Amazon says “time has come” for U.S. to legalize marijuana
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
We are having serious problems in San Diego and Riverside counties in Southern California with non-permitted growers. Many are linked to Mexican cartels. Many tend to operate with pirated power and water. And all of the illegal growers have been bad for the local environment because of improper and excessive use of pesticides and fertilizers.
An illegal grower recently stood up a greenhouse, made of stolen materials, on a neighbor's property. When he stumbled onto the site, they threatened him and shot at him. The Sherrif's department would not respond to a 911 call so we called the local fire marshall. When fire people got threatened, the sherrif's dept decided they would respond. The county DA has not charge anyone with anything. It cost him several thousand USD to clean up the site.
We need to de-criminalize cannabis use. We need to be much more thoughtful about legalizing cannabis.
I would have thought, originally, that legalization would do a better job suppressing illegal grow operations than decriminalization. Decriminalization can create a murky semi-legal area where sanctioned, fully above board businesses can't enter the market, which might empower illegal operations to operate with greater impunity (and to be clear, the "illegal" thing I fear and despise isn't some small time grower with a few plants in a closet or small backyard greenhouse, it's the wildly environmentally destructive and violent organized crime you're describing here).
Maybe the problem is that legalization turned out to be so restrictive that a large scale illegal market has persisted. When you legalize, you really need to legalize. This, people have trouble with - like, would people tolerate cannabis at a farmer's market stall? That may be what it takes.
Another thing is that people see the legalization day to day, whereas the don't really see and experience the harm of what you describe on a regular basis.