Are pot busts across the country in actuality policing for profit?

IGO, Calif.—Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko, his budget under pressure in a weak economy, has laid off staff, reduced patrols and even released jail inmates. But there's one mission on which he's spending more than in recent years: pot busts.

The reason is simple: If he steps up his pursuit of marijuana growers, his department is eligible for roughly half a million dollars a year in federal anti-drug funding, helping save some jobs. The majority of the funding would have to be used to fight pot. Marijuana may not be the county's most pressing crime problem, the sheriff says, but "it's where the money is."

Washington has long allocated funds to help localities fight crime, influencing their priorities in the process. Today's local budget squeezes are enhancing this effect, and the result is particularly striking in California, where many residents take a benign view of pot but federal dollars help keep law-enforcement focused on it.

In Northern California's rural Lake County, which applied for $275,000 in federal anti-pot funding this month, Denise Rushing, a county supervisor, says it is "a vexing problem" whether to accept such money. She worries that doing so causes local sheriff's offices to skew their priorities toward pot busts and away from things that more directly affect residents, like property crime. At a meeting last month, Ms. Rushing opposed applying for the federal anti-pot funds but was outvoted by other supervisors.

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