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State Marijuana Eradication Program Scaled Down
“The cost for a helicopter, which airlifts about 5,000 pounds of plants, garbage and equipment from these sites, is about eight to **ten thousand dollars an hour**,” "officials say it costs between $30,000 and $40,000 to set up a large-scale marijuana farming operation." It takes considerably more money to eradicate Marijuana than it is to grow it. Fiscally it makes no sense whatsoever to approach the issue this way; prohibition is clearly more expensive than legalization. Your spending 10,000$ an hour to eradicate something that was worth 50,000$ and don't tell me that they are going to complete the operation in less than 5 hours, some of these forest raids could even take days to complete. It is an unattainable victory in this battle, even if you throw all the money in the world to it. This years reduction in budget is a step in the right direction but ideally to get back our national parks and forests we need to legalize, tax and regulate. You can only control something you have power over and right now the criminals have the power over Marijuana and while they're at it they're making millions of dollars.— July 26, 2012 8:31 a.m.