This may be a bit dated ... I was going to post it just before my laptop crashed.  But the question is no less relevant: Is the U.S. Drug Czar completely stoned??

The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort. "Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said.

After touring gardens raided this week in Shasta County, Walters said the officers who are destroying the gardens are performing hard, dangerous work in rough terrain. He said growers have been known to have weapons, including assault rifles. 

"These people are armed; they're dangerous," he said. He called them "violent criminal terrorists."

Whether or not you enjoy using marijuana, I have a few obvious problems with this kind of grandstanding. The first, of course, is that it's patently ridiculous to equate growers with terrorists. While certainly a black-market enterprise, pot-farmers are trying to run a business whose success depends entirely upon a strong, vibrant economy where people have disposable income and are, you know - alive to spend it! Moreover, unlike heroin, meth, or cocaine, pot ranks among the lowest income as a factor of quantity, space, time, and overhead. If you really want to fund terrorism, there are far better cash crops to go with. Just ask post-invasion Afghanistan where recently supercharged opium production finances everything from rocket launchers to identity fraud.

Secondly, and this is a quibble, but the accusation of pot being harmful to the environment is nothing but a cheap ploy at exploiting a hot-button liberal (and recently conservative) issue. In fact, marijuana is one of the best rotation crops in existence by outcompeting other weeds, adding abundant organic material to the growing fields, and protecting ground nutrients through a strong root system. Moreover, with a rapid growth system, cannabis rivals most crops for year-round absorption of carbon emissions and has the potential to replace many higher-polluting industrial materials.

Finally, of course farmers have guns. They are operating outside the law in a very dangerous and often unscrupulous black market. Not only does this criminal environment lead to a great deal of paranoia, but also to the very real threat of death on a daily basis. Sure, this doesn't make them good people, but having a gun does not post hoc make you a terrorist any more than Charlton Heston is bin Laden's demented, wrinkly old right-hand man.