California marijuana farms siphon large amounts of water from streams and rivers endangering salmon and other fish, clear-cut wide areas, poison the area and water with pesticides, deliberately kill predators and animals that might eat the crops, and in general make a devastating mess and trash the environment.
“Scientists suspect that nutrient runoff from excess potting soil and fertilizers, combined with lower-than-normal river flow due to diversions, has caused a rash of toxic blue-green algae blooms in the North Coast rivers over the last decade.”
While there are small-scale operations in these remote areas, drug cartels often have gigantic grows on public land.
Indoor growing is problematic too.
A study in the journal Energy Policy calculated that indoor marijuana cultivation could be responsible for 9% of California’s household electricity use.
Let’s just legalize marijuana completely then regulate heavily. The current situation is untenable as California marijuana farms are making a mess that will take years, maybe decades, to remediate.
The War on Drugs has become an absurdity. As I learned recently, the practice of medicine is one of the unlikely casualties.
In September, my wife began having abdominal pains. Her GP sent her to the GI specialist, who suspected Crones Disease but found nothing. (Apparently Crones is a very popular diagnosis these days.) The GI specialist said if she was in pain to go to the ER. The ER gave her pain meds and referred her back to her GP. After three and a half months of this shuffle, with all the doctors throwing up their hands and over a dozen ER visits, one ER doc decided she was just an addict seeking drugs and flagged her. Suddenly she couldn’t get either treatment OR pain meds. This left her in excruciating pain with no one interested in why.
Since then, two nurses and an EMT have told us that over 90% of the people who utilize emergency services are addicts looking for drugs – thus the assumption that if you’re in long-term pain, you are most likely an addict.
In an apparent conclusion to the story, a chiropractor met my wife casually and diagnosed her problem almost instantly based on her symptoms. He has been able to relieve her pain without drugs.
Having our hospitals supply drugs to addicts because it’s the only legal avenue is a ridiculous waste of resources. But more importantly, how can a doctor (or other health professional) practice medicine when he or she assumes that 90% of the patients are lying?