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dorkvan420
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/bad-86454-barbourville-economy.html
APPEAL-DEMOCRAT - Sept.11,2009 12:36:00 am
Bad economy good for pot
Associated Press
2009-09-11 00:38:08
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — Machete-wielding police officers have hacked their way through billions of dollars worth of marijuana in the country's top pot-growing states to stave off a bumper crop sprouting in the tough economy.
The amount only got bigger Thursday when helicopter spotters in Tennessee discovered a five-acre pot field near the Kentucky border and cut down more than 151,000 mature marijuana plants.
The number of plants seized has jumped this year in California, the nation's top marijuana-growing state, while seizures continue to rise in Washington after nearly doubling the previous year. Growers in a three-state region of central Appalachia also appear to have reversed a decline in pot cultivation over the last two years.
Officers in those areas, the nation's biggest hotbeds for marijuana production, have chopped down plants with a combined street value of around $12 billion in the first eight months of this year.
Drug manufacturing and trafficking typically rise during a down economy, said Mike Hudson, commander of the Yuba-Sutter Narcotic Enforcement Team or NET-5. That pattern can be reflected in national, state and local seizures.
"Traditionally that is a trend," he said. "Whether its methamphetamine, marijuana or heroin, they sell drugs to make money."
But the reason behind any increase is hard to pinpoint, Hudson said.
"People are not going to admit 'Hey, I'm doing this because I've lost my job," Hudson said. "But I will say our drug arrests ... are up this year from last year."
No numbers were immediately available but marijuana seizures in the Yuba-Sutter area are about on par with last year, Hudson said. Methamphetamine seizures have increased but that does not mean there is necessarily more meth in the area. Rather, NET-5 may be doing a better job of targeting and arresting offenders.
Because of the challenges presented by the California Compassionate Use Act, NET-5 is focusing more on other drugs and gangs, he said. Luckily, local funding for drug eradication efforts has not been cut.
On Thursday morning, the team seized about 460 marijuana plants in an orchard in south Sutter County, Hudson said. No one was arrested.
While national numbers aren't yet available this year, officers around the country increased their haul from 7 million plants in 2007 to 8 million in 2008.
"A lot of that, we theorize, is the economy," said Ed Shemelya, head of marijuana eradication for the Office of Drug Control Policy's Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. "Places in east Tennessee, eastern Kentucky and West Virginia are probably feeling the recession a lot more severely than the rest of the country and have probably been in that condition a lot longer than the rest of the country."
Growers in Appalachia are often hard-luck entrepreneurs supplementing their income by growing marijuana, authorities say. Troopers thrashing through the thick mountain brush there typically find plots that could easily be tended by a single grower, while officers in the two western states have focused on larger fields run by Mexican cartels with immigrant labor.
Officers assigned to the Tennessee Governor's Task Force on Marijuana Eradication were working Thursday to destroy an expansive marijuana field near Jellico, Tenn. Authorities initially said the field might be the biggest ever found in the state, eclipsing a discovery last year of 350,000 plants in the Appalachian foothills. They later said fewer plants were found Thursday but they were more mature — some as tall as 6 feet — than the ones discovered last year.
The marijuana was being airlifted to a Tennessee state park to be burned. No one had been arrested.
The demand for domestically grown marijuana is at a record high, in part because stricter border control has made it more difficult to import pot from Mexico, said Dave Keller, deputy director of the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Keller said growers large and small across the country are trying to fill the void.
The ailing economy isn't stopping users from spending money on pot. In fact, Shemelya said the demand appears to be rising with the unemployment rate.
"I've never seen any decline in demand for marijuana in bad economic times," he said. "If anything, it's the opposite. People always seem to find money somewhere to buy drugs."
The number of plants destroyed in California has increased over the last three years, said the assistant chief of the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, Kent Shaw. The total increased from 4.9 million plants in 2007 to 5.3 million in 2008. Already this year, Shaw said, California authorities have exceeded last year's total.
The Appeal-Democrat's Ashley Gebb contributed to this report.
APPEAL-DEMOCRAT - Sept.11,2009 12:36:00 am
Bad economy good for pot
Associated Press
2009-09-11 00:38:08
BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — Machete-wielding police officers have hacked their way through billions of dollars worth of marijuana in the country's top pot-growing states to stave off a bumper crop sprouting in the tough economy.
The amount only got bigger Thursday when helicopter spotters in Tennessee discovered a five-acre pot field near the Kentucky border and cut down more than 151,000 mature marijuana plants.
The number of plants seized has jumped this year in California, the nation's top marijuana-growing state, while seizures continue to rise in Washington after nearly doubling the previous year. Growers in a three-state region of central Appalachia also appear to have reversed a decline in pot cultivation over the last two years.
Officers in those areas, the nation's biggest hotbeds for marijuana production, have chopped down plants with a combined street value of around $12 billion in the first eight months of this year.
Drug manufacturing and trafficking typically rise during a down economy, said Mike Hudson, commander of the Yuba-Sutter Narcotic Enforcement Team or NET-5. That pattern can be reflected in national, state and local seizures.
"Traditionally that is a trend," he said. "Whether its methamphetamine, marijuana or heroin, they sell drugs to make money."
But the reason behind any increase is hard to pinpoint, Hudson said.
"People are not going to admit 'Hey, I'm doing this because I've lost my job," Hudson said. "But I will say our drug arrests ... are up this year from last year."
No numbers were immediately available but marijuana seizures in the Yuba-Sutter area are about on par with last year, Hudson said. Methamphetamine seizures have increased but that does not mean there is necessarily more meth in the area. Rather, NET-5 may be doing a better job of targeting and arresting offenders.
Because of the challenges presented by the California Compassionate Use Act, NET-5 is focusing more on other drugs and gangs, he said. Luckily, local funding for drug eradication efforts has not been cut.
On Thursday morning, the team seized about 460 marijuana plants in an orchard in south Sutter County, Hudson said. No one was arrested.
While national numbers aren't yet available this year, officers around the country increased their haul from 7 million plants in 2007 to 8 million in 2008.
"A lot of that, we theorize, is the economy," said Ed Shemelya, head of marijuana eradication for the Office of Drug Control Policy's Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. "Places in east Tennessee, eastern Kentucky and West Virginia are probably feeling the recession a lot more severely than the rest of the country and have probably been in that condition a lot longer than the rest of the country."
Growers in Appalachia are often hard-luck entrepreneurs supplementing their income by growing marijuana, authorities say. Troopers thrashing through the thick mountain brush there typically find plots that could easily be tended by a single grower, while officers in the two western states have focused on larger fields run by Mexican cartels with immigrant labor.
Officers assigned to the Tennessee Governor's Task Force on Marijuana Eradication were working Thursday to destroy an expansive marijuana field near Jellico, Tenn. Authorities initially said the field might be the biggest ever found in the state, eclipsing a discovery last year of 350,000 plants in the Appalachian foothills. They later said fewer plants were found Thursday but they were more mature — some as tall as 6 feet — than the ones discovered last year.
The marijuana was being airlifted to a Tennessee state park to be burned. No one had been arrested.
The demand for domestically grown marijuana is at a record high, in part because stricter border control has made it more difficult to import pot from Mexico, said Dave Keller, deputy director of the Appalachian High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. Keller said growers large and small across the country are trying to fill the void.
The ailing economy isn't stopping users from spending money on pot. In fact, Shemelya said the demand appears to be rising with the unemployment rate.
"I've never seen any decline in demand for marijuana in bad economic times," he said. "If anything, it's the opposite. People always seem to find money somewhere to buy drugs."
The number of plants destroyed in California has increased over the last three years, said the assistant chief of the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, Kent Shaw. The total increased from 4.9 million plants in 2007 to 5.3 million in 2008. Already this year, Shaw said, California authorities have exceeded last year's total.
The Appeal-Democrat's Ashley Gebb contributed to this report.
