Next Big Thing in Terrorists: Pot Growers

[aduidarnenye]

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-t..._as_terro.html

Pot growers portrayed as terror threat

Federal, state and local officials carrying out a counter-terrorism drill in Northern California Wednesday played out a scenario in which local marijuana growers set off bombs and took over the Shasta Dam, the nation’s second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade.

According to an account in the Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight, the 12-hour drill was part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program, begun in 2003.

“More than 250 people from more than 20 agencies took part,” said Sheri Harral, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, according to the paper.

Harral said the drill took 18 months to plan and cost the bureau alone $500,000. The other agencies covered their own costs.

The paper made only passing reference to the scenario's designation of pot growers as terrorist villians.

In the otherwise realistic mock-terror scenario, the marijuana growers’ “red cell” set off bus and car bombs as distractions, took over the dam with three hostages, and then “threatened to flood the Sacramento River by rolling open the drum gates atop the dam,” according to the paper.

No matter how worthwhile a drill, said marijuana legalization advocates, envisioning pot growers as a terrorist threat in laid-back Northern California was ridiculous.

"That was so stupid," said Dale Gieringer, head of the California chapter of NORML, the decades-old National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

"I don't know what inspired it,” Gieringer told the Drug War Chronicle. “I can see the need to do better pat downs for air travelers to make sure they're not holding joints in their underpants, but this? It sounds like something some yahoo redneck county sheriff would dream up."

Harral did not return the Chronicle’s call for comment and could not be immediately reached by SpyTalk.

In a confidential catalogue of terrorist threats, uncovered by Congressional Quarterly in 2005, the Department of Homeland Security did not include the region's marijuana growers.

In August, however, the Big Valley News in Madera, Calif reported that the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program "has been studying the escalating violence associated with the growing of cannabis throughout California."

It said, "The increasing involvement of highly organized drug trafficking organizations protecting their investment or competing for territory and market share has elevated the dangers surrounding cannabis growing from 'pot users merely growing their stash' to...a 'marijuana war.'"

[Cyn]

So?

[Priran]

http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/9...7973165229.jpg

it's that reefer madness

[MarkM.]

Seriously? I mean come on, when's the last time you heard about anyone doing something stoned on pot other than eating 3 lbs of pasta or something....

[Jaybar]

Clearly if they didn't arrest the pot dealer comrade this scenario wouldn't have happened.

[Demosthenes11]

lol @ terrorists cover to being terrorists being an illegal activity

[Zilong]

Next they'd be using anonymous cover scenario using van bomb for distraction.

[Uzor]

Next they'd be using anonymous cover scenario using van bomb for distraction.

Not before Wikileaks employees bomb the Pentagon and take the president hostage in order to get access to top-secret military intel.

[jmc]

I don't see this as a problem, the scenario did not seem to be targeting the "normal pot smokers"

it almost seemed like a situation that could arise if there was some type of Columbia style drug cartel operating in the US.

[altwight]

in before you grow pot you're a terrorist.

[*Shinzon*]

Narco-Terrorism around the world has become increasingly more popular, or prevalent I guess is a better word. So this really isn't a surprise.

[Zilong]

Not before Wikileaks employees bomb the Pentagon and take the president hostage in order to get access to top-secret military intel.

with ninjas?

[Rhyis.]

People that grow large quantities of pot tend to be affiliated with some kind of mafia or gang... Just sayin'. It's not like they're going to crack down on that 20 year old kid growing a few plants in his moms basement.

[miokomioko]

So what does "terrorist" even mean these days? "Bad guy?"

[Ksandra]

If there's one thing action movies have told me, terrorists can be funding money through drugs.


I don't see a problem with this.


tbh, it doesn't sound like they are calling stoners terrorists, just that they wanted a full scale scenario and it so happens that the terrorits grow pot in this picture.


Next time they should use a woman who used a bomb to kill her husband for sleeping with her sister.

Then we can say all women are terrorists.

I'd be true.