"Calif. farm region is a meth network center, US says; ‘Super labs’ run by drug cartels are hard to find" by Gosia Wozniacka and Tracie Cone | Associated Press, January 22, 2012
FRESNO, Calif. - When a 23-year-old Fresno woman fatally shot her two toddlers and a cousin, critically wounded her husband, then turned the gun on herself last Sunday, investigators immediately suspected methamphetamine abuse in what otherwise was inexplicable carnage. It turned out the mother had videotaped herself smoking meth hours before the shooting....
Related:
"A woman shot her two children, their father, and a cousin hours after she took video of herself on her iPad as she smoked methamphetamine, police said, adding that she committed suicide as they approached her apartment"
A Bakersfield mother was sentenced Tuesday for stabbing her newborn while in a meth rage. An Oklahoma woman drowned her baby in a washing machine in November. A New Mexico woman claiming to be God stabbed her son with a screwdriver last month, saying, “God wants him dead.’’
The Central Valley of California is a hub of the nation’s meth distribution network, making extremely pure forms of the drug easily available locally. And law enforcement officials say widespread meth abuse is believed to be driving much of the crime in the vast farming region.
Chronic use of the harsh chemical compound can lead to psychosis, including hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations. The stimulant effect of meth is up to 50 times longer than cocaine, experts say, so users stay awake for days on end, impairing cognitive function and contributing to extreme paranoia.
“Your children and your spouse become your worst enemy, and you truly believe they are after you,’’ said Bob Pennal, a recently retired meth investigator from the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement.
Meth originally took root in California’s agricultural heartland in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a poor man’s cocaine. Its use initially creates feelings of euphoria and invincibility, but experts say repeated abuse can alter brain chemistry and cause schizophrenia-like behavior.
Meth’s availability and its potential for abuse combine to create the biggest drug threat in the Central Valley, according to a new report from the US Department of Justice’s Drug Intelligence Center....
And the government is going after pot clinics!!!
Large tracts of farmland with isolated outbuildings are an ideal place to avoid detection, which is why the region is home to nearly all of the nation’s “super labs,’’ controlled by Mexican drug-trafficking organizations, said John Donnelly, agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement Administration office in Fresno....
Related:
"Well-organized Mexican cartels have also moved to increasingly cultivate marijuana on public lands in the United States"
Looking more and more to me like the BIGGEST DRUG DEALERS are the GOVERNMENT ITSELF!
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Time to fast-track it out of the valley:
"Plans for high-speed rail are slowing down; Project’s starting location raises criticism in state" by Michael A. Fletcher | Washington Post, January 22, 2012
PALO ALTO, Calif. - Critics began panning the first leg of California’s futuristic high-speed rail network as a “train to nowhere’’ soon after officials decided to build it not in the major population centers of Los Angeles or San Francisco but rather through the state’s Central Valley farming belt.
Since then, things have only gotten worse. Spiraling cost estimates and eroding political and public support now threaten a project crucial to a 21st-century vision of train travel that President Obama promised would transform US transportation much as interstate highways did more than half a century ago.
A national high-speed rail network would not only support construction and manufacturing jobs but also would get Americans out of their cars, revitalize struggling downtowns, and spare the environment carbon emissions, and travelers untold hours wasted in traffic or in airport terminals waiting out delays.
Virtually none of the projects have gotten off the ground, and the one that has is in trouble....
More tax loot up in smoke.
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