Rainbow Farm. Sicko monsters.
FACT…Gotta love the sound of that.
Our taxpayer dollars at work. This wouldn’t happen if they had to produce results for prohibition. Which is impossible.
Depending on the helicopters used, hourly operating costs (fuel, maintenance, crew, insurance and debtservice) can run from six hundred bucks up to a thousand bucks an hour. These dimwits from the DEA sure know how to waste OUR tax money! There may be a silver lining on this cloud of financial crisis after all. Maybe now these special interest lackeys come to realize that the war on pot is one waste of tax payer’s money this nation of OURS can no longer afford!
With America sinking into the next Great Depression you would think they would adjust their priorities. On the other hand for them to keep the music playing while the ship goes down is just what we’ve come expect.
How the government can justify spending so much to eradicate a herb when we’re 10,300 billion dollars in debt is just beyond me. I mean this is just crazy a good friend of mine has just lost his home and become homeless. Not because he had some sub prime what ever but because the carpet cleaning business he owned went from a dozen calls a day to a couple of calls a week. Meanwhile the same government that thinks nothing of flying around helicopters to destroy a nonexistent plants also has the audacity to claim he is the reason we have to give over a trillion and a half dollars to to the richest people in the world so they won’t lose their homes.
The government’s basic theory being if Master don’t have a plantation. Who we gonna pick cottin for?
No one wants the drug war the Fact that we are now heading into a depression is in no small part due to hundreds of billions were spending on a Drug Civil War and the loss of productivity from the 3 million + people most prisoners of the drug war wasting away in our prisons. If those people alone were out contributing to society in stead of consuming government resources they would add another 1.3 trillion dollars to our gross domestic product.
Forget taxing weed just ending the drug civil war and releasing it’s P.O.Ws would do more for the health and stability of our nation than anything else imaginable.
What a waste of tax dollars
I gotta hand it to them, WHAT A WASTE! here’s a perfectly viable crop (you know like Tobacco) who’s lealization, taxation and commercial sales could pull us right out of debt almost overnight!
Yet, they keep it illegal and jail people for growing,posessing or smoking it! I thought the ‘new’ limit for growers was 25 plants or more?…I guess the agents involved can’t COUNT!
I guess when the monetary system TANKS in the US, we know what will be ‘good as gold’ to trade with now don’t we?!
Damn crazies…taking away the ONE thing out there that makes people happy, what are they thinkin?
I don’t understand. Just legalize pot. If people want to smoke it at home, fine. Let them grow their own in their own back yard. People have been using drugs and hallucinogenics since the beginning of time and it’s not going to ever stop.
FACT? The federal government doesn’t have the right to regulate alcohol, tobacco, and argably firearms either. The 9th and 10th amendments leave those duties to the States, not the fed. After this long and painful and costly prohibition, do you really want to give the federal leviathan, which employs the same inept bureaucrats as the DEA, the power to regulate this issue?
redneck juicer or pothead.Who would you want for a neighbor?
Maybe someone could donate twenty pot plants to these guys so next time they won’t need to waste our tax money by flying noisy helicopters over otherwise peaceful neighborhoods.
FACT! Wonderful.
One item – ATF moved under Dept of Justice. Still would like the FACT agency name.
Yeah, but they got 20 plants! Don’t ya just know that they’ll say “they took @20 mil off the streets!” LOL
I’m a helicopter CFI and, yes, it’s expensive as hell to operate a chopper. Especially a turbine, instead of a recip.
This is tantamount to joyriding in daddy’s new car. Yet, it’s gotta be done. “For the children,” don’t ya know! With the current economy, they’ll soon be using “broom horses.”
Bud, fellow CFII, MEI here, turbine jockey here. I know first hand the cost of operating a turbine and can imagine how expensive this whole operation is.
Our country needs to focus solely on creating an environment that is healthy for innovation and business- the US absolutely needs to establish itself as an intellectual incubator, this must become our differentiator. This will not happen until the fed steps out of the markets, states rights, and stops spending our country into bankruptcy.
Austrian free market economics > socialism.
5 DEA agents a year die from copter crashes in OP fog!
WTF?
That’s 5 more deaths than caused by the weed they give their lives for.
Maybe the time has come that pot smokers should honor the dead who are sent on suicide missions, in the name of keeping pot smokers from killing themselves with weed.
Pity their children for the ignorance of their commanders. It is a shame they lose their lives in the name of an ineffective and counterproductive prohibition.
Love it: FACT
The DEA doesn’t care about costs necessarily, that’s too obivious. Otherwise, pot would be legal by now. It’s all a Catch 22 though, right.
The DEA are simply billion dollar stormtoopers. They care about arrests, seizures, and profit. That’s it, and rely heavily on drug cartels to keep things going in circles.
If they justify the agency has a reason to spend taxpayer money by capturing 20 pot plants, well… that’s just more money for budget next year amidst their successful illusions.
Either that, or agents were complete bored and decided to take the chopper out for a spin. All that while more citizens become addicted to worse drugs – primarily due to lack of federal funds for nationwide education, prevention, and rehabilitation.
Cannabis is the safer choice. Just decriminalize, and end this stupid lie.
Tax Money?
Depending on size and variety of those twenty plants, we all know they could have easily financed the 5 day operation twice or more.
We all know where the DEA gets its real funding. Northern California.
Y’all just don’t get it! “THEY” like making money off of your misery and shame! Don’t you see that the drug war gives “THEM” a legal pretext to invade your home, take you prisoner, put you to work in prison for a dime on the dollar, steal your possessions, seize all of your assets, and examine your piss…..and get paid to do it. Seeing as homosexuality and communism are out as pretexts to do these things, how else are they going to be able to justify murder, robbery, and extortion???
Wow…You guy’s they nabbed 20 plant’s!!!!!Holy shit batman look up in the sky I think its the second coming of christ!!!!This goes to all DEA who will read this….Get a fuckin life and stop ruining the lives of people who intend no harm on anybody…and the one’s who do intend to harm other’s..like certain dealer’s and kingpins…..you can only give yourselves a pat on the back for their very existence….why? Beucase if drugs were legal and regulated no criminal orginization could profit from the ever booming illicit drug trade you fucks…the shame of this all is that a DEA agent has to go to college..hahaha wonder which college you fucks graduated from? either way you all clearly need to go back.
I lived and got busted in washington and i can tell you first hand that the local drug task force more than likely found ALOT more then they’re stating-so they themselves can sell said pot and add the funds to their misguided cause. (they also have been known to teach kids how to make meth in order to help their cause.-truth )
Where’s Johnny Blue
Hey while they are at it maybe they can go and find Bin Laden. Isn’t he the real terrorist it is amazing we have the most powerful military and we are waisting valuable resources going after pot smokers. I actually have a blood problem that is bad for my liver but in modern day America I am suppose to drink it is the social thing to do. Whatever
FACTs for you:
It wasn’t the DEA, is was the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team (OPNET). This is a small, federally funded drug task force made up of state, federal and local officers. They were actually the task force of the year last year. That’s sad.
The helicopter is an asset of the Washington Air National Guard. I think it is an incredible embarrassment and a waste. I would never have told the paper if I had wasted that much money (about $3500 and hour) for 20 pathetic plants. What a joke.
I live in the county where this occurred, and just so happen to know some of the officers that participated. Not impressive on any level.
I am a conservative in most of my opinions and people on this website would probably disagree with me on most issues, however, one area we agree on is that the DEA and the laws that make pot illegal to responsible adults are totally ridiculous. I don’t smoke marijuana or do any drugs, but I do pay taxes and I definitely think the DEA is a huge waste of our tax dollars. The DEA consists of mostly power-hungry,insecure pig-headed individuals who probably feel inferior within themselves and need this power to feel good about themselves. It’s pathetic! Does anybody think their power will be greatly reduced or totally abolished OR will they just continue grow and flourish and be an annoyance to Americans. Hopefully, these idiots will eventually have the brains to distinguish real criminals from hardworking individuals who personally prefer a joint to a beer or martini.
i’m still against in smoking..specially marijuana just think the smokes enter to our body..and if we got sick we immediately go to the doctor and ask for help..i think our government will focus on this issue on how to prevent and not to spread this kind of vices.
One thing…In our place cigars is hard to be ban because of the high tax the company pays on the government.