Drug Czar John Walters wants you to think of the federal marijuana eradication effort in California like a ground war against guerrilla terrorists. As quoted in the Redding Record Searchlight:
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…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.
It is true that illegal marijuana cultivation on public lands continues to have a significant environmental toll, which Walters noted in his statement. But the drug czar isn’t likely to rally the troops in California by obliterating any remaining distinctions between the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. The take-away message is clearly that when you’re fighting a losing battle in hostile terrain, sometimes you need to re-examine the premise of the fight. Now would be a good time. UPDATE: The Office of National Drug Control Policy posted the Record Searchlight story to their blog and called it “a good story,” so, yes, Walters really did mean to say those crazy things.