I notice a disturbing trend in marijuana enforcement in this state.  As counties and the federal government act against patients, caregivers and collectives growing and distributing marijuana to patients with doctors' recommendations, larger and larger marijuana crops are discovered and eradicated97 almost always without a single arrest.

Your article details how as many as 58,000 plants guarded with AK-47s are being discovered, as Mexican syndicates push out peaceful small farmers in California.  Our misguided drug laws and misenforcement of them have effected this change.

Just as the prohibition of alcohol had to be repealed because of the violence it caused, so too the prohibition of marijuana.

If the federal government has any role in marijuana enforcement in California, it should be in investigating and prosecuting large foreign organizations that are growing and distributing marijuana here.

It's much easier to prosecute citizens who announce they are growing pot legally under Proposition 215, and quibble about a few dozen plants deemed too many for medical use.

More than 62,000 people were arrested in California on marijuana charges last year, an increasing percentage of them for possession only, while the largest growers went free.  This is madness.  The only sane solution is a regulated market for marijuana, and legalized personal cultivation.

Ellen Komp, Program Associate, Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, San Francisco