Grand jury: Illegal pot costs more than you think'

Shouldn't the report be called "Marijuana Prohibition: It costs more than you think"?

How can you blame any one else for the tons and tons of sulfer that the vineyards strew all over this county ,yes and poluting the water ways with contaminents that are used in comercial winerys. you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with a result that we can exept, not this snow job.

Posturing to empower as many bureaucratic agencies as possible.

Thank you Grand Jury for high lighting the ugly side of marijuana cultivation. The typical grower cares only for how much money they make.

The growers care nothing for the environmental damage they cause or the impacts to the community. Add up all the costs and the "easy money" from marijuana costs us far more than you think.

It is predicable that the growers choose to point the finger at the grape growers, one of the most highly regulated industries in the world, instead of taking some leadership to clean up their own mess.

What would it look like if the "responsible" growers joined in demanding that the bad actors be put out of business? Are there any responsible growers? Well, are there?

The grand jury has it right- while everyone else was cutting back on water use, illegal grows just took what they wanted while damaging the evironment and not paying taxes.

And we are suppose to trust these people to pay taxes and follow the law if MJ is made legal? I don't think so.

It would appear that the report does not even hit on the large number of small fry(baby salmon) that die in the streams where all the water has been pumped to the marijuana gardens. That is a major cost due to the near extinction of this fish.

Ha. Environmentalists are going to be tripping all over themselves trying to divert the facts, negate reality and defend their god-plant.

So the authorities, attempting to expand said authority, report the environmental abuses and water theft by mj growers based on their reports and findings but it always sounds like the same couple of incidents and not as wide spread as they would have people believe. Yes stealing water from the potter valley canal is bad but go after the thief. Mixing chemicals in home made ponds is also a bad idea but where are the photos if this practice is so wide spread. I see tanks for this purpose available all over the county for very little money. If these chemicals are so dangerous that they are not allowed in the US then why can the reporter not state the name of the chemicals purportedly being used. Seems factually pertinent to a informative article. Without proper evidence being shared by authorities and reported by the paper in order to prove the abuses, this seems like little more than a fluff piece copied from a press releases without checking facts.

The Grand Jury report leads to the inevitable conclusion we would be better served if Marijuana were legalized and regulated, rather than remaining in the dark ages where "anything goes".

If they think it is bad now, just imagine how much water would be used just for marijuana if the stuff was legalized and even more people were growing it. It's bad enough that literally everyone and their grandma does now, but the strain on our resources, if legalized, would grow exponentially.

Pot cultivation is not going to stop. These are more good reasons to legalize this agricultural crop.

concerned wrote:

The grand jury has it right- while everyone else was cutting back on water use, illegal grows just took what they wanted while damaging the evironment and not paying taxes.
And we are suppose to trust these people to pay taxes and follow the law if MJ is made legal? I don't think so.

The people you complain about would be out of an occupation if weed were indeed legalized. There will be no need for thugs to grow on the mountain when there are hundreds of thousands of acres of flat agricultural land in the mid west where land is cheap and labor shows up and works, also cheap. The biggest threat to Mendocino will be the financial ramifications for the people of this area and the associated blight that comes to an area when it has lost its economic engine.

Look people aren't going to stop growing no matter what...

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU WRITE IN THIS PIECE IF CRAP NEWSPAPER!

Get the Mexican drug cartel out of our public lands and off of the corporate lands. The logging is bad enough, but now it's not safe to go hiking!

Blackbeard wrote:

So the authorities, attempting to expand said authority, report the environmental abuses and water theft by mj growers based on their reports and findings but it always sounds like the same couple of incidents and not as wide spread as they would have people believe. Yes stealing water from the potter valley canal is bad but go after the thief. Mixing chemicals in home made ponds is also a bad idea but where are the photos if this practice is so wide spread. I see tanks for this purpose available all over the county for very little money. If these chemicals are so dangerous that they are not allowed in the US then why can the reporter not state the name of the chemicals purportedly being used. Seems factually pertinent to a informative article. Without proper evidence being shared by authorities and reported by the paper in order to prove the abuses, this seems like little more than a fluff piece copied from a press releases without checking facts.

I don't know you, or your politics, but I have to agree that news reporting needs to have the facts.

Sk8ter wrote:

Look people aren't going to stop growing no matter what...
IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU WRITE IN THIS PIECE IF CRAP NEWSPAPER!

Correct. Crime will never be stopped. That is why jails were created. We can lock those people away from society that refuse to obey the laws of the land. Then you can sit in your jail cell and complain while the rest of us live our lives.

Make pot legal and none of this would be a problem.

anonymous wrote:

Make pot legal and none of this would be a problem.

Wrong. The problem isn't with the pot. The problem is with those that DECIDE to profit off of crime. I know lots of people that grow and want it kept illegal so they can continue making money.

Our society teaches people to blame others. By doing this we blame the law for making crime while never addressing the actual issue. People committing crimes to make money and many people think this is acceptable. Parents teach their kids it is OK to break the law if they can make money.

This smoke screen of blaming the laws for crime hide the actual issues that need to be dealt with.

Check out what I've done way at the end of Doolan Canyon Drive in Ukiah. I've done everything the GJ listed, and I'm an environmentalist and Green Party member. Making tons of money illegally and being a hypocrite is what I do best! I'm also running a new nightclub in Long Beach...check it out!

The Grand Jury has taken an interesting look at bud production. It looks like they're focusing on the pollution of our water supplies by carpetbaggers.

The recommendation that the Sheriff go after these ugly-ass grows early in the season makes a lot of sense to me. I'm tired of the Sept/Oct big-game hunts that lead to a summer of degradation at the cartel sites. Take 'em out early, and the land will get a reprieve.

If you haven't seen photos of "mixing" ponds, ask the Sheriff to show you some.

Please stop comparing cartel grows to viticulture.
They both have their problems. Let's concentrate on the message here and demand that the Mendo Sheriff's Office do early interdiction.