Marijuana called top cash crop in America

[jholmes800]

SACRAMENTO -- For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America's biggest cash crop. Now they're citing government statistics to prove it.

A report released Monday by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the United States exceeds $35 billion--far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay.
The report estimates that marijuana production has increased tenfold in the past quarter-century.

Jon Gettman, the report's author, is a proponent of the push to drop marijuana from the federal list of hard-core Schedule 1 drugs, such as heroin and LSD. He argues that the data support his push to begin legalizing cannabis and reaping a tax windfall from it, while controlling production and distribution to better restrict use by teenagers.

"Despite years of effort by law enforcement, they're not getting rid of it," Gettman said.

But Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, cited examples of countries that have struggled with drug crops.

"Coca is Colombia's largest cash crop, and that hasn't worked out for them, and opium poppies are Afghanistan's largest crop, and that has worked out disastrously for them," Riley said.

Gettman's report cites figures in a 2005 State Department report estimating U.S. cannabis cultivation at 10,000 metric tons--10 times the 1981 production.

Using data on the number of pounds eradicated by U.S. police, Gettman produced estimates of the likely size and value of the cannabis crop in each state.

His methodology used what he described as a conservative value of about $1,600 a pound compared with the $2,000- to $4,000-a-pound street value often cited by law-enforcement agencies after busts.

Nationwide, the estimated cannabis production of $35.8 billion exceeds corn ($23 billion), soybeans ($17.6 billion) and hay ($12.2 billion), according to Gettman's findings.

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