Indiana State Police Marijuana Eradication Team

HARBESON: Weed it and weep

JEFFERSONVILLE — The Indiana State Police has a very special team of people performing very special work this time of year. Dressed in camouflage, these government employees get paid to traipse around Southern Indiana counties and pull weeds out of the ground.

The ISP’s Marijuana Eradication Team wants you to believe this is important work. Somehow every pot plant they manage to successfully creep up on and wrestle to the ground makes your community safer. See, it’s these green leafy stalks that put communities in danger of violence, not the black market created by the government’s prohibition on voluntary trade of this particular agricultural product.

The weeds these guys get paid to hunt down are usually hidden inside corn fields, which is so ironic considering how important corn was as an ingredient in illegal products distilled during alcohol prohibition. Yet now it’s perfectly fine if these fellows, thirsty from a hard day’s work among the vegetation, decide to go out after work, probably around 4:20 or so, and throw down a few shots of corn-based whiskey, toasting themselves for eradicating a couple of marijuana plants.

There is a double irony to the prohibited pot plant being hidden inside corn fields. Corn has grown tall in the market due in part to lots of government favor over the years and the subsidized plant has been used to make a product known as high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). HFCS is used in loads of processed foods, which has enabled sugar addicts to obtain a cheap high, which has helped cause an increase in obesity, which can lead to many assorted health problems and even early death.

But hey, marijuana, that’s the bad stuff.

Oh and meanwhile, as this group of government employees is running around ripping roots, we find out that inmates inside several of Indiana’s prisons have been successfully operating a flourishing drug business while sitting in the government cages.

So while you are constantly being fed the baloney by one group of government agents that the government’s drug war is actually a positive action, other government agents are failing to control the drug trade even when they catch people, lock them up and force you to pay to house, clothe and feed them.

The only validity to pulling weeds that even comes close to actually looking like it could involve defending against aggression is the illegitimate use of a farmer’s land without his permission, which means the land owner’s property rights are being violated.

That thought doesn’t really take one very far though because the main reason the marijuana plant growers invade the farmers’ property in the first place is because of the government prohibition. So we’re back where we started — just like the Marijuana Eradication Team is back where it started when a new growing season rolls around.

Growing plants on other people’s property without their permission is not a big problem otherwise as far as I know. I don’t really hear stories about people clearing out parts of someone else’s corn field to grow a stash of tomatoes. We might if the government suddenly decided to prohibit tomatoes though wouldn’t we?

I don’t know what’s worse, paying these guys to weed someone’s garden or hearing them pontificate about their work in terms of the supposed street value (a distorted price created by prohibition) of the plants they confiscate and pretending that slicing a few stalks is doing much of anything to stop the marijuana drug trade.

There is good news though. Despite the fact that the people who make money off of prohibition keep trying, fewer and fewer people are willing to inhale the government propaganda that groups like the Marijuana Eradication Team use to justify their jobs.

— Clark County resident Debbie Harbeson is thinking about forming a Government Eradication Team.