Drug caches found in Home Depot vanities

CNN ^

[The Lion Roars]

Large quantities of drugs were found inside merchandise from at least two Home Depot stores in Massachusetts, and authorities are investigating, police said Wednesday.

A contractor late last week discovered two 50-pound "bricks" of marijuana wrapped in plastic bags inside a bathroom vanity he had purchased at a Home Depot store in Tewksbury, said Chief of Detectives Lt. Dennis Peterson.

The estimated street value of the marijuana is around $145,000, Peterson said.

Similar incidents have occurred in other parts of the state.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Now we know where LeRoy shops.

[cowtowney]

Should this be posted under news or vanities?

[krb]

A contractor late last week discovered three two 50-pound "bricks" of marijuana wrapped in plastic bags inside a bathroom vanity he had purchased at a Home Depot store in Tewksbury, said Chief of Detectives Lt. Dennis Peterson.

[nomorelurker]

Yeah ours has been gone about 2 weeks also, and seriously, right after the vanities were picked up from Home desperate.

[jiggyboy]

"So that's what happened to Jose from the promotions department..."

[philman_36]

Once it gets broken down in to quarters, halves, and ounce, the price goes up.
At $120 oz., for instance, that's $47,000 above the estimate given.

From a readily grown plant. Amazing!

[hadit2here]

...two 50-pound "bricks"... Typical MSM stupidity probably illustrating the publik skool math that the reporter didn't lern.

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".

[philman_36]

Love that quote!

Must have been some high end bathroom vanity to hold that kinda volume- let alone twice that much.
I was thinking it was a mighty big vanity myself. Then I got to thinking about trash compactors and compression factors and then size/weight ratios...I gave up. Poor reporting or one BIG vanity.

Unintended pun..."high" end bathroom vanity?

[Pylon]

Now that's a Bonfire of the Vanities.

[philman_36]

LOL
Pile on, Pylon!

[bwteim]

Right on.... here is a photo of 50 pounds of weed. From

http://www.statepatrol.ohio.gov/media/2002/mr0201.html

[philman_36]

That's way more than two bricks.
I guess size does matter in some things.

[bwteim]

LOL.
And hadit2here was the voice of logic or experience, hmmm....

[philman_36]

And hadit2here was the voice of logic or experience, hmmm....
Hey, hadit2here, you don't by chance own a white minivan do you? {;^)

[bwteim]

Yes, we want to know, where were you on January 24, 2002 and was it in a 2002 Ford Windstar Minivan...

BTW, to ALL

hadit2here was spot on. First to question the story.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1649245/posts?page=47#47

From police blotter (2oo2 year)

"The vehicle was stopped for traveling 83 mph in a 65 mph zone. A canine alerted to the vehicle and a probable cause search revealed **53 bundles of marijuana in the side and back door panels. The marijuana totaled 50 pounds*** and is estimated to have a street value of $113,500."

See the picture

http://www.statepatrol.ohio.gov/media/2002/02_012.jpg

[TKDietz]

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.

[TKDietz]

It just depends on how much they are compressed. I saw some bricks averaging about twenty five pound in court recently. They were maybe four inches thick and the other dimensions weren't much bigger than a phone book. I've talked to people who've seen the bricks being compressed. They told me that what they do basically is weld together a metal bock with with no lid and use a hydraulic car jack fixed in a metal frame with a metal plate to press a big pile of pot into the metal box. Hopefully you can picture what I'm talking about with my lame description. Kilo bricks of pot are not that common, they're almost always bigger than that now. All they are trying to do is get a bunch of cheap pot compressed to a much smaller volume to make it easier to transport and conceal. I think they also think it will help it stay fresher because this stuff will often sit a good while before being distributed and compressing it and wrapping it in more or less airtight packaging keeps it from drying out so fast and losing potency and becoming stale and harsh. Of course if it has too many seeds and they compress it too much the oil pressed out of the seeds permeates the product and makes it nasty tasting, but for the Mexicans who deal in huge quantities of dirt cheap pot the concern is more quantity than quality.

I don't know what bulk prices are in Mexico but I've had clients tell me they paid not much more than $50 a pound down there for loads of only around a hundred pounds. After smuggling it they might sell the whole load to one person somewhere like Dallas for $250 or $300 a pound or something like that, and make a huge profit with only one sales transaction. Whoever takes control over it in Houston or Dallas or in that area will likely make a few multi pound sales for in the neighborhood of $400 or $500 a pound, volume discounts apply, and it will get more expensive the farther north or east it has to be transported.

[smith288]

"Dude, I said take the Depot HOME not take it to Home Depot..."

[abigailsmybaby]

LOL Verrrrry clever.

[TKDietz]

Those look like compressed bricks and if they are that's a lot more than fifty pounds. I've handled probably thousands of pounds of pot cases over the years involving compressed Mexican pot, and if I had to guess at how much was there I'd say it has to be a good two hundred pounds or more, depending on the level of compression. I could go through all my old files and pull out several files with pictures of bundles of pot in vehicles where two or even three hundred pounds will take up less volume than that. You can easily fit a couple of hundred pounds in a toolbox on a pickup truck or in the trunk of even a small car. That has to either some super fluffy uncompressed pot packaged in packaging that makes it looks like brickweed, or someone supplied the wrong picture for the fifty pound bust, or maybe a lot of this load disappeared between the time this photo was taken and the product was weighed.