NORMLIZER

Marijuana prohibition—specifically, law enforcement’s annual efforts to eradicate America’s domestic marijuana crop—just might be the perfect example of the law of unintended consequences. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, if someone offered up some “homegrown,” most pot smokers ran away like their hair was on fire. Homegrown? Gross! Back then, more than 90 percent of the marijuana consumed by Americans was imported from Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Jamaica and Thailand, and hash products were smuggled in from countries like Turkey, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Nepal and Morocco. All-American herb just didn’t measure up.

My, how things have changed! Today, because of the abject failure of marijuana prohibition in our free-market-oriented democracy, over 50 percent of the marijuana consumed in America is domestically cultivated, and 90 percent of the hash is produced in North America. So just how large has America’s domestic cannabis crop grown? According to a NORML Foundation report, marijuana ranks as a top-five cash crop nationally and as the No. 1 cash crop in 20 or more states most years.

Wondering where to grow your next stash?
According to the latest domestic marijuana - cultivation report from the DEA, the top five states for marijuana eradication in 2005 were California (1.9 million plants), Kentucky (507,000), Tennessee (440,000), Hawaii (251,000) and Washington (103,000). The states with the lowest incidence of plant eradication: South Dakota (0), Rhode Island (79), North Dakota (120), Delaware (182) and Utah (310).

Here’s another rich and ironic factoid about one of America’s most valuable (though not yet taxed) commodities: Despite the tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars wasted looking for relatively harmless vegetation to destroy, of the 223 million marijuana plants eradicated in 2005, over 98 percent was ditchweed—i.e., feral hemp left over from the World War II-era federally subsidized “Hemp for Victory” campaign in the Midwest. Almost every other country in the world, including Canada, allows farmers to grow industrial hemp and prosper from its cultivation, but unfortunately, here in Reefer Madness Land, our government annually whacks, stacks and incinerates hundreds of millions of otherwise-valuable hemp plants, passing them off to a gullible and lazy media as the dreaded “demon weed.”

Allen St. Pierre is the executive director of NORML, 888-67-NORML.
For more info on America’s domestic marijuana scene, search for “crop report” at norml.org. For a complete breakdown of the 2005 DEA data on marijuana eradication, check out: pdfalbany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf