Jamrock points to an article on environmentally-safer drugs.

Of course, weed and anything grown locally wins. Perhaps with shrooms there’s some runoff from the hydrogen peroxide in the growth medium, but I think that actually occurs naturally — and might be consumed during production?

Anyway. Legality is a terrible barometer of ethicality. There’s no mention of the environmental devastation of, eg, coffee. Talking about illegal highs gets more pageviews I guess.

Props to the author for briefly taking the “War on Drugs” itself to task for environmental damage — carpet-bombing Columbian cocaine fields with RoundUp has:

a) Made coke less available.
b) Caused Monsanto to lobby for rational drug policies.
c) Helped poor farmers feed their families.
d) Reduced drug gang violence and wealth.
e) None of the above.

The author ends with a cheap-shot though: “most of today’s drug culture is simply another wasteful frontier of American consumerism”. The reason most drugs have to be imported is because of prohibition — they are simply impractical to produce locally because of the land-use metrics the article mentions.

For example, people grow in national forests because they can’t grow on farms.

In California’s Central Valley, law enforcement estimates between 4 million and 7 million pounds of [meth] lab waste were poured into canals and on properties between 2000 and 2004. The people who have to clean it up wear Haz-Mat suits.

Irresponsible production is the result of poor government regulation. Like BP.