Weed as a profitable crop

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August 22, 9:44 AM

by Rob La Gatta & Mike Baldwin, Seattle Crime Examiner

 

 

There was a time when weed busts consisted of federal agents swarming someone's suburban home to find 300 plants in their basement.  It was the ultimate "getting the drugs out of our neighborhood" moment.

Well, lately, it seems that the producers of the funny little plant that makes your dad feel like he's young again have decided to skip the shadiness of indoor growing and go back to growing marijuana like nature intended: along with other profitable crops.

Growing weed in the open, hidden alongside other plants is nothing new.  Kids have been trying to hide personal plants in their neighbors well-tended gardens for years.  But this time it's been taken to a wholew new scale.

According to the Seattle Times, since July 8, police in the Yakima Valley have pulled 165,670 plants out of the ground in the state, most from "Vineyard Busts," where the plants have been discovered growing in asparagus fields, apple orchards, and cornfields.  The street value of those 165.670 plants?  Even with the lowballed figures that law enforcement spit out, they would be worth over $165 million.  That's a whole lot of bud.

You may remember the story from earlier this month where agents were alerted to a giant crop growing in their own backyard, when a pilot discovered a giant, $48 million crop in the North Cascades National Park.  The best part of this case being that no one has any idea how long that crop had been there.

Between the "Vineyard Busts" and the National Park bust, that totals over $200 million in weed seizures since July.  This after a series of huge busts last year around the same time that led to the destruction of plants also well into the six figures.

I can't help but feel a sense of deja vu every time I see a story on some "giant" pot bust.  No matter how many times a record number of plants are eradicated, the next year, there's bound to be more of the same size and nature.

I have no idea how much taxpayer money goes into each of these complicated busts, but I imagine it's quite a bit (I tried to find a video detailing some of what goes into it, but my flash player wouldn't work.  YouTube "Average cost Marijuana Bust" and there's some pretty inetersting material) .  And it never really changes anything.

I think I've posted this before, but here's a fantastic article by Ben Wallace-Wells that lays out the cost of the failed War on Drugs and analyzes why the government has been so inept at finding an effective way to eradicate large-scale drug operations.

I've long been an advocate of, at the very least, decriminlization of marijuana in order to save this country a ton of money and man hours.  It's been disheartening to see how the anti-drug public service announcements have gone back to painting weed as the worst drug around.  If you can convince me for one second that weed is worse than any drug, you may be crowned as the best debater of all time.  Will America ever figure out that they will never get rid of weed use in society?

I'm sure at least some of your opinion's may differ on the subject and, as always, your voice is encouraged.  Feel free to weigh in on the issue, no matter your stance.

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