Posted on 09/20/2008 9:59:32 AM PDT by AuntB
Yreka, Calif. - Siskiyou County Sheriff Rick Riggins said that approximately 100,000 marijuana plants were discovered at various garden locations in western Siskiyou County last week.
Involved in the discoveries were the Sheriff’s Office Marijuana Eradication Team, Siskiyou County Sheriff’s deputies, Jackson County Sheriff’s deputies, the United States Forest Service, the Department of Fish and Game, and the California Highway Patrol Air Division.
Riggins noted that a representative from the Fish and Game Department came along to assess the damage to the environment caused by marijuana operations. Riggins said that on Friday, the agencies involved discovered a garden in the Coon Creek area near Happy Camp which housed 73,272 plants and, as the team was leaving the area, they found four other sites, including a garden containing 24,738 marijuana plants.
The discovery of the other gardens, according to Riggins, was a reminder of how tough it is to find them. He said the area had been searched from the air a month ago, and the garden was not detected.
Riggins stated that this time of year is the harvesting point for marijuana, which is generally planted soon after the final frost. He added that harvest time is also one of the most dangerous times of the year because of the close temporal proximity to the actual sale of the finished product.
The value of the seized plants on the market would have been about $49 million, according to Riggins, who explained that each plant is assumed to yield about one pound of finished product, drawing a street value of about $5,000.
Riggins said that the agencies have been working hard to clean up marijuana gardens in the county. “Our guys have been working hard,” he said, “and Jackson County has been really helpful.”
So far this year, Siskiyou County law enforcement has confiscated over 200,000 marijuana plants. Statewide, Riggins said that different agencies have confiscated many more plants this year than last year.
According to Riggins, the importance of stopping these operations is that they generally fuel the production and dissemination of other drugs, including methamphetamine. Riggins stressed the importance of hunter awareness of the dangers surrounding marijuana operations, advising any hunters going out for the buck season starting next week to call the Sheriff’s Office if they find anything suspicious in the forest. This may include plants, suspicious persons or PVC pipes that are used to draw water to the gardens
“Great use of time and resources.”
I will assume you meant that sarcastically. It is a waste of time for our local sheriffs. It’s about all they do lately.
These cartels are MS-13, awol Mexican Military....they are impossible to ignore!
The resource should be spent securing the border and this wouldn’t happen. Some of the growers have been found with legitimate USA issued green cards for ‘agriculture’. Stop them before they get here!
Y’all are missing the Bigger Picture point here.
With one simple action, we can:
1) Create a sizable government revenue stream
2) Reduce taxpayer cost through redirection of law enforcement and correction facility reduction
3) Choke off a huge revenue stream for organized crime
The answer - Legalize It.
I haven’t smoked since college, it’s not for me, but your logic leads to only one conclusion: That people are so irresponsible that government must protect them from all inebriation. I don’t need to quote statistics to tell you how thousands of people are killed every year by drunk drivers, is it time for Prohibition to come back? Very sorry about your neighbor though. People do terrible things, and when they do, they should be punished with the full weight of the law.
What is the greater social ill: people smoking marijuana, or Mexican cartels making billions of dollars off it because of its illicit nature? If we legalized and regulated marijuana and possibly cocaine, we would remove the need for these people.
OK now they can go after the other 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 plants
What a waste of time and money...
I think we should have bi annual weekends or perhaps weeks where all emergency vehicles will go in for maintenance. On those weekends there would be zero enforcement of any and all drug laws. If you can find and it want to smoke, choke, snort, or inject yourself with it go ahead.
911 would respond only to calls where smoke or flames is exiting the building. If it was suspected that somebodies drug lab exploded, the call would be cancelled.
If you happened to have a heart attack or a fatal stroke that weekend, the coroner would fill in “Died of natural causes”. Heart attacks and fatal strokes are natural causes of death amongst drug users.
I think we could do quite a bit to clean out the gene pool of irresponsible parasites by authorizing such a program. I wonder if the second weekend would be as exciting as the first?
LEGALIZE it! Regulate it! Tax it!
They might as well try to stop growing crab grass IMO.
Damn. You guys need to back off on your caffeine intake.
I think they start with the street value of an ounce, then pull up the plant by the roots, weigh it and multiply. Dried, green, buds, stems, stalk, leaves, roots, and maybe some of the dirt hanging off of them - its all "pot".
And it'll do about as much good as a gun buyback.
Draw the line at pot. It is safer than alcohol. The other drugs really are bad.
oh my god, really? stop it. i let a lot of ridiculous stuff go around cop threads, but yours takes the proverbial cake. thanks for the laugh.
Cops and lawyers always have the best weed. I know where cops get it from but not sure where lawyers do. Lawyers can afford the best and probably also barter some.
“OK now they can go after the other 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 plants
What a waste of time and money...”
And what do you suggest? Let the Mexican Drug Cartels take over the entire country?
“LEGALIZE it! Regulate it! Tax it!”
That’s probably the most logical answer.
I want to clean out the gene pool. Legalize all of it including industrial chemicals, twice a year for two days ata a time. Think of how many parasites we could get off the social programs in two days. It would be fantastic.
I’d probably agree to keep the borders open a while longer so we could work on Mexico’s gene pool too. Anyone too stupid to make a living in Mexico, send them up here to replace our dead drug users.
Look at guys like Bill Gates who tried pot- he's the very definition of unsuccessful-probably sits at home in his living room all day smoking it.
Oh wait, no he doesn't. And neither do I. I manage to sock away large amounts of money EACH year into investments despite using marijuana once or twice a month. I must be pure evil and a liar according to these people, because God knows all marijuana users are unsuccessful bums.
/s
Not that I would feel bad for them at all-the scumbags deserve it. I would much rather see us return to the days of Bayer marketing heroin and maybe Pfizer could market their own brand of marijuana. I just wonder what would happen. I have a sneaking suspicion that a solid amount of violence would result.
PS guys-there’s a reason why people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson talk about wanting “treatment” for drug users instead of outright legalization. A lot of their friends who happen to have the same shade of skin wouldn’t like it very much if they came out for legalization. Almost everyone pushing for legalization is white, because they don’t associate with as many drug dealers.
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