The official who came up with the name "Operation Green Thumb" must have been very pleased with himself. As reported by the New Hampshire Union Leader on Dec. 14, police officers seized over 6,000 marijuana plants with a street value of over $24 million from 10 houses throughout wealthy areas of southern New Hampshire.
I intently watched this story develop from my Manchester home during winter break. On Dec. 15, the newspaper published front-page news stories proclaiming "The Pot Farm Next Door" emblazoned with menacing cannabis leaves. "They approach with promises of easy money," the article begins, painting the (even worse) Vietnamese so-called criminals as the type of people who are trying to rape and kill you, and pay your innocent neighbors to do it. In rich neighborhoods, nonetheless!
The officials quoted in the articles are stirring fear in a more calculated manner than even the Union Leader. State Police Col. Frederick Booth expressed his alarm: "It's not the type of houses you would typically look at and say 'That's a drug house.'" Citing the large stockpiles of fertilizers and illegal splicing of electric lines to hide their large draw on the power grid, June Stansbury of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency said the "outrageous behavior not only was criminal, it was calculated and sneaky and without regard to anyone's safety." State Police Maj. David Kelley pledged that the state will crack down on these operations to avoid giving the drug business a foothold here in New Hampshire.
This state is one of the few in the Union truly dedicated to minimizing government interference in its citizens' affairs. It claims legitimately, as do all governments, the right to interfere when there is the danger of some individuals' activities harming others. And yet, the byproducts of the drug's illegalization create more danger to society than the drugs themselves.
Do pot smokers hurt anyone? Not usually. THC inebriation is not scientifically recognized to make one violent. Pot smoking itself is not proven to be more medically dangerous than tobacco smoking. The argument can be made that those who smoke and drive could kill others, but many drunks kill other drivers and pedestrians and we don't bust speak-easies any more. The real reason we have outlawed marijuana in this country is because some, perhaps even the majority, think that it is wrong for others to smoke to get high. This terrifyingly puritanical notion falls to pieces in the face of the slightest scrutiny, since millions of Americans are habitual abusers of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine, just to name a few. Pot is certainly no more dangerous a drug than any of these.
The quoted officials hint at their last line of defense: these drug dealers harm the community. They admittedly do dangerous things to circumvent the law, like splicing electric lines that lead to fires like the ones that brought the houses to the attention of the authorities in the first place. However, the dealers only do these things because they cannot be done openly. During Prohibition, the Sicilian mafia took hold of this country's crime world by cornering profits on alcohol. Once Prohibition ended, the mafia could no longer compete with businesses devoted to profiting off the sale of alcohol, and moved on to other things. But the mob would never have such a hold on the country as it did during those dark years.
If pot were legal, it would be sold in places like the shop across the street from the Manchester Police Department where my father buys his pipe tobacco. It would feed the bottom line of a corporation, which would pay dividends to shareholders and enrich the whole nation by enlarging the economic pie from which we all eat. Vietnamese "criminals" in New Hampshire would not be able to buy nice houses in small communities and make a killing off dealing drugs because there would be businesses that are better at it. People do not generally complain about their neighbor raising pigs next door and stinking up the whole neighborhood because there are huge farms devoted to it far away that are far better at it than he is. If we residents of New Hampshire don't want the pot farm next door, we must legalize the pot farm far away.
