Talk:Herbicide spraying in the United States

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Discussion for: Herbicide spraying in the United States • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Herbicide spraying in the United States treats the spraying of herbicides on marijuana inside the United States: the Florida spraying of 1982, the DEA's paraquat spraying of 1983 and the court orders that stopped it, and the later glyphosate spraying in Hawaii. Eradication by hand, burning and the National Guard's operations without herbicide are outside its scope. United States support for spraying in other countries is on United States and cannabis eradication abroad.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources and how they were read

The court order in North Georgia C.O.P.S. v. Reagan, 587 F. Supp. 1506 (N.D. Ga. 1984), was read in the Caselaw Access Project copy. Its factual background is the source for the 1978 programme, the 1981 environmental assessment, the 12 August 1983 spraying and the two restraining orders.
The United Press International reports of 28 August 1982, 12 and 19 August, 1 and 14 September 1983 were read on upi.com. The Christian Science Monitor reports of 21 July 1982 and 20 December 1983 were read on csmonitor.com. Time (25 July 1988) and the NORML news item (17 October 1996) were read on their sites.
The Senate hearing of 30 September 1982 (Cultivation of Marihuana in National Forests), the House select committee's annual report for 1983 and the Justice Department's annual report for 1990 were read in Internet Archive full-text copies. Pages 138–142 of the Senate hearing hold the Family Weekly article (by Linda Marsa, 26 September 1982) and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's letter of 12 October 1982.
Mendel (1992) was read in a Foreign Military Studies Office reprint; the Operation Wipeout details are in its endnote 3, which cites a DEA report of December 1990 that was not itself read. The Military Review issue (December 1992, pp. 74–87) is confirmed by two later works that cite it; no web copy of the issue was found, so the reference carries no link.

Where the sources disagree

Red Bay, 28 August 1982: UPI reported an 80-acre field, 10,000 to 12,000 plants and a 500-gallon spray truck; the FDLE's letter says one quart of paraquat was applied over about two hours. Both are given.
The Daniel Boone National Forest is named by UPI (1 September 1983); UPI's report of 19 August names the site as Bullskin Ridge in the Redbird Purchase area near London, Kentucky.
NORML's 1996 report says the Hawaii spraying had gone on for "nearly a decade"; the Justice Department's and Mendel's accounts are of 1990. The article gives both without fixing a start year.

Tennessee

The House select committee wrote that the DEA's plan "would have included" national parks and forests in Kentucky and Tennessee, and The Christian Science Monitor (19 August 1983) reported two Tennessee patches chosen as a possible second target. No source read records spraying in Tennessee. The article says the plan would have taken in Tennessee and no more.

Not used

The Christian Science Monitor "For the record" item of 17 August 1983 (the administration was considering paraquat on federal land in up to 40 states), as a wire summary.
Claims about Operation Green Harvest (Hawaii National Guard) were not found to involve herbicide in the sources read.
The Florida state-court outcome of NORML's July 1982 suit was not found; the Family Weekly article says it halted the programme for a time, and the spraying took place on 28 August.

Open questions

The environmental impact statement the DEA undertook to prepare after the November 1983 consent judgment was not traced, nor whether paraquat was sprayed on federal land again after it.
The 1996 NORML report says the DEA would issue an updated environmental impact statement the next year; that statement was not traced.