[Excerpt]
But for Conrad, who frequently testifies as a court-qualified expert witness in California marijuana cases, the war on ditchweed is worse than merely stupid. "This is more than a waste of money," Conrad told DRCNet. "This is akin to species-cide. The taxpayers' money is going to destroy hemp that was developed at taxpayer expense by the US government to produce the most productive hemp in the world for American fighting men. This feral cannabis is highly superior to what is being used in Europe and Canada now. What we have here is one of the last stands of superior hemp for high quality industrial products," said Conrad. "If I were growing hemp, my preferred source of seeds would be those plants being destroyed by the DEA. They're the best possible hemp seeds: low THC, high fiber and oil production, low fertilizer requirements, high yield."
As for the DEA, said Conrad, they are engaging in what is "basically an arbitrary abuse of power. They have discretion to deal with this, and their discretion is to be arbitrary, cruel and capricious."
("Arbitrary and capricious" is legal language that was used by DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young in 1988 to conclude that DEA was obligated under the Controlled Substances Act to reschedule marijuana as a prescription medicine. DEA Chief Administrator Robert Bonner proceeded to arbitrarily and capriciously disregard Judge Young's well researched and reasoned decision, which the Act allowed him to do.)
Annual
Ditchweed
Eradication
Boondoggle
Underway
Again
--
Feds
Spend
$13
Million
on
Summer
Jobs
Program
for
Midwest
Students,
Bored
Cops
Drug War Chronicle, recent top items recent blog posts "In the Trenches" activist feed SUBSCRIBE TODAY!!!
"Feral cannabis," more commonly known as
ditchweed, has been a part of the rural landscape from Indiana to the Dakotas
and down as far as Texas for the last half-century. The hardy, opportunistic
weed, descendant of the legally grown hemp of the World War II era, lines
roadside ditches, the edges of farm fields and creek beds, and is an innocuous
and generally unremarked upon part of Midwest country life.
The folk wisdom on ditchweed is right,
said internationally recognized cannabis expert Chris Conrad. "This
stuff is feral cannabis left over from World War II when the US government
subsidized hemp farming to help the war effort," Conrad told DRCNet.
"It doesn't have any psychoactive effects," he added, "and that's been
known since at least the 1970s."
Clayton's research is not the only to pan
the DEA's eradication efforts, nor the most damning. A 1998 report
by the Vermont State Auditor placed the proportion of ditchweed in DEA's
marijuana eradication program even higher, at 99.28% (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/041.html#ditchweed).
When asked by DRCNet this week about current
ditchweed to cultivated marijuana ratios, Clayton said, "Nobody knows for
sure now because there is no independent audit. My guess is that
roughly the same proportion is ditchweed, which is useless from a drug
consumption point of view."
And if this year's campaign is any indication,
a figure of that order still stands. According to reports in the
Munster (Indiana) Times: "It's marijuana season again, and that means law
enforcement officials have begun searching trenches, roadways and farm
fields in Northwest Indiana for the ditch weed."
"It's very difficult to kill," trooper
Don Hartman told the local paper. "Once it goes to seed, it's spread
by animals, birds or the wind. You have to actually destroy the seed
and sterilize it, but it's not possible. We spray the plant but we
have to keep checking the same area to see if it's really gone."
The enthusiastic Hartman told the paper
that in one year a decade ago, police destroyed 23 million ditchweed plants
in the state with a value of $10 billion. Sounds impressive, until
one considers that ditchweed has no value in the drug market. This
would suggest a more modest value for the eradicated plants: zero.
(Twenty-three million times zero still equals zero.)
Hartman added that the herbicide spray
doesn't kill the plants immediately. If you smoke it after it has
been sprayed, it won't kill you, he told the Times, "but you won't get
the same high." The Times reported that Hartman "chuckled" at his
own witty remark.
The Munster Times reporter did not question
either about the futility or utility of their work. But when DRCNet
asked the University of Kentucky's Clayton about the wisdom of devoting
resources to eradicating ditchweed, he asked in return: "How do you transcribe
the sound of laughter?" Regaining his composure, Clayton said: "In
the larger scheme of things, this is a relatively small amount of money.
The program's principal purpose may be as much symbolic as real, which
is consistent with the principal approach of the domestic drug war."
But for Conrad, who frequently testifies
as a court-qualified expert witness in California marijuana cases, the
war on ditchweed is worse than merely stupid. "This is more than
a waste of money," Conrad told DRCNet. "This is akin to species-cide.
The taxpayers' money is going to destroy hemp that was developed at taxpayer
expense by the US government to produce the most productive hemp in the
world for American fighting men. This feral cannabis is highly superior
to what is being used in Europe and Canada now. What we have here
is one of the last stands of superior hemp for high quality industrial
products," said Conrad. "If I were growing hemp, my preferred source
of seeds would be those plants being destroyed by the DEA. They're
the best possible hemp seeds: low THC, high fiber and oil production, low
fertilizer requirements, high yield."
in what is "basically an arbitrary abuse of power. They have discretion
to deal with this, and their discretion is to be arbitrary, cruel and capricious."
("Arbitrary and capricious" is legal
language that was used by DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young in
1988 to conclude that DEA was obligated under the Controlled Substances
Act to reschedule marijuana as a prescription medicine. DEA Chief
Administrator Robert Bonner proceeded to arbitrarily and capriciously disregard
Judge Young's well researched and reasoned decision, which the Act allowed
him to do.)
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