Newly released data by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reveals that 98 percent of all domestic marijuana seized in the U.S. is ditchweed, or feral hemp.
The statistics in the 2005 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics could certainly raise some taxpayer eyebrows. In 2005, the DEA reported the eradication of 4,209,086 cultivated pot plants. If you think that number is high, here ís one for you: in addition to cultivated plants, those boys in their helicopters pulled up 218,633,492 feral hemp plants.
In fiscal year 2001, the DEA provided $13.1 million to 102 programs in all 50 states for marijuana eradication. Statistics show 99.42 percent of eradicated marijuana that year was ditchweed. In 2004, the cost to federal taxpayers for marijuana eradication rose to at least $3.67 billion. This figure does not include state and local spending.
Incidentally, the 4 million-plus cultivated plants eradicated by the DEA includes cultivated ditchweed, or industrial hemp.
DEA Special Agent Sarah Pullen says that all marijuana is considered a Schedule 1 narcotic, and the DEA’s mission is to target large drug trafficking organizations that are either cultivating, distributing or selling narcotics.
“The way the federal law is written, marijuana is marijuana whether it ís ditchweed or whatever,” Pullen says. “The substance in marijuana that is illegal is THC, and not a percentage of THC. Ditchweed still contains a percentage of THC so it is a controlled substance and hemp is a controlled substance under federal law.”
According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the THC levels in industrial hemp and ditchweed are so low that one cannot get high from smoking it. It also contains a relatively high percentage of another cannabinoid, CBD, that actually blocks the marijuana high.
Could the billions of dollars being spent to eradicate industrial hemp and ditchweed legitimately be tagged as targeting large drug trafficking organizations that are cultivating, distributing or selling narcotics?
Watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS) commissioned Harvard University visiting professor of economics Dr. Jeffrey Miron to conduct a study on whether this spending of taxpayer dollars was justifiable.
According to Miron’s report, the answer is no. Current levels of marijuana use and attitudes toward marijuana are only modestly different from 30 years ago despite a significant escalation in federal marijuana spending. Similarly, differences across countries in marijuana spending bear little relation to marijuana use rates.
NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre blasted the DEA for spending taxpayer dollars on wild hemp eradication.
“Industrial hemp is grown legally throughout most the Western world as a commercial crop for its fiber content,” St. Pierre said in an article on NORML’s website, “yet the US government is spending taxpayers’ money to target and eradicate this same agricultural commodity.”
The national ditchweed numbers can be a bit deceiving, however. Out of the 218,633,492 feral hemp plants eradicated last year, 212,441,768 of them were in Indiana. According to St. Pierre, most of these plants are remnants of U.S.-government subsidized industrial hemp crops that existed prior to World War II. If one were to exclude Indiana, about 93 percent of all DEA eradicated plants were cultivated and about 7 percent were ditchweed. In Hawaii, all confiscated plants in 2005 were cultivated, with no ditchweed reported. However, more than half the states failed to report their ditchweed totals.
Though DEA statistics through 1996 show no ditchweed reported in Hawai‘i, DEA actions in the Aloha State raise questions about the validity of this figure.
A part of DEA’s eradication program specifically designed to target feral hemp has been the aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate, commonly known as RoundUp. Aerial spraying was used in Hawai‘i throughout the late ‘90’s and early into this decade. Though DEA officials maintain it was used in Hawai‘i to target cultivated crops, this form of eradication is usually reserved for eradicating acres of wild hemp on the Mainland.