Time For Summer CAMP: Agents Cut Down Millions of Pot Plants
Campaign Against Marijuana Planting going strong, even as cities license dispensaries
GILROY — Wednesday was a typical summer day in Northern California.
The sun was shining, the sky was blue — and 16 county, state and federal agents dressed in full camouflage were cutting down thousands of marijuana plants in a remote mountain park near Gilroy.
The state’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting has continued unabated every summer since 1984 even as cities have wholeheartedly allowed medical marijuana dispensaries to flourish. Indeed, on Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council voted to double the number of dispensaries in the city from four to eight.
Neil Cuthbert, who led the CAMP team Wednesday, said that the changing attitude toward marijuana in California has not changed the program’s mission, especially in public parks.
“We believe it is necessary,” he said. “This is a park, people hike here and these growers can sometimes be armed and dangerous. There’s also the environmental problems associated with these grows,” like erosion and pesticides.
This year, the CAMP will cut down more than 4 million marijuana plants statewide, an all-time high, according to Cuthbert. Between 5,000 and 10,000 of that total will be from Wednesday’s operation in the tree-covered hills of Mt. Madonna County Park, a secluded 3,688-acre park in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Cuthbert’s crew, consisting of California National Guard members, state agents and county sheriff's deputies, found marijuana plants growing among the trees in four spots — two inside the park and two on private land — far from any road or well-used trail.
A helicopter carried the agents on a long rope and dropped them at the growing sites. From the helicopter, they could be seen cutting down small plants, which they said were marijuana.
In this video, you can see plants that the helicopter pilot said were marijuana in a clearing along with irrigation equipment.
When the marijuana plants are mature and valuable, Santa Clara County opts to dump them in landfills, said Troy Smith, a spokesman for the sheriff. CAMP team members said they planned to leave the Mt. Madonna marijuana plants, which were still young, out in the woods after being cut.
Dale Gieringer, the California coordinator for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which works to promote the legalization of marijuana, said that the eradication will go on as long as marijuana is illegal.
He said the CAMP program was what inspired him to work for NORML, but that over the years the agents have reformed their “invasive” and “cowboy” style, focusing on larger grows. He also said that they tend to leave medical marijuana growers alone.
“CAMP has been more or less respecting medical cannabis grows in recent years,” he said. “The medical cannabis grows tend to be smaller ones and the larger ones are usually known to the local authorities.”
There is a new twist to the eradication program this summer. Instead of just cutting and running, as has been the practice for years, Santa Clara County Sheriff Captain Michael Doty that there is now a “heavier emphasis” on nabbing the growers too, in hopes linking them to “larger drug cartels.”
Although eleven suspects have been arrested in the raids, none have been linked to cartels yet, Doty said.
The sheriff’s marijuana eradication team, which includes two detectives funded by the federal government, spends the first six months of the year scouting for marijuana gardens. They found the gardens on Mt. Madonna in January, he said. The rest of summer is spent destroying them with the help of CAMP.
“It must be summer again,” said Gieringer.
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Matthias Kiechle
good article, guys!
Jillian Galloway
On June 17, 1971, President Nixon told Congress that "if we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely destroy us." After forty years of trying to destroy "the drug menace in America" we still *haven't* been able to destroy it and it still *hasn't* destroyed us. Four decades is long enough to realize that on this important issue, President Nixon was wrong! All actions taken as a result of his invalid and paranoid assumptions (e.g. the federal marijuana prohibition) should be ended immediately!
It makes no sense for taxpayers to fund the federal marijuana prohibition when it *doesn't* prevent people from using marijuana and it *does* incite the awful violence that we read about in the news every day by making criminals incredibly wealthy and inciting the Mexican drug cartels to murder thousands of people every year.
We need legal adult marijuana sales in supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies for exactly the same reason that we need legal alcohol and tobacco sales - to keep drug dealer criminals out of our neighborhoods and away from our children. Marijuana must be made legal to sell to adults everywhere that alcohol and tobacco are sold.
"There's something extraordinarily perverse when we're so concerned about preventing addicts from having access to drugs that we destroy the lives of many times more people, either through untreated pain or other drug war damage".
Rocky Fisher
We need to regulate this trade and stop wasting police resources and taxpayer dollars on this charade. No amount of busts will stem supply and demand, it only encourages criminals to take up the trade because of the obscene black market profits involved. Legalize and regulate this plant (yes, it is a plant, think about that for a second) and stop wasting our time, money and people!
It is foolish to waste time fighting a fruitless battle that cannot be won when we can be gaining revenue for our communities from a plant that is safer than alcohol and tobacco.
Schaun Cox
So the state of California thinks it makes sense to fire 1000's of fire fighters and then pay cops to destroy a crop that the state could turn around and sell to Dispensaries??
Im starting to not care that CA has no $. If they wont pull themselfs up by their bootstraps or at least use a brain cell to fix things, what are we all supose to say? Not to mention this war going on on our southern border fueled by unregulated marijuana sales TO AMERICANS! Americans have been "green lit" by mexican drug cartels as of last week.
LEGALIZED MARIJUANA MEANS BANKRUPT DRUG CARTELS AND A SAFER, STRONGER AMERICA!
Schaun Cox
Check out LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) on facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/CopsSayLegalizeDrugs?ref=ts
Sonny Fellers
There must not be any economic problem at all. Hell, let's stop payin taxes till they stop sending agents to camp!
Frank DeFelice
Do they really send DEA gorilla teams to cut down weed? What an incredible waste of money. I thought California was cutting back on waste?
Joni
Good for Jerry Brown - a waste of money. Unfortunately, the growth of MJ is often by illegals and they set up elaborate watering systems and put rat poison around their camps and make a huge personal mess with canned items.... but, it's not worth the money to stop them since they always seem to find areas to grow. If the feds want em out - let them foot the bill. I don't want this grown private or public lands due to the mess/ encampments - but I'd rather see the millions going to something worthwhile. Plus, all the good comments above=ditto.
Christian Conservative
Jesus said to do unto others as we would have them to do unto us. None of us would want our child thrown in jail with the sexual predators over marijuana. None of us would want to see an older family member’s home confiscated and sold by the police for growing a couple of marijuana plants for their aches and pains. It’s time to stop putting our own family members in jail over marijuana.
If ordinary Americans could grow a little marijuana in their own back yards, it would be about as valuable as home-grown tomatoes. Let's put the criminals out of business and get them out of our neighborhoods. Let's let ordinary Americans grow a little marijuana in their own back yards.
Here's one way that IT IS REALLY WORKING: Arresting the criminals and collecting a fee from the registered growers (and bringing in thousands of dollars to support the county budget); what a great plan! This is the way to build a better America! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/2011/07/the-pot-republic-one-sheriffs-quietly-radical-experiment.html
The current proposal before Congress, bill HR 2306, will allow states to decide how they will regulate marijuana. Email your Congressperson and Senators at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and ask them to sign on as a CO-SPONSOR of HR 2306.
And a big THANK YOU to the courageous, freedom loving legislators, governors, and countless others who are working so hard to bring this through! You’re doing a great patriotic service for all of America!