A plane crash in Colorado took the lives of one current and one former law enforcement officer on Friday. Pueblo County Sheriff’s Captain Leide DeFusco and retired Pueblo police captain John Barger were both in the plane when it crashed in the San Isabel National Forest. Barger, who was flying the plane, has been described as an experienced pilot and a flying enthusiast. Contact with the plane was lost at about 9:30 a.m., while the wreck was found around 7:00 p.m., and the precise cause of the crash…

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass a resolution today declaring illegal marijuana cultivation on federal lands to be an “unacceptable threat to the safety of law enforcement and the public,” and calling upon the nation’s drug czar “to work in conjunction with Federal and State agencies to develop a comprehensive and coordinated strategy to permanently dismantle Mexican drug trafficking organizations operating on Federal lands.” Speaking on the House floor yesterday, Rep. Jared…

The cost of pointless marijuana eradication efforts in California went up Wednesday when sheriff’s deputies shot and killed an unidentified man while hiking around in the woods looking for clandestine grow sites. It is currently unknown whether this man was involved in marijuana cultivation, whether he was armed or fired at deputies, or even if there was any marijuana found nearby. Authorities are being typically tight-lipped about the entire incident. What is known, beyond any doubt, is that eradication…

Bruce Ross at the Redding Record Searchlight takes issue with my post about a recent Wall Street Journal article, which showed once again how marijuana eradication efforts are counterproductive, but that law enforcement engage in them still because the federal government pays them to. I’ll reserve further comment, and let readers reach their own conclusions. You can read our back-and-forth exchange below: Bruce Ross: “It’s not about the money.” Mike Meno of the Marijuana Policy Project reads this…

People often wonder why local law enforcement agencies will spend so many resources cracking down on marijuana. As this weekend’s superbly reported front-page piece in the Wall Street Journal explains, it really all comes down to money. IGO, Calif.—Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there's one mission on which he's spending more than in recent years: pot busts. The reason is simple:…

As summer nears its end, marijuana “eradication” efforts are in high gear – and nowhere more so than in California, whose effort is called the “Campaign Against Marijuana Planting” – CAMP for short. And as usual, the news is filled with stories of CAMP raids like this one, in which whopping numbers of marijuana plants are seized. These are habitually accompanied by breathless tales of criminal gangs despoiling forests and wilderness areas with their marijuana growing operations. Missing from these…

Is there something in the water over at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy that turns every new drug czar into a babbling idiot? If not, how else can one explain the latest statement from new ONDCP honcho Gil Kerlikowske? Has he somehow been possessed by the spirit of his predecessor, John Walters? While never a reformer, Kerlikowske had a reputation for being pretty rational while he was police chief in Seattle. But a story in Wednesday's Fresno Bee quotes the drug czar as saying,…

Well, the federal government's National Drug Threat Assessment for 2009 is out, and -- who'dda thunk it? -- "Marijuana availability is high throughout the United States." This is despite record seizures of marijuana plants in 2007, as well as an all-time record number of marijuana arrests, over 872,000. Indoor cultivation -- often in converted homes and other dubious locations -- has increased "because of high profit margins and seemingly reduced risk of law enforcement detection." This year's Monitoring…

We're actually going to miss John Walters when he finally leaves his post as drug czar. He and his minions keep making our points for us -- and apparently don't even know they're doing it. Take, for example, this post from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's blog, reproduced here in full: In Case You Missed It: Leno and O'Reilly on Medical Pot in San Francisco Our recent post on the large and undocumented number of medical pot clubs in California gained a national audience last…