October 18, 2009 in City

Sophisticated pot fields a growing problem in Washington

Jim Camden jimc@spokesman.com, (509) 459-5461

Tags: border patrol cartel Colville reservation DEA drugs marijuana Mexico pot raid reservations

Audio slideshow: Marijuana grow

‘Using their noggins’

On a hillside about 15 minutes outside Nespelem, agents found an operation much larger and more innovative than they ever expected: a series of cleared spaces in the pine forest with dozens or even hundreds of plants per plot, and an elaborate irrigation system.

About a mile uphill from the nearest road, marijuana growers had dammed a spring-fed creek just below its water source to create a reservoir, then used polyvinyl chloride pipes and hoses, along with gravity, to bring the water downhill to various plots and a tarp-lined catch pond. They then used a small gas-powered generator to pump the water about 200 vertical feet back up the hill to another catch pond, where more hoses and gravity brought water down the hill to more plots.

The system had no valves or regulators. When gardeners wanted to turn off the water flow to a plot, they’d crimp and tie off a feeder hose. To get water for the marijuana plants, they’d uncrimp it.

For some of the route, the hose was buried in hand-dug trenches covered with rocks, leaves or branches. In other places, it stuck out of the forest floor.

Most of the plants were female, which produce buds and yield marijuana. But in one area, the grow operation had its own “nursery,” where male and female plants were close together and creating seeds, probably to plant next year, drug agents speculate.

“These guys were using their noggins,” Dave Everett, a special investigator for the Colville Tribe, said as he showed off the system last month after all the plants had been pulled and stored in a warehouse for evidence. “If ordinary horticulturists had followed marijuana growers’ path, we’d be growing 500-pound watermelons.”

Based on the layers of dirt and forest debris on top of the pipes in some areas, part of the system had been in place at least three years.

‘We miss a lot’

Discovering outdoor marijuana grows on remote forest or rangeland can take a combination of persistence and luck. This year’s biggest bust, which yielded about 134,000 plants on an irrigated tree fiber farm in Walla Walla, was reported by the timber company after its workers discovered the irrigation system had been tapped and diverted. Growers had thinned trees in remote areas and planted marijuana in their place.

Last year, a large outdoor grow was found in a vineyard. McDevitt said neighbors became suspicious when the vineyard’s grapes were dying but the owners had no trouble paying their bills.

Two years ago, a marijuana grow was discovered when hunters in the backcountry ran into well-armed “gardeners” hauling their harvest out, Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers said. There was no confrontation, but the hunters reported the unusual meeting and the location to deputies, who put the area under surveillance for the following year.

Sometimes residents will report suspicious vehicles driving regularly on lightly used roads or stopping in open spaces at odd times. Or local police will get a tip or develop an informant, Haney said.

Okanogan County has seen a steady increase in the marijuana seized in outdoor grows, Rogers said. In the Methow bust, which took place in an area called Gobbler’s Knob, they seized more than 400 pounds of processed marijuana along with the 30,000 plants. The harvest had already started; some plants were hanging to dry under tarp tents, and others had been cut and bundled to be packed out.

The regional drug task force does flyovers with airplanes and helicopters, but spotting marijuana from the air can be difficult. On the Colville Reservation grow, for example, some trees were cut down to provide planting areas, but others were left standing on the perimeter of the plots, with limbs removed from about 8 feet down. That camouflaged the marijuana from above but allowed diffused light to reach plants.

The year before, the task force found about 17,000 plants in Okanogan County at a place called Goat Peak. In 2007 it found and destroyed more than 8,700 on the Colville Reservation at a place called Moses Meadow. The drug task force has busted grows throughout Central Washington, Rogers said. But, he added, “I think we miss a lot of them.”

A bigger payday

The outdoor grows in the Northwest are operated by Mexican drug cartels and follow a consistent pattern, said a federal Drug Enforcement Agent who agreed to explain the system but asked to remain anonymous.

A representative of the cartel known as the foreman hires the gardeners to live on the site through the growing season and tend the plants. The payments vary, but gardeners arrested at the Moses Meadow grow in 2007 reportedly were promised $60,000, federal court documents said – but only when they delivered the drugs at the end of the season. After they were arrested, the four illegal immigrants told federal drug agents that they never saw “El Indio,” their foreman, again.

Most gardeners who have been arrested are illegal immigrants, from Mexico, Central America or South America, McDevitt said. Some are smuggled into the country, but others are already in the U.S. The payoff is much better than picking apples, cherries or vegetables, he said, but the risks are high. Federal drug laws carry a sentence of eight years in prison on a conviction of growing 1,000 marijuana plants. Sentences are served before deportation.

Every two or three weeks, gardeners receive supplies from a person on the next rung of the ladder, whom drug agents call the lunch man. At a predetermined time and location, the lunch man drops off food, water, propane and other supplies, which the gardeners carry back to the grow site.

Size and weight are a consideration for anything the gardeners receive. Agents were surprised to find a gasoline generator on the Colville grow site. The fuel had to be carried about a half-mile uphill in 5-gallon containers, which would weigh about 30 pounds each.

The gardeners don’t have refrigeration, so meat and anything else perishable doesn’t last long in summer. On this year’s Colville Reservation grow, law enforcement agents found evidence that the gardeners at one point killed, butchered and ate a moose, Everett said.

Over the summer, the site gets littered with garbage from food, containers from chemicals put on the plants, and human waste.

‘The perfect climate’

Since 2001, the number of plants seized each year in Washington has skyrocketed from about 6,500 to nearly 590,000, and more than 87 percent are in the state’s central and eastern counties. Western counties have marijuana grows, too, but many are inside; in the east, they’re almost all outside.

“It’s the perfect climate,” McDevitt said.

The plants are typically a Mexican strain that’s relatively high in THC, the chemical that causes the marijuana “high,” but nowhere near the potency of so-called BC Bud, the super-strength pot grown hydroponically in large indoor operations in Canada. That pot can sell for 2 1/2 times more per pound than the Mexican strain, but the outdoor pot is also less expensive to produce. As in all businesses, there are trade-offs, a DEA agent said.

The reason for the jump in statistics is threefold, McDevitt and other law enforcement officials say. The first is better intelligence and that a more aggressive eradication program is finding more pot. The task force combines county, city and state law enforcement agencies along with the U.S. Forest Service, the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Air support sometimes comes from the Washington National Guard.

Increases in the Border Patrol in recent years have particularly helped in some of Washington’s rural counties, which have small sheriff’s departments. “Everybody comes in to lend a hand,” said Richard Graham Jr., agent in charge at the Border Patrol’s Oroville office.

The second reason is a tighter U.S.-Mexican border after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, making it more difficult for drug cartels to smuggle the drugs into the country; they’re switching their strategy to growing closer to the market.

The third is a crackdown in recent years on marijuana grows in Northern California – also operated by Mexican drug cartels – which encourages them to move north into Oregon and Washington.

Federal drug agents use the stiff penalties for growing large amounts of pot as leverage on gardeners and lunch men in attempts to move up the chain to the foremen and into the cartel. But it’s a slow process, because the people arrested either don’t know very much, are afraid to talk, or both.

“The guys that get caught are the ones that make mistakes,” Everett, the Colville tribal investigator, said.

Every year, the drug task forces learn a little more, develop a few more sources and improve their tactics, McDevitt said.

But the drug cartels learn and change their tactics, too. They may have started using countersurveillance to watch for law enforcement watching them, Haney said. “They’re getting smarter and smarter.”

18 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

Jonathan Morse on October 18 at 1:49 a.m.
Every one of the the negative things described in this story would disappear if marijuana were made legal, the environmental damage, the drug cartels the danger to hikers and campers or law enforcement officers.Tthe gardeners would be growing legal pot being paid legal wages paying legal taxes the state could regulate and tax sales and the cops would be free to chase real criminals.The spokesman might consider asking how much each of these busts cost us tax payers and don't forget the cost of imprisonment.
http://stillahippie2009.wordpress.com/.

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Nick42 on October 18 at 6:16 a.m.
I agree completely Jonathan.

Normally, I really appreciate your work, Mr. Camden, but this story is completely one-sided and ignores the root cause of this problem: the war on drugs.

How much do those flyovers cost? How much does a year of surveillance cost? How much does the “more aggressive eradication program” cost? How much will it cost to imprison all of these “gardners”? And after all of this tax money is spent, what good has it done? Pot is still widely available everywhere.

What we get for our money, it seems, is people tearing up forest land because of this silly prohibition.

For your next story on this issue, please consider asking law enforcement some of these questions and consider gathering some comments from those on the other side of this issue.

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crazyivan44 on October 18 at 8:44 a.m.
As far as calls for a more balanced article, fine. But the notion that this is a “silly prohibition” is absurd. Do you really think pot is the end goal? What is going to stop E, and Meth, and PCP, and any of the hard drugs from being legalized. It's a pretty big gamble to assume that if things are legalized then all of society's drug problems are going to cease, and if you are wrong then there is no way of going back. Nick I do not agree with your viewpoint but I certainly think that the costs that you speak of need to be addressed to find a balance so we are not throwing good money after bad.

And Jonathan, on a very very personal note, while it is not appropriate to discuss the full details in this posting, your blog is full of nothing bug one-sided very uneducated bias. Your comments on the military are offensive and you need to turn off CNN and go speak with some folks at a real military installation, maybe you'll get a balanced perspective.

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garfnagn on October 18 at 9:00 a.m.
Thanks S-R for printing a how to manual for every stoner dork without a summer job to go destroy some more woods and probably some more minds with their THC laden herb. Nice diagram. Really helpful.. Fact is, the illegals and their deadly cartels have taken the old hippie fun outta growing dope, and if stoners cross paths with these bad boys they will get cut up with automatic rifle and shotgun fire. Even Humboldt Co Cali has been taken over by the Mexican cartels. Be careful out there, dopers. And S-R please take your civic duty a little more seriously to NOT encourage potheads from diverting streams, building cisterns and chainsawing tree limbs to put in big weed plots.

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Lewis on October 18 at 9:12 a.m.
Shows how ignorant our government is they spend millions trying to control a industry that is undetectable. Sure they might find a plot here and there but in Washington and Oregon marijuana are big cash crops that our government is too stupid to tax.

Since the SPD and other cities have raided and arrested marijuana dispensaries they basically are going against what the voter wants but there is nothing the voter can do, but start voting against all the new gadgets law enforcement wants to control the problem.

In the US the feds find an arrest 2% of the marijuana population. As our economy falters will we be able to pay agents to do nothing but drive and fly around trying to make it 3%?

If marijuana was legal the feds would have the money to control meth, etc. the gangs would all but be put out of business, but since the dispensaries have been shut down the SPD sent all the medical marijuana card holders straight back to the gangs.

Personally I think the SPD must have their own drug rung and the dispensaries were cutting in on it.

Nancy Reagan and her crew she took away from me and you she took it far away she took it far away………..

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flutieflakes on October 18 at 10:58 a.m.
That Miracle-Grow will make your bud taste weird.

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Sadbuttrue on October 18 at 11:05 a.m.
Wikipedia entry: “The Iron Law of Prohibition is a term coined by Richard Cowan which states that “the more intense the law enforcement, the more potent the prohibited substance becomes.” This is based on the premise that when drugs or alcohol are prohibited, they will be produced only in black markets in their most concentrated and powerful forms. If all alcohol beverages are prohibited, a bootlegger will be more profitable if he smuggles highly distilled liquors than if he smuggles the same volume of small beer. In addition, the black-market goods are more likely to be adulterated with unknown or dangerous substances. The government cannot regulate and inspect the production process, and harmed consumers have no recourse in law.”

An ignorant blogger above asked “What is going to stop E, and Meth, and PCP, and any of the hard drugs from being legalized?” According to the Iron Law of Prohibition, there would be no need to legalize harder drugs if Marijuana were legalized, because the market for harder drugs would be swiftly eliminated. The Mexican marijuana cartels would also be eliminated.

What the above blogger thought they were asking should be asked as follows: “How soon after marijuana is legalized will the entire market for hard drugs be completely and permanently eliminated?”

We are actually relearning the exact same lessons we should have learned, but apparently did not, from alcohol prohibition. Just before alcohol was re-legalized, we were publicly wringing our hands about the violent alcohol gangs which imposed an immense pathology on the country. And unsuspecting normal citizens who stumbled over backcountry stills were often shot at and killed in the 1920's. The chief outcome of alcohol prohibition is the United States changed from being a country of beer and wine consumers, to a country whose citizens were controlled and frequently slaughtered by the violent alcohol mafia. Prohibition spawned the creation of 200 proof Everclear and toxic “bathtub gin,” in abject obedience to the Iron Law of Prohibition. Similarly, Marijuana prohibition has viciously spawned the entire horrendous “bathtub meth” catastrophe.

Thus, these frontpage stories that extoll the horrendously counterproductive and anti-social efforts to eradicate marijuana are fundamentally intellectually dishonest. Marijuana prohibition benefits just one group: the law enforcement prison/industrial complex, at the expense of any other societal value.

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Bob_Knows on October 18 at 6:31 p.m.
I wonder which corrupt politician these particular pot farmers didn't pay off?

This entire agricultural operation and market is created by the government under its “war on drugs” program. They government tries do justify its abusive, invasive, and destructive control of the people by pushing these “horror” stories about the illegal drug business. But the truth is that a couple of regular farms could produce all the needed produce without the damage to forests, crime, and destruction of the lives of people. The “crime” is created for the purpose of “fighting” it.

The drug business is the biggest business at the cop shop. We don't need them. we don't want them. And we all would be a lot better off if they were run out of town on a rail.

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Rifleman__Dodd on October 18 at 8:59 p.m.
Well if we paid the illegal mexicans a decent wage, they wouldnt be doing the gardening or working for lawn care companies.

Kinda stupid to have to warehouse 10,000 plants for evidence when a couple plants and a lot of pictures would do. Instead of burning the evidence they could sell/give that away as medical marijuana and end that “problem”.

Its a cat and mouse game. The more they crack down, the more the product is reduced and therefore increases its unit if value, therefore enticing the cartels to take chances and grow it.

You have ten gardens and you lose two to the feds, so what, just makes the rest of it worth more and your overhead less.

In college it was $10/oz. Now days seems the dope is worth more than gold $1000/oz.

Too bad Mr. McDevit isn't concentrating more on crooked SPD officers. He's only going after Thompson where he should also be slamming the other conspirators. Kinda of a lame duck anyway. Obama is so slow in appointing U.S. Attorneys that McDevitt might make it to the next presidency at this rate.

I bet if we made mandantory bi-weekly urinalysys tests for every Federal, State, County and City employee we would be a finding a lot of THC levels. Maybe the Spokesman could lead by example here..and uh.. Doug Clark would be exempt.

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Scoutster on October 18 at 9:19 p.m.
Looks like the feds are going to step in and provide some rationality to the medical mj element, according to the AP:

'bout time some grownups started removing the emotion from this nonsense.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

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Sugar Shane on October 19 at 12:38 a.m.
To Sad, many many more people benefit by marijuana being illegal than just law enforcement and prisons. Phamaceutical companies, textile industries, and even petroleum industries would be impacted by legalizing industrial hemp alone. To Scoutster, a good point and I was excited when I first read it but if you reread it a bit, “to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws”. The laws are written with such ambiguity that anyone could be busted for not being in “strict compliance”. Have you ever seen an attorney dance around such vauge terminology? This is a battle far from over, and many more victories will need to be one before real change happens. Viva Reveloution!!

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420man on October 19 at 1:39 p.m.
They need to legalized cannabis and regulated it like they did with alcohol. Prohibition doesn't work. Cannabis is much safer than alcohol.

1. Marijuana is far less addictive than alcohol.

Dependence: How difficult it is for the user to quit, the relapse rate, the percentage of people who eventually become dependent, the rating users give their own need for the substance and the degree to which the substance will be used in the face of evidence that it causes harm.

Withdrawal: Presence and severity of characteristic withdrawal symptoms.

Tolerance: How much of the substance is needed to satisfy increasing cravings for it, and the level of stable need that is eventually reached.

Reinforcement: A measure of the substance's ability, in human and animal tests, to get users to take it again and again, and in preference to other substances.

Intoxication: Though not usually counted as a measure of addiction in itself, the level of intoxication is associated with addiction and increases the personal and social damage a substance may do.

Source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J. Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 “Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends on Whose Criteria You Use.” See, http://drugwarfacts.org/addictiv.htm

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2. Deaths from the two substances. There are hundreds of alcohol overdose deaths each year, yet there has never been a marijuana overdose death in history. The consumption of alcohol is also the direct cause of tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year.

In 2001, there were 331 alcohol overdose deaths and 0 marijuana overdose deaths. Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrh…

Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States (1) and is associated with multiple adverse health consequences, including liver cirrhosis, various cancers, unintentional injuries, and violence.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported 20,687 “alcohol-induced deaths” (excluding accidents and homicides) in 2003. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcoh…

The CDC has no reports of “marijuana-induced deaths.” (In reality, there may be 2-5 deaths each year attributed to marijuana, but this article — http://bbsnews.net/bw2005-02-01.html — describes how these are actually deaths attributable to other causes but “blamed” on marijuana due to the way the data is collected.)

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420man on October 19 at 1:39 p.m.
more info

3. Alcohol is one of the most toxic drugs, and using just 10 times what one would use to get the desired effect can lead to death. Marijuana is one of – if not the – least toxic drugs, requiring thousands times the dose one would use to get the desired effect to lead to death. This “thousands times” is actually theoretical, since there has never been a recorded case of marijuana overdose.
The most toxic recreational drugs, such as GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate) and heroin, have a lethal dose less than 10 times their typical effective dose. The largest cluster of substances has a lethal dose that is 10 to 20 times the effective dose: These include cocaine, MDMA (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often called “ecstasy”) and alcohol. A less toxic group of substances, requiring 20 to 80 times the effective dose to cause death, include Rohypnol (flunitrazepam or “roofies”) and mescaline (peyote cactus). The least physiologically toxic substances, those requiring 100 to 1,000 times the effective dose to cause death, include psilocybin mushrooms and marijuana, when ingested. I've found no published cases in the English language that document deaths from smoked marijuana, so the actual lethal dose is a mystery. My surmise is that smoking marijuana is more risky than eating it but still safer than getting drunk.

Despite the health risks and social costs, consciousness-altering chemicals have been used for centuries in almost all cultures. So it would be unrealistic to expect that all types of recreational drug use will suddenly cease. Self-management of these substances is extremely difficult, yet modern Western societies have not, in general, developed positive, socially sanctioned rituals as a means of regulating the use of some of the less hazardous recreational drugs. I would argue that we need to do that.

Source: The American Scientist, the Magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. http://www.americanscientist.org/temp…

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4. Long-term marijuana use is far less harmful than long-term alcohol use.

There is little evidence, however, that long-term cannabis use causes permanent cognitive impairment, nor is there is any clear cause and effect relationship to explain the psychosocial associations.

There are some physical health risks, particularly the possibility of damage to the airways in cannabis smokers. Overall, by comparison with other drugs used mainly for ‘recreational’ purposes, cannabis could be rated to be a relatively safe drug.

Source: Iversen, Leslie. Current Opinion in Pharmacology. Volume 5, Issue 1, February 2005, Pages 69-72. Long-term effects of exposure to cannabis. University of Oxford, Department of Pharmacology.

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5. The United Kingdom's Science and Technology Select Committee considers alcohol far more harmful than marijuana.

The committee commissioned an assessment of 20 legal and illegal stimulants in order to bring some logic to the country’s drug classification. Based on this study, they made recommendations to the government, including a recommendation that alcohol be considered among the most harmful drugs. Cannabis was considered significantly less harmful. (See chart below.) As you can see in the chart below, cannabis was recently rescheduled in the UK and is now a Class C substance (with A being the most harmful).

Source: New Scientist Magazine. Issue 2563. August 2006, page 5. Drug-danger 'league table' revealed.

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420man on October 19 at 1:42 p.m.
6. There has never been a documented case of lung cancer in a marijuana-only smoker, and recent studies find that marijuana use is not associated with any type of cancer. The same cannot be said for alcohol, which has been found to contribute to a variety of long-term negative health effects, including cancers and cirrhosis of the liver.

It could be interesting to note in the chart the difference between what people usually consider the most likely serious harms associated with marijuana and alcohol. While there has never been a documented case of lung cancer in a marijuana-only smoker, there are clearly thousands of deaths by liver disease directly associated with alcohol – 12,360 in 2003, to be exact. [See, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcoh… . Note also on this page that “alcoholic liver disease” is a separate category from “alcohol-induced deaths, excluding accidents and homicides.” Thus the 20,687 cited in #2 (as “deaths from alcohol consumption” could easily be 33,047.]

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, May 26, 2006; Page A03

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

“We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

“This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use,” he said. “Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning.”

Tashkin's group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals, and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers — exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

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420man on October 19 at 1:42 p.m.
While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana in their youth, when it is most often tried.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/…

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420man on October 19 at 1:43 p.m.
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7. Studies find alcohol use contributes to the likelihood of domestic violence and sexual assault and marijuana use does not.

Of the psychoactive substances examined, among individuals who were chronic partner abusers, the use of alcohol and cocaine was associated with significant increases in the daily likelihood of male-to-female physical aggression; cannabis and opiates were not significantly associated with an increased likelihood of male partner violence.

…the odds of any male-to-female physical aggression were more than 8 times (11 times) higher on days when men drank than on days of no alcohol consumption. The odds of severe male-to-female physical aggression were more than 11 times (11 times) higher on days of men’s drinking than on days of no drinking. Moreover, in both samples, over 60% of all episodes occurred within 2 hours of drinking by the male partner. (page 1557)

Source: Fals-Stewart , William, James Golden, Julie A. Schumacher. Journal of Addictive Behaviors. 28, pages 1555-1574. Intimate partner violence and substance use: A longitudinal day-to-day examination. Research Institute on Addictions, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

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8. Studies find alcohol use contributes to aggressive behavior and acts of violence, whereas marijuana use reduces the likelihood of violent behavior.

Alcohol is clearly the drug with the most evidence to support a direct intoxication-violence relationship.

Cannabis reduces likelihood of violence during intoxication…

Source: Hoaken, Peter N.S., Sherry H. Stewart. Journal of Addictive Behaviors. 28, pages 1533-1554. Drugs of abuse and the elicitation of human aggressive behavior. Dept. of Psychology, University of Western Ontario. Dept. of of Psychiatry, Dalhousie University.

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9. Alcohol use is highly associated with violent crime, whereas marijuana use is not.

About 3 million violent crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been drinking at the time of the offense.

Two-thirds of victims who suffered violence by an intimate (a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend) reported that alcohol had been a factor.

Among spouse victims, 3 out of 4 incidents were reported to have involved an offender who had been drinking.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Crime Victimization Survey 2002.

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420man on October 19 at 1:43 p.m.
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10. Alcohol use is a catalyst for domestic violence in Denver.

Alcohol is involved in nearly 50 percent of all domestic violence cases in Denver, and the use of alcohol by the perpetrator is a predominant factor in fatal cases of domestic violence.

Marijuana is not mentioned as a correlating or causal factor in cases of domestic violence in Denver.

Source: Abrams, Margaret L., Joanne Belknap, Heather C. Melton. When Domestic Violence Kills: The Formation and Findings of the Denver Metro Domestic Violence Fatality Review Committee. March 2001.

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11. Alcohol use is prevalent in cases of sexual assault and date rape on college campuses. Marijuana use is not considered a contributing factor in cases of sexual assault and date rape, as judged by the lack of discussion of marijuana in sexual assault and date rape educational materials.

A Harvard School of Public Heath study found that 72 percent of college rapes occurred when the female was too intoxicated by alcohol to resist/consent. Source: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/Docum…

Comparisons between alcohol and marijuana with respect to sexual assault are very difficult. This is because it does not appear as if marijuana is a significant contributing factor. The best way to “prove” this is through observation that many organizations dedicated to studying and educating about sexual assault do not list marijuana as a substance associated with incidents. Here is a good example from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network: http://www.rainn.org/types-of-assault…

Note their description of alcohol: “Alcohol is the most commonly used chemical in drug facilitated sexual assault. In large part this is due to the fact that alcohol is easily accessible and a chemical that many people use in social interactions.” Given the fact that marijuana is also “easily accessible” and used widely in “social interactions,” it is quite telling that marijuana is not even listed at all on this “Drug Facilitated Assault” page.

Another example: A Web site sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services lists alcohol, but not marijuana, as putting a person at risk for unwanted or risky sexual activity: http://www.4woman.gov/faq/rohypnol.htm#5

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spoketucky on October 21 at 12:34 p.m.
rifleman: I disagree with your claim that marijuana is more expensive. The weed you purchased for 10 per oz was no where near a potent as what one can regularly purchase for around $300.00 per oz today. I've been purchasing 1/8 increments for the last thirty years for forty dollars while witnessing steady increases in potency. Pot is actually a free market success, it's quality has increased while, compared with inflation, it's price has remained steady or dropped. If you are spending 1000 per oz you need to get a new dealer!

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