Readers call Tampa Bay pot bust a terrible waste

Tampabay.com readers are fired up today about a report on 3 local arrests in a statewide marijuana grow house investigation. Currently, the story is the most commented on the site and one of the top 5 most viewed.

The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office arrested 2 people in Dunedin and another in St. Petersburg as part of a statewide crackdown dubbed "Operation Eagle Claw."

In St. Petersburg, detectives say they found 49 marijuana plants and two pounds of the harvested plant in the garage at the home of James Dillashaw at 1878 74th Ave. N. In Dunedin, they found two grow rooms containing 27 plants and 8 ounces of marijuana at 800 Main St. Bruce Kleinknight, 50, and Katrina Lynn Kleinknight, 38, were arrested at that home.

The investigation and arrests were deemed a colossal waste of taxpayer money by tampabay.com readers.

"Oh my God. 2 lousy pounds? That doesn't make sense." wrote Josh from Spring Hill. "I bet thousands upon thousands were spent making this happen. The war on drugs, especially marijuana, is ultimately a failure."

Dave from Largo commented: "The war on drugs a bigger failure than prohibition, what a waste of time and money by law enforcement."

"Enough already," wrote JR from St. Pete. "Waste your time on someone that is actually harmful to society. The Drug War has been losing since its inception. Alcohol is legal, but weed isn't? Cigarettes are legal? Alcohol and cigarettes kill millions."

Grandma from St. Pete described herself as a pot smoker since 1971: "I feel this is uncalled for. Go after real crime. Man made alcohol. God made marijuana. Who do you trust?" she wrote.

"It is much easier to arrest these non-violent types than go into the hood and clean up," wrote Nurse Nancy.

Others took issue with the operation's name. "Wow! 'Operation Eagle Claw,' sounds like something out of a spy thriller," wrote Mark from Conneticut.

Your take? Waste of your taxpayer money? Silly name?

Comments

[wade]

Whatever happened to these people who were arrested? When do they go to court? Is there any flow up?

[JASON]

Gateway Drug? That is everyone who's for the war on Marijuana's excuse, it's a gateway drug. NOT TRUE, what is the gateway drug, it's not Marijuana, ask any heroin addict, or cocaine or meth addict what got them started with using drugs, they will all tell you the same thing. Tobacco, yes, tobacco is the gateway drug, cigarettes, nicotine, anyone who has a problem with addiction will say that the first addictive substance they used was tobacco or alcohol. I myself, have been through treatment, have been an alcoholic for many years, and a one time Marijuana user, and have known many people who have lost their lives to Heroin addiction, Methadone, Xanax, OxyContin, Meth, and Cocaine, and every single person that I have ever known who has had a problem with these addictions, started out smoking cigarettes before they ever smoked Marijuana. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense, tobacco is highly addictive, nicotine is highly addictive, so the addict lifestyle sets in, from the start. Marijuana is not physically addictive in any way. Caffeine is more addictive than marijuana, some could even say that caffeine is the gateway drug. But I will stand by the fact that any drug addict you ask will all tell you the same thing, they started out using tobacco or alcohol, before ever using Marijuana or any other illegal drug.

[Me]

Sorry people, I live at the address and we're pretty normal folks! You won't be finding any monsters, drug addictions (believe it!), crime (ha ha), gang activity, guns, knives or anything else of the sort!

[greg]

The war on drugs is a complete and utter failure. I can't believe how taxpayer money is being spent. America is broke, we can not afford to be putting tax dollars into these stupid efforts. The majority of americans don't give a flying flip about marijuana. Obviously, neither do Floridians. Wake up!

[Jefferson smoked pot and ate opium]

Sign wrote:

"Look up the address in St Pete and see what else this drug does to people who live there. Pinellascountysheriff
whose in jail address 1878 74TH AVE N"

Sign, I've got a pretty strong hunch that those people's problems started long before they ever started smoking pot.

I just don't understand how these ridiculous "Reefer Madness" stereotypes continue to survive.

I started smoking when I was 10, yet still scored 1470 on my SATs more than 7 years later. I'm now in my late 30s and work as a data storage engineer. I've met plenty of techs, systems administrators, managers, senior executives, engineers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, craftsmen, and other intelligent, responsible and all-around-decent folks who smoke pot on a regular basis.

The drug war is a pack of lies, a money hole, a social catastrophe, and an affront to sanity. After billions (trillions?) of $$ wasted and millions of nonviolent people imprisoned or worse, what do we have to show for it? Now instead of the occasional petty crime (against which we already have laws BTW) from a few cokeheads and junkies, we have armies of violent criminal cartels with enough money and power to destabilize entire governments thanks to this lunacy.

I keep hearing that smoking pot will wreck my mind, but apparently it's not nearly as damaging to ones' intellect as listening to drug war propaganda.

[Sign]

Lawman must have copied that from the internet, key word MIGHT HELP some kinds of cancer. That's probably some scientist's OPINION, WANTING A GRANT. Can someone give us a qualified argument as to why this is not the cure to cancer.
Look up the address in St Pete and see what else this drug does to people who live there. Pinellascountysheriff
whose in jail address 1878 74TH AVE N

[MaryJane Cannabian]

Another statistic that everyone may not be aware of, is that the DEA counts "Ditchweed" marijuana in their seizure amount statistics. In 2006 American taxpayers spent $$$$$ to cut down 83, 903, 653 plants that just grow naturally. http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382006.pdf

Damn that Mother Nature!!!

On the other hand - they did make over 77 MILLION dollars in assets seized. Prohibition = Big Business.

And I haven't even mentioned the billions of $$$ the Prison Industrial Complex rakes in every year, filling prisons with non-violent Cannabis users who then have to work for those companies... there's a name for it... oh yeah! Slave Labor!!! :-P

I agree with Lawman, people have to speak up if this madness is to ever end! This is not a "War on Drugs" it's a "War on PEOPLE that use drugs"

BTW, the 2003 medical report Death by Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, reported 783,936 people in the United States die every year from conventional medicine mistakes. That's the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes a day for an entire year. But where is the media attention for this tragedy? Where is the government support for stopping these medical mistakes before they happen?

Cannabis, has never, in the history of time killed anyone - ZERO deaths.... the FBI Director even had to admit it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY0TQ1uOn3k

I encourage everyone to visit the website for the organization Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP www.leap.cc) if anyone should be listened to, it is this group of nearly 20 000 police, judges and lawyers who have been on the front lines of the drug war. They call it like it is - Prohibition has been a complete and utter failure!

Cartels and Gangs sure do love it, though! Government should be taking this power and money away from them. Regulate and control the sale of drugs and they will no longer have a product to sell.

[Lawman]

Please copy and paste the above info to everyone you know and your local law makers.

We the people are to blame for this mess.

Make your voice heard loud and often.
The prohibition against Cannabis has been illegal from day one.

First they pass a tax act in 1937, then they refused to print the tax stamps.

Instead, they just use this as an excuse to rob us?

Speak up, speak up, speak up.

How else will they know what we want from them?

[Lawman]

Little do most know Cannabis KILLS CANCER!!!!

That's why the dept. of Health and Human Services was granted over 60 patents for Cannanaboids found in Cannabis Sativa.

The researchers in Spain found the cancer killing action of Cannabis to be two-fold and " Elegant".

US Patent 6630507 - Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants

US Patent Issued on October 7, 2003
Abstract Claims
Description
Full Text
6630507

Abstract

Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated
to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids
useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation
associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and
autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular
application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological
damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the
treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease,
Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such
as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid
toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high
doses useful in the method of the present invention. A particular
disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants
is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the
group consisting of H, CH3, and COCH3. ##STR1##

"Cancer occurs because cells become immortalized; they fail to heed normal signals to turn off growth. A normal function of remodelling in the body requires that cells die on cue. This is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

That process fails to work in tumors. THC promotes its reappearance so that gliomas, leukemias, melanomas and other cell types will in fact heed the signals, stop dividing, and die."

"But, that is not all," explains Dr. Russo: "The other way that tumors grow is by ensuring that they are nourished: they send out signals to promote angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels. Cannabinoids turn off these signals as well. It is truly incredible, and elegant."

In other words, this article explains several ways in which cannabinoids might be used to fight cancer, and, as the article says, "Cannabinoids are usually well tolerated, and do not produce the generalized toxic effects of conventional chemotherapies.

[Lawman]

test

[ReaganYouth]

If we have to spend $500K and put fifty men on the operation for one seed and an arrest, it would have been well worth it!

[D]

So it is written, so it shall be done!

[teacher]

package it tax it and stop wasting time and money

[Chris Clement]

It is insanely wasteful to police a common weed. Government "healthcare"?

[Jay]

What an incredible waste of our precious resources. LEGALIZE IT!. Somehow, we managed to build the greatest country in the history of the world while marijuana was LEGAL (it wasn't outlawed until the 1930's), yet the politicians want to waste BILLIONS of dollars eradicating something God put on Earth??? It makes no sense. I would MUCH rather my grown children smoke pot than drink alcohol.

[Phil in Clearwater]

I couldn't agree more with the other comments here. This is more than a colossal waste of OUR money, I see it as a violation of our constitutional right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Who is the government to say what someone can ingest if it does no harm to anyone else.

Cops have become totally addicted to the money they receive and the power that they abuse. This simply has to stop.

But the only way that is going to happen is if people become involved in the politial process and grow the huevos to actually contact their representatives and let them know that they want this stopped.

[susan h, kerk r.n.]

Not enough home invasions, car jackings, rapes, and murders going on I guess. Such a flawless city. Ain't it great.

[Jen]

Legalize it. Tax it. Watch the counties gain money.

Supplier would then have to pay business and Federal Income Taxes. Plus a License fee.

Seller would have to pay Federal Taxes on the income made from selling pot.

Customer would have to add in sales tax to their cost.

[Todd]

The time for Marijuana Legalization is WAY overdue.

[jb]

legalize it,tax it and watch the tax dollars roll in.The tobacco companies are already in place.More jobs more revenue,simple math.

[FredHood]

I am 60 and what bothers me is most police forces view the war on drugs as a way to make money. They buy new cars hire more cops and the war escalates. Its all about money from the top down. The ones that pay the price for this tyranny war are our children having their lives destroyed and becoming slaves to the system. I would much rather have my kids use cannabis drinking liquor and smoking killed my father and his father. I watched them die and weed is much safer....

[m]

Definitely a huge waste of tax money. As I former pot smoker myself (just stopped caring for the stuff), I think this is asinine. My ex. is an avid pot smoker and a very successful businessman who's never committed a crime in his life (except ripping me off during the divorce)! For God's sake, leave these non-violent people alone and use OUR money to get the rapists, pedophiles, gangs out of OUR streets. Enough is enough, already! Legalize it and start bringing some revenue back in.