If this is August it's almost helicopter season

Forty years ago Richard Nixon declared that drugs were public enemy number one. The war on drugs was on. In Canada, Gerald Le Dain was midway through the hallmark study on non-medical drug use that was to become the Le Dain Report, wherein he recommended that recreational use of cannabis be decriminalized.

Last year two outdoor grow-ops were busted within a few miles of Falling Downs. It's quite a show. An OPP helicopter hovers overhead. The first cops move in on ATVs and secure the perimeter. Then they bring in the trucks and trailers and get to work. This war on drugs can't be cheap. Let's see: about $ 3000/hour to run the helicopter, two dozen cops at $50/hour each for another 1200, the ammortized hourly cost of the various trucks, cars, ATVs will easily run another thou. I'm guessing it runs a good five or six thousand dollars an hour to bust an outdoor grow. By the time they've made a six or eight hour day of it, the bust has cost somewhere between 30 and 50 thousand dollars, not including all the airtime the OPP air force invests in looking for the stuff in the first place.

As any fifth grader can tell you, all this busy-work hasn't made much of a dent in the supply down at the schoolyard. Nor does it very often result in the growers being charged. Why? In the first place, there seems to be an underlying assumption that nobody is stupid enough to grow an illegal crop on their own property, when there is so much other property around. So right away, the property owner is in the clear. And don't think the locals aren't wise to this. The result is sort of a weed-growers hopscotch; Murphy plants his stuff on Johnson's farm, Johnson plants his stuff on Murdoch's farm, Murdoch plants on Henderson's farm, and so on. Not that they'll ever admit it, mind you. When questioned, all of them will have vague recollections of seeing strangers cruising the county roads back in May... ya, that's it, Oriental looking guys, not from around here for sure, probably tied up with some Asian gangs in Toronto... When the economics of farming are such that a dozen properly tended plants are more profitable than a hundred head of cattle, this isn't a situation that's likely to change.

With the law-and-order party now driving the bus in Ottawa, the good times are gonna keep right on rolling. This isn't a crowd  that's inclined to reduce policing. If the OPP needs more money for its air force, no problem. More money for prisons, no problem. Crime rate been going down? Make up some bullshit about the soaring rate of unreported crime, no problem.

Besides, it's kinda reassuring that the eye in the sky is keeping watch over Falling Downs when I'm out and about.