A Feb. 25 Acorn article, “Medical marijuana operation in Santa Barbara ends in arrest of T.O. man, 41,” trumpets the arrest of eight suspects on suspicion of marijuana production, trafficking and allegations of money-laundering.

While violation of criminal laws can’t be sanctioned and should be prosecuted, in celebrating this law-enforcement “victory,” we should take a broader moral view of the actual crimes committed against society. Reportedly, these arrests were the product of “A three-month narcotics investigation by five law enforcement agencies.”

It undoubtedly consumed hundreds of hours of expensive police time, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Additional hundreds of thousands will further be spent on future jail time and for a prosecutor, public defender and court costs.

Moreover, each prisoner costs about $53,000 per year for incarceration while, simultaneously, the federal government is sanctioning our bankrupt state with hefty fines for unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment” of prisoners, from overcrowding and substandard medical care. For lack of adequate public funding, our libraries are closing, schoolteachers laid off, civic infrastructure left crumbling, unemployed left hungry, homeless go unsheltered and uninsured sick people go unhelped.

Yet we can rest assure that through perhaps $2 million in public expenditures, this particular unlawful marijuana supplier group has been shut down, thus forcing local users to go buy their next mellow “cannabis high” at any of the scores of legal medical marijuana dispensaries currently operating within easy driving distance.

We can further expect that local violent gang members, pedophiles, deadly drug traffickers and major white-collar thieves all applaud this preoccupation of our heroic local peace officers making a showy marijuana bust. In balance, we must ask of ourselves and political leaders, which is the greater social crime: 1. the unlawful trafficking of a semilawful natural plant substance, one demonstrably far less damaging to society than either legal alcohol or tobacco, or 2. The massive squandering of precious public funds upon quixotic law enforcement quests to suppress the above, particularly when such limited tax monies are otherwise desperately needed for lifesaving food, shelter, medical care, employment and education?
Robert I. Schwartz
Thousand Oaks