One industry that needs no stimulus

. Drug officials in California's Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties (north of San Francisco) estimated in January that two-thirds of the area's economy may be based on illegal marijuana farming (illegal under federal law, but permitted for medical use by the state). One federal agent told MSNBC, "Nobody produces any better marijuana than (they) do right here."

. In January, the director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime acknowledged that during the bleak banking days of September and October 2008, with panic in the economy over the shortage of cash, often the main source available to some banks was drug dealers' steady deposits of money to be laundered.