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DEA Spending Millions to Destroy Cannabis Plants

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Cannabis PlantsCannabis may be legal in some form or another in over half the states in the U.S., but that’s not stopping the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from spending millions of dollars a year on a mission to destroy the plant.

According to documents acquired by the Washington Post, the DEA’s Marijuana Eradication Program funded a New Hampshire raid on an outdoor grow facility that cost taxpayers $740 per plant destroyed. A similar operation was rolled out in Utah last year where local agents told a Senate panel that the facility was creating “stoned rabbits.”

Even in California, where medical cannabis has been legal for 20 years, and where recreational use is on the ballot next month, The DEA is spending $5.3 million a year to destroy cannabis plants.  That’s the most spent in any state by a large margin, Kentucky ranks second with just under $2 million.

Even states where recreational cannabis is legal are being targeted by the DEA. The Washington task force receives $950,000 and Oregon is allotted $200,000. Confusing the issue further, other recreational states, Colorado and Alaska, received no federal money to destroy cannabis plants.

The Eradication Program, which has an annual budget of $14 million, has been on the verge of de-funding for years. Lawmakers have been trying to re-allocate the organization’s funds to reducing domestic violence or other policies that would “play a far more useful role in promoting the safety and economic prosperity of the American people.”

“I think the DEA’s marijuana eradication program is a huge waste of federal taxpayer dollars,” Congressman Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, told KGW in 2015. “We have states like Oregon, Washington and Colorado that have legalized marijuana, and then you’ve got the federal government trying to eradicate it. That doesn’t make any sense.”

With seven states putting cannabis legalization measures on the ballot this November, it will be interesting to see if Congress will finally defund the Marijuana Eradication Program.

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