The only marijuana magazine bringing you the stories of other pot smokers and smugglers.

Quick Hits (page 4)

Along the U.S.-Canada border: People smuggling down, marijuana smuggling up

By: Wilson Ring, Associated Press Writer

From a farm field about 10 feet from the Canadian border, State Police Sgt. Tom Hango looks through an apple orchard at cars on a back road in Quebec.

The rolling farmland separated into two countries by a slash in the trees is called "apple alley" by drug smugglers.

Since Sept. 11, Hango and other Vermont troopers have been making a habit of driving there, especially at night, looking for anything out of place. Hango is not deterred by the huge odds against finding anything.

"We'll do what we can to protect our state and our country," he said.

Hango is one of countless state, provincial and local law enforcement officials on both sides of the U.S-Canadian border who have been paying closer attention since the terrorist attacks.

No terrorist - or terrorism-related arrests have been announced, but there have been other payoffs. The number of illegal border crossings is down sharply, and drug seizures and arrests are way up.

From October to April, the number of illegal border-crossers dropped 34 percent compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The agency says the drop occurred on both the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Heightened vigilance is believed to be at least partly responsible.

"There is definitely an increased, visible presence on the border," said immigration spokeswoman Amy Otten. "That word gets out among the people who might try to get through illegally. But we really don't know because we aren't talking to people who aren't coming."

Smugglers undoubtedly drew lessons from the case of Lucia Garofalo, a Montreal resident arrested at Beecher Falls in December 1999. Authorities originally suspected her of playing a role in a foiled plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport as 2000 dawned, but changed their minds and released her in spring 2002.

Officials believe increased vigilance also helps explain the surge in drug arrests on the border, but, again, no one can say for sure.

Between October and March, agents in the U.S. Border Patrol's Massenna, N.Y., office made 37 drug arrests, seized $4.7 million worth of marijuana, $462,000 in cash, 13 boats and 16 vehicles, said Dick Ashlaw, the agent in charge.

During the same period a year earlier, the Massena office had two drug seizures.

"The bottom has dropped out of alien smuggling," Ashlaw said. "People are just afraid to move aliens across the border."

Though Sept. 11 obviously made smuggling aliens riskier, Ashlaw said there always have been reasons to prefer drugs.

"I can make 10 times as much money in half the time," he said. Besides, he said, "A hockey bag full of marijuana can't testify against you in court and you can't get charged with manslaughter for tossing it overboard."

No one knows how long the changes will last.

"We are watching to see if the trend continues, is it permanent?" Otten said of the drop in alien smuggling.

"It's still too early to say."

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Tan 'n' Trends

Growin' Our Own (page 4)

0013 hrs. Narc Alert

By: General Lee Doofy, on the front line

To: All soldiers and soldierettes

This is an urgent heads up to all heads. Our duty status will be,.. narc alert 3..as of 0013 hrs.

With the arrest and detainment of Luke Helder, the postal pipe bomber, we can breath a collective sigh of relief.

Although we are grateful to be safe from his idiocy, a battle of perception will soon be waged leaving us the onus of addressing the news media spin.

At this point in time Luke Helder is being portrayed as a good kid gone bad. What made him go bad?

According to information supplied by the press, Luke has smoked marijuana, listened to Nirvana, and thought Kurt Cobain, who's Teen Spirit led to his suicide, had something meaningful to say.

With this information to work with our enemies, those that are filled with bigotry, hypocrisy, and hatred, will be on the march.

Timothy McViegh had been known to drink beer and was an ex marine. Our society, at this point in time, has not abolished beer, nor has it marched in support of a disbandment of the Marines.

While we are on the subject of homegrown terrorists (nut cases), let us not forget to give mention to Ted Kazyinski. Ted, according to his manifesto, was sure that technology was the downfall of man. Technology marches on, unabated by the public, in spite of Ted's warnings.

Last, but surely not least, we need to work Charlie Manson into the scenario. Charlie and his girls stand to this day as stark testimony to the potential drugs have for the corruption of a young mind. Charlie was, and remains to this day, a creation of our society.

In Luke's case, the enemy now has two of the necessary ingredients to form an indictment. Not of Luke's heinous activities, but of marijuana and youth culture music. I am sure Attorney General John Ashcroft and Mr. Asa Hutchinson are thrilled to their very marrow. If Mr. Ashcroft and Mr Hutchinson had contacted Igor for a body and went to work in the laboratory they could not have produced the successful poster boy that they have received. The use of Luke to further their attack on our rights is an opportunity on which they will not pass.

It appears at this time as if sex hasn't been added to this mix. It may not be added. I can assure you that it is there as well. The nice, staid looking teacher that spoke so highly of Luke to the media - did she ever look at him in any way that he may have perceived as sexual? Did he go home at night, with lascivious thoughts of her, and choke his chicken? Is there some young nubile lass out there that has insight on Luke's sexuality?

It is difficult, if not impossible, to grow up in today's society with out exposure to recreational drugs and music with sex thrown in as an unavoidable given. What young healthy male has not had a hard on? Even if he has had the hard on for another guy, I assure you that he has had one. Sex , drugs and music are a reality of life in this country.

Will we lose our voices to those in power as they and their lap dog named media hold sway over the dissemination of information? If so, we will not need to worry about the Taliban, Al Quaida and the Muslim extremists. We will, by lowering ourselves to their tactics of fear and intimidation, have fallen into the trap of becoming them.

When we hand over our rights of free speech and search and seizure, for our own protection, we can start fitting our women for burkas, give up our music and lay down our arms. Regrettably there are religious movements in this country that will find all of this very satisfying.

We need to take a stand against the vitriolic hypocrisy, bigotry, and hatred that is breathing fear, uncertainty and disenfranchisement into the youth of our great country.

It is not the sex, the drugs, the music, or the money that is making victims of young men like Luke Helder. It is the evils of bigotry, hypocrisy, and hatred. Until we, as a nation, address these issues with more compassion, logic, and understanding the result will be more misguided young people.

There was a time when the saying was, "Do not trust anyone over thirty." Soldiers and soldierettes I am well over thirty and, regrettably, I can see why that was a slogan.

My first suggestion as a battle plan is to differentiate the word terrorist. The Taliban, Al Quaida, and the Palestinians have forever changed the meaning of terrorists. It should now read: anyone who gives their life to incite terror for the purpose of making a political statement.

The inclusion to the new definition - gives their life.

We have already seen examples of young people, in this country and other free world countries, giving their lives while taking innocents with them in what, to this point, appear to be vain attempts to garner attention to their disenfranchisement and disillusionment. The youth suicide rates in this country are shameful. As a country, we need to quit fanning the smoke and get to the fire.

This is a call to action, soldiers and soldierettes. The war on drugs that some of us find ourselves fighting is just one battlefield. To put an end to this war we need to attack our common enemies. Hypocrisy, bigotry, and hatred are the true axis of evil.

Our foremost weapon in this war is words. It is therefore vital that we protect our first amendment rights. I did not become a general overnight. My promotions were not easy. The blood of my brothers was left on the battlefields of Vietnam. Their bodies came home in bags. I refuse to feel disenfranchised in the country for which they and their families paid such a high price.

Victimless crimes must be addressed in a sane and rational manner. An example. A soldier or soldierette has a true drug problem, possibly with meth. If he or she seeks help there are, in most cases, several avenues open to him or her. They are treated as if they are sick and are offered help. If, on the other hand, that same individual gets busted prior to seeking help he or she is no longer an individual with a drug problem. He or she is now a criminal.

The logic behind the laws used to detect and arrest marijuana smokers is even worse. It does not hold up under the slightest of scrutiny. Marijuana is not a drug problem. It is a legal problem.

The question many of you should have is "What can I do?" What you mean is what can I do without calling unwanted attention to myself? Start with the marijuana issue. It is, without a doubt, one of the most hypocritical. The examples of hypocrisy are prevalent and visible. For example, look at Bill Clinton, Mike Bloomberg, the now deceased Carl Sagan. We need to demand accountability from those that are still among the living and capitalize on the reputations of the departed.

It is time to think of identification. If you want to be known as a soldier or soldierette in this Army, hang a set of dog tags from your vehicle mirror or on the bars of your favorite cycle.

For those of you that do not have dog tags, replicas are not that difficult to find. Possibly someone that reads this will post a site. In the event that you want to have a set made up but do not want your name on them. Have them stamped - Private Lee Doofy, then a number - any number. You will then be in full compliance.

That is it soldiers and soldierettes. I will be looking for you out there on the front and in the trenches. Do not worry about disappointing me. Worry about disappointing yourselves.

AT EASE

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Pipeline (page 4)

Did The Drug War Claim Another 3,056 Casualties On 9-11?

By: Arianna Huffington

The Phoenix memo. The Rowley letter. The Oklahoma red flag. All elements in this true and tragic story of fumbling feds that has more smoking guns than a Quentin Tarantino movie.

So why did the FBI, whose job it is find smoking guns, fail to see the smoking guns popping up all around it?

In announcing his big reorganization plans, Director Robert Mueller seemed to consider the FBI's tragedy of errors a question of flawed management flow charts, nothing that a rejiggered PowerPoint presentation couldn't fix. But there was a much more fundamental problem plaguing the bureau before Sept. 11. And it wasn't one of office politics, but of office-wide priorities. Namely, the agency's crippling addiction to America's war on drugs.

While Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida minions were diligently preparing for their murderous mission, the FBI was looking the other way with equal determination. More than twice as many FBI agents were assigned to fighting drugs (2,500) than fighting terrorism (1,151). And a far greater amount of the FBI's financial resources was dedicated to the war on drugs.

And this pathological prioritization of the drug war extended well beyond the allocation of money and manpower. It was ingrained in the culture. Counterterrorism units were treated like the bureau's ugly stepchildren, looked down upon by FBI management because they weren't making the kind of high-profile arrests that spruce up a supervisor's resume and make the evening news. Let's face it, canvassing flight schools in search of suspicious students is nowhere near as sexy as one of those big drug busts with the bags of coke or bales of pot piled high for the cameras.

It's now painfully clear that there were terror warning signs aplenty but that they were disregarded by distracted FBI officials who had their eyes on a very different prize.

In Phoenix, where the now infamous Ken Williams memo originated, counterterrorism agents complained bitterly about their efforts being given "the lowest investigative priority" by a supervisor who preferred glamorous drug-fighting investigations. Even though the anti-terror squad was understaffed, having been assigned only eight of the division's 200 agents, it had managed to infiltrate groups of suspected terrorists through the use of paid informants, including a man who was being trained to be a suicide bomber. They had also uncovered local men with ties to World Trade Center bomber Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and to a virulently anti-American Muslim organization linked to al-Qaida.

So what was their reward for all this? Regular head-butting sessions with higher ups who balked at having to allocate resources for information that didn't lead to immediate arrests. I'll bet doubloons to donuts that the Phoenix agents doling out cash to drug case snitches very rarely ran up against the same sort of resistance -- what one veteran terrorism squad member described as "micromanaging, constant indecision, and stonewalling."

Meanwhile, across the country in Boston, Raed Hijazi, an admitted al-Qaida member who had become an informant in exchange for avoiding jail, tried to warn FBI agents about Arab terrorists and sympathizers, particularly Nabil al-Marabh, a member of an al-Qaida terrorist cell who was arrested in the wake of 9-11. But the FBI wasn't interested in Hijazi's terror leads - they only wanted to hear what he knew about heroin being smuggled into America from Afghanistan.

And it wasn't just the FBI. This Drug War Uber-Alles mindset infected the entire law enforcement community, starting at the top. "I want to escalate the war on drugs," said Attorney General John Ashcroft in his first interview after being nominated for the post. "I want to renew it. I want to refresh it." And he was true to his word. Witness the $43 million the Bush administration gave to the Taliban just four months before Sept. 11. Sure there was the small detail of harboring a guy named bin Laden, but the Taliban had agreed to ban the production of opium poppies. And so the drug war trumped the terror war once again.

So is this kind of thinking finally a thing of the past? I'm not so sure. Even after last week's highly touted reorganization, which included the reassignment of 400 narcotics agents to counterterrorism, there will still be 2,100 agents spending their invaluable time and energy fighting a fruitless drug war. This despite the fact that combating drugs didn't even make Director Mueller's official Top Ten list of priorities.

Which raises the question: if the drug war is suddenly lower on the FBI pecking order than combating white collar crime (#7), protecting civil rights (#5), and taking on public corruption at all levels (#4 with a bullet!), then how come 1 out of 6 agents will still be working that beat? The numbers just don't add up.

According to high-ranking FBI officials, Mueller originally intended to pull the plug on his agency's involvement in the drug war, shifting every one of his counternarcotics agents to counterterrorism activities, but was talked out of it by drug war generals who can't admit defeat. Not only should the White House follow though on Mueller's instinct and choose the war on terror over the war against drugs, they should insist that the FBI hire new kinds of people to fight this new kind of war.

"Merely reassigning traditional FBI agents to fight terrorism isn't enough," former senator Gary Hart, who co-chaired the U.S. Commission on National Security, told me. "The new counterterror team should be more like the Delta Force. Not standard-issue agents in dark suits and ties, but young, imaginative 21st century investigators recruited from outside the bureau."

At the same time, we should make sure that the administration doesn't just transfer the drug war and its attendant lavish funding from the FBI to the DEA, which will no doubt show up on the Hill any day now, looking for more money to take up the drug fighting slack.

As the soaring budget deficit reminds us, federal coffers are not a bottomless well.

Everything comes with a price. Sadly, it's looking more and more like the price of the drug war may have included the 3,056 lives lost on Sept. 11.

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