Okay, gang, you had me down last issue with a stomach split from sternum to belly button. And now you've got me wearing a girdle to keep my insides in. But that doesn't mean I'm not back up to speed when it comes to loathing the stupid and criminal war on drugs, the sack-o-shit politicians who foist its carnage and fear on us, and the evil DEA and Narcoboy munchkins who carry out their demon plans.

That said, let's start pointing fingers and naming names. First up, the incomparably idiotic John P. Walters, the US Drug Czar, who noted at during a July 12 press conference celebrating a number of recent pot raids in northern California's Shasta County that "the people who plant and tend the [pot] gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."

The Shasta raids utilized 17 policing agencies, including the ever compliant California National Guard and the ever zealous DEA, whose members got to zip around Northern Cal in Blackhawk choppers while searching out lush gardens planted on national park land.

Walters, whose comments were printed in the Redding Record-Searchlight, went on to say that the growers were "armed; they're dangerous… [they're] violent criminal terrorists."

Despite Walters assertions, however, no arrests had been made at the time of his comments and there were no reports of either booby-traps or weapons found at any of the busted pot spots. By the time the two-week operation Walters was talking about was concluded in late July, 60 gardens with a total of 283,397 plants had been uprooted, 16 suspected growers had been arrested and 10 weapons had been found, including a bow, pellet guns, one pistol, one .30-.30 rifle and a couple of .22-caliber rifles. The stuff of terrorists for sure! That's quite an army, Mr. Walters, no shit. If I was one of those arrested I think I might ask my lawyer to charge Walters with libel for his name-calling.

On the other hand, had those 283,397 plants made it to harvest and found their way to smokers' bowls, imagine what a cash infusion it would have been for the local economy, and imagine how many more happy people there would be in Shasta and elsewhere. By elsewhere I mean my house, of course. My bowl. Thanks a lot, fellas.

Read the rest in SKUNK volume 3, issue 6