Backcountry Drug War
biographic.com
biographic.com
It's a problem because I like hiking up there but there are no go zones where you have to be afraid of running across pot growers or meth labs. Fortunately at least they aren't interested in the higher altitude areas. But a good part of the land in the county is simply public land (there's only one town in the county) so you have to be a local to stay out of trouble.
(We're not far away, in Groveland...)
(Although it is illegal to distill without a licence).
But for that matter, growing good weed is another story and properly dry-curing it is too (it's not as simple as dehydrating the crap out of it to get good pot for smoking).
It probably will be super gross at this point, but will get you drunk.
Search amazon for 'countertop water distiller' for under a hundred bucks, they'll ship you a "countertop water distiller" - run your spoilt juice through that thing a few times, and i'm not saying it will be good vodka; it won't... but it will be mostly alcohol, and it will be something you could probably choke down when mixed with something that tastes strong enough.
I mean, making booze that tastes good, that's an art. but if you just wanna get drunk? Probably easier than making decent bread.
That said, I'm fine with legalizing marijuana. Not so much so with the likes of cocaine, meth or heroine. Soft drugs, sure, hard drugs, keep a leash on it.
I realize that this is becoming a popular opinion, but why? I almost understand the full prohibition mindset more.
as long as there are any illegal drugs with strong demand, people are going to get killed over it. legalizing weed isn't going to make much difference; there's way more money in the hard stuff.
so I gotta ask, do you think you will personally be hurt if hard drugs are legal (or even decriminalized), or are you taking it upon yourself to protect other people from themselves?
I'm of the legalize everything mindset, but heroin (and fentanyl) have killed many people I personally know. Weed has not. It is not illogical for people to want to treat them differently.
it's fine for you to want that; it's not okay for you to support the use of state violence to make it so.
I also have lost many friends and years of my own life to heroin. worrying about the cops didn't help any of us.
sure, this at least makes it possible for drug users to seek help without fearing legal repercussions, but it doesn't do much to stop people from overdosing due to inconsistent purity and nasty cuts (eg, fentanyl and friends). it does nothing to stop the killings in source countries and poor communities where drugs are sold.
I was simply trying to explain why. I think the full prohibition mindset makes no sense personally. It would include more state violence, so I am confused why you think that is as valid as the parent comment's opinion of treating each drug differently.
In addition, it seems like drugs are frequently more of a symptom than the root cause of problems. Happy people with a fulfilled life rarely OD.
No one is getting killed by fentanyl on purpose - those deaths are the direct result of prohibition. Until it is legal to buy clean drugs, people will continue to be killed by dirty drugs.
Following the end of prohibition, beer truck drivers became beer truck drivers, bartenders became bartenders, but the violent criminals moved into other rackets: drugs, prostitution, gambling, extortion, and the big one corruption. What are the violent element and the large number of financially distressed workers in the rural pot industry going to do?
Once you create a criminal class, it does not go away. Only the Chinese, the Filipino, and the Argentine governments have found the means to eliminate these classes. Their means are far too brutal to mention here. I would never advocate them. We are mostly helpless.
I live in Mexico half the year. Once pot is legalized on a widespread basis, these *s will show up at my door demanding $100 a month or else.
Don't get me wrong as I believe there is nothing we can do. Perhaps improving the situation with vigorous law enforcement would keep the problem under control.
The criminal class may not go away immediately, but you can take away most of their income. No other form of crime is as lucrative. Drugs really are special.
Have that same network double as forest fire early warning, and it'd probably pay for itself.
We also had low and slow flying Cessnas for fire spotting, and we were also in the flight line of retardant bombers flying south. So, summers were generally pretty noisy for us as far as aircraft noise goes. The Cessnas & retardant bombers were flying so low, slow & close to the house, you could read the tail numbers with your naked eye. The old bombers in particular really stuggled to gain altitude. We were about 20 miles from the airport, and about 1000 feet over the value floor, and they were seldom higher than straight out horizontal from our deck.
Don't need UAVs for forest fire detection - already have MODIS [0] (and other) satellite imagery for that. New fires are detected via infrared usually in less than 24 hours.
That's not enough. Per the forecasted fire danger map[0]:
"Extreme - Fires start quickly, spread furiously, and burn intensely. All fires are potentially serious. Development into high intensity burning will usually be faster and occur from smaller fires than in the very high fire danger class. Direct attack is rarely possible and may be dangerous except immediately after ignition."
The lesser two classes have similar narratives. Given the speed at which fire spreads, earlier the detection the merrier.
As an aside, I was going to suggest artillery as a potential candidate for immediate response, but it seems that's already been thought up.[1]
[0] https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/current.php?sensor=modis&extent=...
[1] https://wildfiretoday.com/2016/08/25/boeing-wants-to-fight-w...
Last year, a slow moving fire in Montana that started from lightening ended up costing my parents' home after it made a small move, out of town hotspots made a shit call and lit a back burn on a Western facing slope, and then just watched it all burn down in the heat of afternoon and the height of eastern blowing winds. In other words, they lit the fire, expecting it to go west, but hot, dry winds blowing to the east blew it right onto the areas they sought to protect. Lawsuit is still pending, but my parents are at least covered by insurance, but the FWS also showed growes negligence that day, in my opinion.
Prior to that experience, we'd had 3 or 4 lightning strikes in the area. All reported locally, and crews were on site within 48 hours. Difference was, this time, the strike was in very difficult terrain, they couldnt get to it, so they let it burn. They put in fire breaks and ran hoses for sprinklers along the firebreak, but they didn't even have the lines charged for the sprinklers when they lit the back burn. Then, like I said, they just watched while homes burned that they had setup to protect.
Keep taking the money out of it, and these people will go away.
Why do sites do things like this?
OTOH, both copy-paste and reader mode are broken.
My guess? Because the ads they are serving aren't mobile-responsive, this forces you to see them as is.