[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 12906]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       THE FEDERAL LANDS COUNTER-
       DRUG STRATEGY AND ENFORCEMENT ENHANCEMENT ACT (H.R. 5645)

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. DEVIN NUNES

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 13, 2010

  Mr. NUNES. Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, June 30th, I introduced H.R. 
5645, the Federal Lands Counterdrug Strategy and Enforcement 
Enhancement Act, legislation designed to combat drug trafficking on our 
nation's public lands.
  Drug traffickers, primarily Mexican and Asian drug gangs involved 
with cannabis cultivation and marijuana distribution, are increasingly 
using our nation's public lands to operate large-scale operations. 
Eighty three percent of all plants eradicated from U.S. forests between 
2004 and 2008 were removed from national forests in California. Sadly, 
Tulare County, California, recorded three consecutive seasons in which 
the number of marijuana plants seized exceeded $1 billion.
  Traffickers find the remoteness of the public lands appealing as it 
reduces the risk of detection and asset forfeiture. By cultivating 
marijuana on our public lands, international drug trafficking 
organizations avoid the risk and expense of smuggling their product 
across the border. It also makes distribution less risky because it can 
be easily driven to major cities, where it is distributed to street 
dealers. Accordingly, cultivation of marijuana is expanding from the M7 
states including California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oregon, Tennessee, 
Washington, and West Virginia, into Utah, Idaho, Texas, Wisconsin, and 
Ohio. This illicit activity poses a significant threat to our nation 
and those Americans who choose to camp, hike, hunt, ride, or otherwise 
use our nation's public lands.
  Drug traffickers also are growing increasingly aggressive toward law 
enforcement officials and members of the public who enter the area in 
which drugs are being cultivated and produced. They are encircling 
their plots--some of which have as many as 75,000 plants--with crude 
explosives and patrolling them with firearms, including AK-47s. In one 
instance reported last year by The Washington Post, two Lassen County, 
California, law enforcement officers were wounded by a gunman guarding 
a grove on Bureau of Land Management property. In another incident, an 
eight-year-old boy and his father were shot after they accidentally 
stumbled onto a hidden marijuana grow in El Dorado County, California. 
One Placer County, California, law enforcement official reported that, 
``In every garden, every single encounter, we find weapons.''
  Moreover, drug traffickers are causing serious and extensive 
environmental damage to our public lands. Animal poisons are used as 
are chemical repellants, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides many 
of which are banned in the United States. Traffickers often pour 
fertilizer directly into streams and pools and run it through their 
homemade irrigation systems. The use and abandonment of these and other 
hazardous substances--such as gasoline--results in toxic levels of 
chemicals in the soil, groundwater, streams, and rivers. Eventually, 
these hazardous substances enter our residential and agricultural water 
supplies.
  I find this situation utterly unacceptable. We cannot meaningfully 
address drug trafficking on public lands without a comprehensive 
strategy. Such a strategy has been authorized and developed for the 
southwestern border and I am firmly convinced that one should be done 
to better combat drug trafficking on public lands.
  The Federal Lands Counterdrug Strategy and Enforcement Act would 
address this situation by requiring the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy to develop a strategy to combat drug trafficking on public 
lands. The bill would also increase the penalties available for 
cultivating or manufacturing drugs on public land as well as for using 
hazardous chemicals, diverting streams, removing vegetation without 
authorization, and using boobytraps or firearms to produce drugs on 
public lands. Accordingly, I ask my colleagues to join with me to enact 
this legislation.

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