Hey, Sierra Club!

America's national forests are increasingly being damaged because of illegal marijuana cultivation, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and the many other groups devoted to protecting the wild need to make repeal of drug prohibition part of their conservation agenda!

Prohibition doesn't work, and it does not work to protect the forests! In the summer of 1986 I helped U.S. Representative Harley Staggers, Jr. write the "National Forest System Drug Control Act of 1986," Title XV of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, P.L. 99-570, sections 15001 to 15007. Those provisions directed the Secretary of Agriculture "to take actions necessary, in conjunction with the administration and use of the National Forest System, to prevent the manufacture, distribution, or dispensing of marijuana and other controlled substances." (P.L. 99-570, section 15002).

Obviously these laws and the additional resources and new crimes have done little to protect the forests as drug prohibition has raised the value of the cannabis crop and enforcement activities made the forest more attractive refuges for these crimes.

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