Posted on 08/11/2007 11:55:40 AM PDT by AuntB
No kidding, enjoy your parks & forests. Oregons governor not only aides & abetts illegals, he wants to close off the coastline to fishing and boating for his !@#$ marine reserve %^&*.
Daugther & son-in-law hunting bear just North of there Friday through today.
We have a few of those illegal Mexican drug grows here on the North coast but not as many as Southern Oregon due to better growing climate down there.
If they could just find a way to tax it they probably would.
LOL!
I agree, then tax the wholly hell out of it, I am telling you, it would completely ERASE the budget deficate, overnight. 5$ an 8th in taxes and blamo, Budget surplus.
LOL
I don’t smoke anything, legal or illegal. As far as I am concerned however, Marijuana is no more or less harmful than Alcohol, and it can NOT be overdosed on, just that alone makes it safer than alcohol. As with Alcohol, you regulate it and tax the crap out of it. It reduces the cost to society in a large number of ways. Just freeing up all those resources that it took to “get rid” of those plants alone would save a HUGE number of dollars from Police Budgets. Regulating it would ELIMINATE such groups as Mexican Drug cartels growing and defending it, because the overall price would drop so far as to make it unprofitable. Every way you look at it its a win/win.
Unless you own stock in the Pharmaceuticals industry that is.
Like you I am a non-smoker (of anything; and last smoked a J over 30 years ago in school) and I see the anti-marijuana laws as simply another gov’t intrusion that is causing massive problems, namely the huge number of people fined or imprisoned for behavior that causes no harm to anyone other than themselves and the lawlessness from drug cartels that the money brings on... There wouldn’t be any laws against it if the gov’t had decided in the 1940’s/50’s that it was going to be another tax revenue source ...
I don’t know anyone who has been harmed from recreational marijuana use, only by the gov’t response to that use. If it was treated the same as tobacco where it was commercially taxed but people were allowed to cultivate it for themselves that would bring the price down to near zero where the only known negative, lung damage from tars, could be eliminated because people could better afford to consume it in ways that didn’t involve direct inhalation.
$5,000 a pound, is because the government made it illegal. 5k for a pound of weed? LOL!
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I understand the actual wholesale price of Mexican imports is about $1500/kilo or $650/lb. ,,, Our gov’t just won’t stop feeding the drug cartels and their friends in the Mexican gov’t $$$$billions by artificially inflating their prices through our enforcement..
North Korea finances Lil Kim’s lifestyle with counterfeit tax stamps for blackmarket smokes and booze.
Ah to be young & think you’re so much smarter than you really are.
I remember it well. Fortunately I snapped out of it.
It depends on where you are. Down close to the Mexican border it should be easy to find for closer to $400 a pound or even less. I live a couple of days from the border in an area with a fairly large and growing Hispanic population and narcotics officers are telling me they see pot all the time locally going for $400 or $500 a pound. Head out to the East Coast and it will be considerably more expensive though. Price varies a lot depending on where you are and it’s usually going to be cheaper the closer you are to the Mexican border, especially if you have a large Hispanic population. Not that all Hispanics are into marijuana, but the more you have the more you are likely to have with connections to Mexican drug trafficking organizations competing with one another for the local wholesale marijuana business.
I just hope she gets wise sooner than I did. There’s a good chance of that.
I hope so too. I figured out an awful lot of things the hard way.
Yeah shows how stupid the law is Capice ?
I think you are one toke over the line. That stuff rots your brain.
Sorry but Don’t smoke or drink ( it rots the brain also)
Only drug I use is an occassional iced tea or diet Pepsi ( caffeine is a drug )
Update on this story. Plus more farms found in the area last weekend.
Associated Press - August 15, 2007 11:05 PM ET
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) - Authorities say four men arrested in the course of raids on pot farms hidden in Southern Oregon forests this week are part of a Mexican drug cartel that is growing pot for national distribution.
In recent days teams of state police, Jackson County deputies, and federal agents have cut some 42,000 marijuana plants potentially worth more than $100 million from sites near Applegate Lake about 20 miles southwest of Medford.
The investigation goes back two years, when a U.S. Bureau of Land Management special agent found a cell phone at a campsite at a marijuana plot in Jackson County.
Authorities say all four men were being held without bail on immigration holds.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.ktvz.com/Global/story.asp?S=6939068
More of the same in Kern Cty. Ca.
Marijuana farms pose dangers to local ranchers
Large “farms” of marijuana are being grown in many remote areas around Kern County, and the operations are a danger to local ranchers. The pot plantations are found in places like national forest land — those lands are also often used for cattle grazing.
Marijuana with a reported street value of $11-million was hauled out of a remote area of the Sequoia National forest on Tuesday. It’s an area where cattle are grazed by a local rancher who feels threatened by the pot operations.
“Me and my family are out there chasing cows and looking for our cows and you never know if these people are armed or dangerous — or can do you harm,” the rancher told Eyewitness News.
He did not want us to use his name, saying still feels threatened. “The marijuana growers are still out there,” he said. “Just because they got one patch doesn’t mean they stopped the marijuana growing.”
On Tuesday, six suspects were arrested in connection with the large marijuana farm found near Bohna Peak. Kern County Sheriff officials say they pulled out 4,536 marijuana plants in various stages of growth.
Early Tuesday morning, the suspects were stopped. Five suspects were found in one vehicle. But, the driver of another car refused to stop and led officers on a high speed chase that ended near Delano.
The passenger in that car was arrested, but the driver got away. Officers searched the car and found a loaded .22 caliber rifle and 20 pounds of processed marijuana.
The six suspects are identified as five men from Delano and one from Portland, Oregon.
The rancher says he’s spotted evidence of marijuana farms often, and they cause serious problems. The pot growers will often take water sources used by cattle, and pipe that off to irrigate their “crop.”
And the livestock is in danger in another way. “Of course the marijuana people don’t want the cows in their plantations — and so they chase them off, they shoot at them, and they move them around that way.” The rancher says that leaves less land for the cattle to graze on.
The farms also damage the land itself. At past marijuana farm cases, sheriff officers have showed Eyewitness News trash and fertilizer left behind by the growers.
Plus, undercover officers say the profits from marijuana farms can fund other types of drug trade. That’s dangerous and another important reason to find and shut down the farms.
The rancher who grazes cattle where the latest farm was found is glad that operation is gone, and the suspects are behind bars. “Now I feel more safe and I don’t have to be so careful there,” he says. “I can ride through there and look for cows and check the waters and not have to watch my back.”
But, he believes there are more pot farms hidden in remote areas of private and public land — he says the “plantations” can be almost anywhere there’s some source of water.
http://www.eyeoutforyou.com/news/local/8863242.html
More Mexican drug cartel grows found in Eastern Oregon.
Pot bust may signal trend
VALE - Like other marijuana fields found in Oregon this month, a big pot harvest on public land discovered Tuesday by an Oregon Army National Guard aircraft in remote Malheur County may be part of a larger Mexican national growing operation.
“We were not successful in locating any (pot gardens) in the county last year. This is the first of this type we have located this year ... We’re afraid we’re going to be finding more,” the sheriff said.
Pot gardens have been popping up across Oregon this month. For example, authorities in Jackson County removed thousands of marijuana plants this week 20 miles southwest of Medford, which could be connected to a Mexican drug cartel that is growing pot for national distribution. Four men were arrested in connection to that Medford case, and they are all being held for immigration authorities, the Associated Press reported. Bentz said authorities do not know if the local pot garden and the Medford case are connected. Historically, illegal pot grows tend to produce product that is distributed nationally and possibly internationally, Bentz confirmed. The use of public lands for cannabis cultivation is increasing, according to a 2007 assessment from the National Drug Intelligence Center.
Pot gardens are also apparently more common this time of year.
“This is also the time of year ... Everybody (law enforcement) gets stretched thin during marijuana grows,” Bentz said.
“It has the earmarkings of what has begun to be referred to as Mexican national grows,” Malheur County Sheriff Andy Bentz said Thursday.
Authorities determined some of the plants had been harvested, others were drying, and around 15,000 plants were still in the ground. The pot grow was located near White Horse Creek Basin. The exact location of the grow is not being released. A man from Central California was arrested Wednesday near the area of the pot field for unlawful manufacture of marijuana. That man, Sergio Lopez, 26, is lodged in the Malheur County Jail and he is also being held for federal immigration authorities, Bentz confirmed Thursday. At least two additional suspects in the case are at large, Bentz confirmed. Authorities believe a stolen dump truck, that later caught on fire, was used by suspects connected to the marijuana grow operation who were attempting to leave the area, Bentz said. Marijuana was not inside the truck, the sheriff confirmed. Before Lopez was arrested he hitchhiked until he was picked up by a citizen. He had also called police, Bentz said, because he was “lost.”
“We were already headed to the area to help him,” Bentz said. The last pot grow operation found on federal land in Malheur County occurred in 2005 in the Jonsboro area and involved six gardens with around 11,000 plants, Bentz said.
The Malheur County Sheriff’s Office is working on the pot case with other agencies including the Harney County Sheriff’s Office, United States Bureau of Land Management, Oregon Army National Guard, the Oregon State Police and the High Desert Drug Task Force. Authorities will begin to eradicate the Malheur County pot gardens today, Bentz said. Authorities will cut, bundle and burn the plants. The Oregon Army National Guard “eradication flight” did not cover the entire county, Bentz confirmed Thursday, and the aircraft has left Malheur County.
http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2007/08/17/news/03.txt
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