Maybe they're figuring wholesale value, although that's certainly not how the cops usually do it. At any rate, the larger the unit, the lower the price when figued down to the ounce level. Once it gets broken down in to quarters, halves, and ounce, the price goes up. Buy in bulk, I always say.
Do you know how BIG 50 pounds of weed would be? Let alone 2 of them packed into one vanity. I'm thinkin' that maybe it was 2 "bricks" which are usually known as "keys" which are 1 kilogram or 2.2 pounds each. That would make a lot more sense, but the illiterate reporter did some quick modern math calculations in his head and found that 2.2 pounds X 1 KILOgram was 22 pounds X 2 = almost 50 pounds. A "key" is little larger than the size of a masonry brick- thus the name. Just visualize the volume (not weight) of about 22 building bricks stacked together. Must have been some high end bathroom vanity to hold that kinda volume- let alone twice that much.
And the cops usually claim that a confiscated baggie is worth a "street value" of 17 kajillion bajillion dollars, so the dipwit reporter duly reports his "50 pound" bricks and the highly overinflated "street value" that the cops placed on 2 keys of dope.
You have to remember when reading (or in CNN's case, listening to) these dumb as rocks snooze media the words of Mark Twain:
"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poor house."
Not much has really changed from his time regarding (spit) "journalists".
From what I understand Mexican brick goes for $600 a pound these days where I live and it's a good bit cheaper in Texas where this was coming from, especially in bulk. It's cheap as heck and from what I understand usually much better than it used to be, although it isn't as strong as overpriced indoor grown pot. A lot of drugs come across the border in states like Texas and Arizona and a good bit of it is shipped out east. It gets more expensive the further east it goes. I'm a public defender on a major interstate highway running east and west and over the years I've handled thousands of pounds worth of cases where people have been caught large loads headed east. I wouldn't be surprised if all of this they are talking about in this article came in on one truck and then went to the various stores from a Home Depot distribution center that supplies stores in the region. I also wouldn't be surprised if there were several more bundles of drugs found by others that were never reported.