We’ve reported several times before on the environmental damage that can be done by illegal marijuana gardens, particularly on federal land where wildlife is sheltered. The run off from campsites and pesticides used on the plants can have devestating impact on the ecology of the surrounding area.

For some, this is why marijuana should be illegal. But marijuana is illegal now federally, and these are illegal grows, so what good is marijuana being illegal doing for anyone?

Take a recent study on a specific wildlife creature as an example.

Biologists from UC Davis, the nonprofit Integral Ecology Research Center, and state and federal land agencies found that nearly 80 percent of a sample size of fishers found dead in the wild were exposed directly or indirectly to anticoagulant rodenticides – rat poison. They point to illegal marijuana cultivation as a likely culprit for the introduction of the chemicals to remote areas where the animals live.

Fishers are members of the weasel family and formerly ranged across the northern forests of North America. But logging and fur trappers lured by their once-valuable pelts drove the fishers’ numbers down, wiping them out in some parts of the United States.

So how do we fix this? Make these marijuana grows more illegal? How and to what end?

The answer is legalization and regulation. Legalization will drive down the price of cannabis, driving the cartels and criminals out of the business and off federally protected land. Growing will be out in the open and kept to certain standards, which the growers will adhere to for the privilege of keeping their growing license, much the same way liquor stores want to keep their liquor license.

Any problems that arise will be easily traced back to the source, instead of park rangers running around huge forests looking for marijuana growers.

The downsides of marijuana prohibition are numerous and use continues to go up, so what is the point?

- Joe Klare