Drug gangs taking over U.S. public lands

[Nervous Wreck]

updated 5:08 p.m. ET, Mon., March. 1, 2010
SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. - Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.

Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.

"Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they've gone to mega, monster gardens," said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have "supersized" the marijuana trade.

Interviews conducted by The Associated Press with law enforcement officials across the country showed that Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the last several years.

Local, state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities say an estimated 75 percent to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.

much more:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35650016/ns ... nd_courts/

[E_]

Thats just great, just as well make it legal and then let us KY farmers have another legal cash crop...

[peteofpineywoods]

Thats just great, just as well make it legal and then let us KY farmers have another legal cash crop...

Absolutely E. Common sense is not a possibility with the Feds.

[katie]

I absolutely agree.... make it just like alcohol & tobacco, heavy danged taxes and we won't have to pay for the DEA to continually chase these *ricks who have absolutely no regard for american soil. That just sickens me...

To top that off, they're probably all getting gov't checks because they're not employed.... keeps the cops off their back. Sorry Arnold, but California is F'D up and has been before you, but if you didn't worry so much about keeping an itty bitty bug alive you would see your whole forrest is dying.... I wouldn't live in California if they paid me.

Hey E, If they legalized it, we could push BUY AMERICAN! LOL

[$parechange]

Thats just great, just as well make it legal and then let us KY farmers have another legal cash crop...

Where is Wally when you need him. He has been preachin this for years.

[FireEscape]

Legalize it, I don't care.

But I will say this... If you tried that around here where I live there would be about 300 county mount me's chasing you down like a federal fugitive, and when they caught up to you there would be more gun barrels pointed at you than there are stars in the sky.

California, home of the p____. Don't hurt the nice Latino folk they're just camping. Idiots.

[DMS]