Nice article. I looked up the Jere Melo web page and found a link to Senate Drug Caucus hearing on Marijuana Cultivation on U.S. Public Lands on You Tube, where Feinstein states in addition to her not believing that marijuana has any medical benefits, that Mr. Melo was killed at a Marijuana grow.
Feinstein was misinformed by erroneous initial media reports. I live here where this happened, and everyone here paid close attention to all information released by the sheriff during the manhunt. No marijuana grow was found at or near the shooting site. There was a small poppy garden that sheriff's spokesperson said was a probably personal use garden, and there is no commercial opium poppy growing in this country because it is too labor intensive and low profit.
The shooter was a paranoid schizophrenic whose family was unable to get authorities to help, despite repeated arrests. The shooter had withdrawn from society and was living in a forest camp where he had dug bunkers for self defense. He wanted to be left alone, but had a paranoid fear that people were coming to get him.
He was right, Melo and another man, who was armed, went looking for this specific crazy individual after a neighbor complained that the guy was camped on company land, and had threatened neighbors with a gun. The whole idea that there is significant public danger from armed pot growers on public and private timber lands is greatly exaggerated. Virtually all armed encounters at pot grow sites involve either cops or robbers coming after the growers. The grows are well hidden and way off the beaten path. The solution to "trespass grows" is to end the ridiculous prohibition against cannabis or at least to repeal the asset forfeiture laws that make growers afraid to grow on their own land for fear of losing it if caught.
To clarify a point that many people still don't get, Melo was not killed because he entered an illegal opium poppy farm. He was killed because he entered the forest camp of a paranoid schizophrenic gun lover.
Initial reports said he was looking for a marijuana grow, and he frequently did that.
But this time he was looking for the specific crazy guy who shot him, and not because he was growing drugs but because he had threatened neighbors with a gun and because he was camped on land belonging to the timber company that Melo worked for as a security man.
Melo was unarmed, but his guide was carrying a pistol, and knew the crazy guy. In fact, the guide is the one who identified the shooter to police, and he is the only one of the three people involved who is alive to tell the story. We don't really know how it all went down except for the survivor's story.
For all we know, Bassler might have shot in self-defense after a pair of guys, one of them armed, entered his forest camp. They were in fact coming to get him.
Neither marijuana nor poppies had anything to do with Melo getting shot dead. Untreated insanity was the cause. But it's much more in line with conventional wisdom to think that Melo was shot by an illegal drug grower than that he was shot by an untreated paranoid. Conventional wisdom is wrong in this case, but many people are still clinging to it because it's what they want to believe.
"Neither marijuana nor poppies had anything to do with Melo getting shot dead."Though tangentially, if Cannabis (i.e. 'marijuana' , hemp, ganja, etc.) were not prohibited, Mr. Melo, Mr. Coleman, and Mr. Bassler would all be more likely to be alive and living in peace today. Mental imbalance is caused by many integrated factors. Nutrition is one. Cannabis seed nutrition has been clinically proven to improve behavioral problems. Economic conditions and quality of life are others. The prevalence of hard drugs in the absence or scarcity-inflated expense of eradicated ganja has its effect.Mentally imbalanced people are much more likely to get whatever social services and/or medical attention they need if money and infrastructure wasn't being wasted on a counter-productive drug war against a "strategic food resource." No news there. We the people have known, for decades, that the so-called "drug war" is creating the problems of violence and imbalance that manifest in billions of perverse symptoms such as the above tragedy.My heart goes out to the family, friends and community of all the victims of this crime -- including Mr. Melo, Mr. Coleman and Mr. Bassler. The failure of our political system to resolve the conditions of violence and toxicity being created, call for emergency preparedness exercise of "essential civilian demand" for "hemp," an "herb bearing seed" "of first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country."As you said Nwilson, and well worth repeating,"Jere Melo and Matt Coleman would both be alive today if Bassler's family had been successful in their repeated efforts to get help from police and other authorities to deal with his increasing paranoia and violent tendencies. I wish the foundation would direct its energies to education about mental illness and the need for us all to deal with it more effectively."Essentially, that means ending prohibition completely an dimmediately, by re-valuating Cannabis as both unique and essential. Nothing less than complete freedom to farm "every herb bearing seed" is acceptable because the horrific consequences of any prohibition are myriad and unacceptable. If you care to, visit my blog for more about how to end prohibition at the federal level, and why it is so critical for us to do so in time to plant this spring. Time is the limiting factor in the equation of survival. Every planting season that passes is gone forever. We don't have another one to waste.
