After years of traveling through the Middle East and Europe as well as several states, I came to lite in Southern California in 1983. A perfect place for a young man in his early twenties. Sun and fun, lovely (if jaded) young females, and lots and lots of really good weed. Kush rained like Manna from Heaven. Golden Thai, Mowie, Purple Buds of all kinds. The purple golfballs from Catalina Island were beyond comprehension. There was even the occasional arrival of tons of Alaskan Thunderfuck. This was the hay-day of outdoor excellence which is, in spite of what many believe, still unequaled. Also, one cannot forget the mountains of Mexican pot that always seemed to be there no matter what season or circumstance.
1983 was also a time of infamy in the California weed scene. In the mid to late Seventies the Mexican Government began spraying the Marijuana crops in Mexico with Paraquat (with plenty of help from the US State Dept to the tune of 15 Million a year). A deadly chemical designed not only to kill the plant, but to poison the smoker. And in doing so scare others into abstaining from indulgence in our beloved herb. The dangers of paraquat were no secret to the State Department. Swallowing as little as a half ounce is suicidal. Paraquat gravitates to the lungs, where it causes such massive damage that death almost invariably occurs within two weeks. There is no known antidote. But whether paraquat that is burned, and then inhaled, produces those same deadly results was unknown. In 1975, when the US started funding the Mexican program, there had been no inhalation studies. There would be none until 1977, when Senate investigators forced the issue.
In March of 1978, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano announced the disturbing results of those tests: Heavy users of this tainted marijuana might develop fibrosis, an irreversible lung disease, and “clinically measurable damage” might befall less frequent smokers. In the furor that followed, the Administration explained that there was nothing it could do but warn smokers against Mexican marijuana — the Government of Mexico selected this herbicide independently, purchased it from a British company with its own funds, and sprayed marijuana mostly when opium‐poppy fields, the true targets of the American funded program, lay fallow. And if the United States pressured the Mexicans, the probable outcome would be suspension of opium‐poppy spraying‐and intensified spraying of marijuana.
In 1988 the director of the Drug Enforcement Administration said that the Government would use the herbicide paraquat and two others in a stepped-up campaign to eradicate domestically grown marijuana.
The use of paraquat, banned from national forests in 1983 because of environmental concerns, was announced by the director, John C. Lawn, at a news conference. A drug agency spokesman, Cornelius Dougherty, subsequently said that, in light of a 1983 ruling by Federal Judge June Green, paraquat would be sprayed for marijuana eradication on private land, not on public property.
The other two herbicides cited by Mr. Lawn, 2,4D and Glyphosate (which is now known to cause Cancer), are not involved in the ruling and could be used on public lands, a spokesman said.
Jay Feldman, coordinator of the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, said: ”The other two chemicals don’t have the same restrictions, but while that may be complying with the letter of the law, it is violating the principles that protect national lands to ensure the protection of wildlife habitats and recreation areas.
Under a consent decree resolving the 1983 suit by several environmental groups and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the D.E.A. agreed not to spray paraquat until after the Government prepared a statement on the action’s effect on the environment. The impact statement was completed in July 1985 and found that ”there is a slight risk that heavy smokers of marijuana could be affected by paraquat-sprayed marijuana.” The document also opened the way for use of glyphosate and 2,4-D.
Glyphosate, a weedkiller like paraquat, was first used in September 1985.
The Government contends that while paraquat is dangerous in a concentrated form, once it is sprayed it becomes ”biologically inactive.”
Mr. Lawn said that the Government must prepare another environmental impact statement when eradication is contemplated and that ”at that point, the determination is made by environmentalists, by law enforcement, which chemical will be most effective.”
Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d said ”the real environmental damage is not from” the herbicides, but rather from what is being done by the illegal growers of marijuana.
So we see that it’s been done before. The US Government trying to eradicate their target of choice without regard for, or intentionally hostile to, the health and lives of average people. Which brings us to the present and forces us to ask the question…. Are they doing the same thing now, only in regards to Opiates?
Why are American junkies dying at such an accelerated rate? Why is so much fake, poisonous Fentanyl making it into the Heroin and Cocaine supply seemingly unabated? A new style every few months. Deadly, cheap….How does something so powerful cost only pennies? If it comes from drug cartels as the DEA has insisted why doesn’t it fit the cartel M.O…..To make money? Are we to believe that some 501(c)(3) non-profit somewhere distributes this poison for shits and giggles? Who would distribute such a thing without profiteering from it? The young people in America could not possibly visualize this, but to those of us who are aged enough to have seen the exact same activity before, it fills us with foreboding and a tremendous suspicion of a Government that we already know will kill it’s citizens without hesitation to sate it’s collective fear of the unknown.
The fearmongering and Government propaganda concerning Opioid painkillers, with the help of capitulating media, is already out of control. The process of using Doctors as scapegoats is in full swing. Is Fentanyl the new Paraquat?
How deep does this horror story run?
- captainkona
Excellent question :
How deep does this horror story run?