Narco State

This was the third marijuana growing season that Laura and I had gone out with the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, CAMP, into California's Sierra Nevadas in search of gigantic marijuana gardens. It was the second time that Tracey Chang had come along with us. The previous year, when we were working for a different new organization, it was Tracey's first ever assignment in television, out of graduate school at USC. And as the CAMP helicopter was dropping us on a rock face about 7,000 feet up, Tracey walked forward--instead of exiting to the side--and because of the incline we were on, walked up toward the rotor until it was just inches from her, at which point, fortunately, the helicopter pilot peeled off... kind of a reminder that you don't always have to be in a war zone to be at risk. In the piece that you see here, Laura, Tracey and I walked in... One side note: The thing that struck me the most about the marijuana grower's camp that we raided was that they had a small, makeshift shrine up to someone whom the lead law enforcement official identified for us as the patron saint of narco-trafficking. The following June, Jael de Pardo and I were in Culiacan, captial of Mexico's Sinaloa state, and across from the state government building, we spotted a big shrine, and the state government official who we were with told us that it was for Jesus Malverde, patron saint of narco-trafficking... Small world.

Legalize it
Don't Criticize it
Cause i will advertise it

Sigh. When will the US government realize the "War on Drugs" has been a monumental failure?

There are too many reasons to list why criminalizing marijuana—or any drug for that matter—doesn't work. It doesn't reduce drug abuse rates, it doesn't reduce crime, it doesn't save lives. It keeps incarceration rates high and perpetuates drug wars, like what we're seeing in Mexico.

Drugs are a public health issue, not a criminal issue. How long will it take the world to realize that?

Laura: you're amazing. I hope you're released soon.

I think if anything, it should be legal...so we can grow it ourselves. Dear god its gonna happen sooner or later why not just let it happen now.

Stoner food, seven hundred pounds of pot and 65 ounces of hemeroid cream. Just what in the hell was going on out there?