Pot is Now the Biggest Cash Crop in the Nation

From LA Times comes the results of decades of federal scorched earth marijuana laws, and the War on Drug(users)s. Marijuana is now the number one cash crop in the nation. Of course you won't be hearing that on CNN, MSNBC, etc. Or even your local "News" for that matter.
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Pot is called biggest cash crop

The $35-billion market value of U.S.-grown cannabis tops that of such heartland staples as corn and hay, a marijuana activist says.

SACRAMENTO — For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it.

A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion — far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.

California is responsible for more than a third of the cannabis harvest, with an estimated production of $13.8 billion that exceeds the value of the state's grapes, vegetables and hay combined — and marijuana is the top cash crop in a dozen states, the report states.

The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter century despite an exhaustive anti-drug effort by law enforcement.Jon Gettman, the report's author, is a public policy consultant and leading proponent of the push to drop marijuana from the federal list of hard-core Schedule 1 drugs — which are deemed to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse — such as heroin and LSD.

He argues that the data support his push to begin treating cannabis like tobacco and alcohol by legalizing and reaping a tax windfall from it, while controlling production and distribution to better restrict use by teenagers."Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid of it," Gettman said. "Not only is the problem worse in terms of magnitude of cultivation, but production has spread all around the country. To say the genie is out of the bottle is a profound understatement."

Continue:

Drug War horrors

The insanity of the War on Drug(Users) continues. This also tells you a lot about our supreme court.

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Man to serve 55 years in prison for marijuana

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand the mandatory 55-year prison sentence that a lower court imposed on a man who was convicted of carrying a handgun during three marijuana deals in Utah.
By refusing to hear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court ensured that 27-year-old Weldon Angelos will spend just about the rest of his life behind bars for selling three eight-ounce bags of marijuana to an undercover informant. As his attorneys noted, the sentence he will serve is harsher than the sentence for raping a child — or the sentence for detonating a bomb aboard an aircraft.
Even the federal judge who was required to issue the mandatory minimum sentence called it “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.” Yet, the U.S. Supreme Court let the sentence stand without comment. You can read more about this abrogation of justice here.

Want a few more?
1. Mitchell Lawrence: This 17-year-old high school student with no prior record received a two-year prison sentence for selling $20 worth of marijuana to a Massachusetts undercover police officer.
2. Unnamed Florida college student: The 19-year-old was raped by his cellmate — a violent sexual offender — as he served the first of four weekend sentences for delivering marijuana, a felony offense.
3. Ryan Wilson: The 22-year-old died after being shot with a Taser stun gun by Colorado police, who were investigating whether Wilson was cultivating marijuana plants.
4. Anthony Diotaiuto: The 23-year-old was shot 10 times in the head, chest, and limbs by a Florida SWAT team that later found a little over an ounce of marijuana in his home.
5. Clayton Helriggle: The 23-year-old died in the arms of his roommate after being shot in a “no knock” raid by Ohio police, who later found a small amount of marijuana in his house.
6. Jonathan Magbie: The 27-year-old quadriplegic died in a Washington, D.C., jail while serving a 10-day sentence for marijuana possession because the facility could not provide the medical care he needed.
7. Tyrone Brown: The 33-year-old received a life sentence from a Texas judge for testing positive for marijuana while on probation for a $2 stickup committed when he was 17.
8. Lester Siler: The 44-year-old was brutalized by five rogue Tennessee police officers who suspected him of selling drugs. Siler was beaten and held at gunpoint, had his head held underwater in a toilet, and was threatened with shooting and electrocution.
9. Accelyne Williams: The 75-year-old retired minister died from a heart attack that was induced by the stress of a Massachusetts SWAT team entering his apartment during a “no knock” raid. No drugs were found.
10. Kathryn Johnston: The 88-year-old was shot and killed in a “no knock” raid by Georgia police, who allegedly later attempted to pay an informant to lie about the circumstances of the drug raid.

These individuals are not rare examples. Rather, they are just 11 examples of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are detained, beaten, harassed, tortured, arrested, prosecuted, jailed, imprisoned, and/or killed each year by the government in the name of marijuana prohibition.
From MPP:(Give them a donation if you can)

Our Death Squads in Columbia | Truth coming out?

Some of us already knew that all that Federal/Corporate "War on Drugs" money we're sending to Columbia(among others) was being used to kill people. But even the worst suspicions didn't foresee this: Columbian Chainsaw Massacres(and no it's not a movie).

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Before the 9/11 attacks came along, I used to work with groups trying to get the U.S. to stop funding Colombia’s right-wing paramilitaries. The pretense, of course, was we were funding the Colombian military in their heroic struggle in the War on Drugs. The reality, that the paramilitaries were run by the Colombian government to murder anyone to the left of Elliot Abrams, is finally being acknowledged:

"The government of President Álvaro Uribe is being shaken by its most serious political crisis yet, as details emerge about members of Congress who collaborated with right-wing death squads to spread terror and exert political control across Colombia’s Caribbean coast…All are from the state of Sucre, where the attorney general’s office has been exhuming bodies from mass graves…"

It’s difficult to overstate the level of human depravity exhibited by the paramilitaries. One of their favorite techniques is to kill people with
chainsaws:

“The Chainsaw Massacre is not a film in Colombia,” said government ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, referring to the April 12 [2001] paramilitary massacre in Alto Naya, 650 kilometers (404 miles) southeast of [Bogota]…
It left some 128 people dead, including 40 in Alto Naya, according to official reports quoted by Cifuentes in an interview with AFP…
Around 400 paramilitaries took part in this “caravan of death” against civilians accused of supporting leftist guerrillas, Cifuentes said in his Bogota office.
“The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut open with a chainsaw. A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut and both hands also amputated,” said the ombudsman…
“A neighbor pounced upon a paramilitary that was ready to shoot him and took his weapon, but unfortunately he didn’t know how to fire a rifle. They dragged him away, cut him open with a chainsaw and chopped him up,” a witness of the massacre told El Espectador daily.


I once attended a lunch with a Colombian union official. He said the paramilitaries would generally warn people like him of their intentions, by visiting them and cutting their sleeves or pants where they would later cut off their arms and legs if they didn’t flee the area. Less important people didn’t get warnings.

This year we’re giving Colombia approximately 600 million dollars for these appealing activities. The biggest upswing in aid came during the last years of the Clinton administration. What’s really neat is the paramilitaries are actually the ones controlling most of the cocaine trade in Colombia. In other words, as part of the War on Drugs, we’re giving massive aid to some of the world’s biggest drug dealers.

If past experience is any guide, the people mentioned in the above article as investigating this (e.g., Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro) have maybe four weeks to live.

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From Tiny Revolution via This Modern World.