Posted on 08/31/2002 3:15:57 AM PDT by chance33_98
Booby-Trapped Pot Injures Three Drug Agents
A booby-trapped pot plant left two national guardsmen and one agent from the Alcohol Beverage Commission with non life-threatening injuries when it exploded. The explosion happened during a routine marijuana eradication conducted by the Governor's Task Force.
At 2:00 p.m. Thursday afternoon, three drug agents found roughly 30 plants in a secluded Maury County pot patch. Suddenly, there was an explosion near the three agents.
"They cut a plant and a device detonated."
Maurice Hobbs, a special ops sergeant with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, rushed to the men who suffered injuries, including ringing ears and cuts from flying shrapnel.
"It was very loud. There was a crater in the dirt indicating, it was some kind of high explosive. It blew a log in half."
Thankfully, no one was seriously injured, but blast experts said had the men been standing directly in the path of the blast wave, the situation could have been much more serious.
"There were enough explosives there to cause extensive damage."
Bomb experts asked News 2 not to disclose how the booby-trapped pot plant was triggered, but agents did tell us it was powerful, sophisticated, and there for a purpose.
"More than likely it was for law enforcement personnel."
"He's taking time to plant marijuana, taking time to build a device for us, hoping to hurt us or kill us."
News 2 spoke to the TBI coordinator for the Governor's Task Force on Marijuana Eradication. He said to date, his men have seized around 400,000 plants across the state, with each plant valued at close to a $1,000. Money is a prime reason some growers booby-trap their crops. If you have any information on who made the bomb, call the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
Yer catching on now Roscoe. You see, it is still illegal to make booze. And it is still expensive to buy legal booze. So them folks in the hills know they can brew some hooch up for pennies a gallon. Simple economics. If it was legal to grow pot, it would be so easy to do that the price would be very depressed. In fact, most dopers would just grow their own. It would be a lousy business to get in to. The pot pushers would be out of business. The DEA would have to find other work. The jails would be much less crowded. And most important, the government would waste less of my money chasing pot growers who now make so much money that they feel compelled to protect their expensive crops with explosives. It makes so much sense that I suspect people who would continue this war on pot are classic liberals who have a stake in some aspect of this farce. I bet they get paid by the government.....my taxes.....that is liberalism at it's best.
I think the WOD is a complete rip off of everyday Americans, it has been used to pry into ordinary Americans personal buisness via the banks "Know Your Customer" to rampant abuse of confiscation. The old breed of law enforcement was to "protect and serve" the new breed of law enforcement is "everyone is guilty until proven innocent", and a paranoid "us against them" type of training that leave some in law enforcement, most especially Fed law enforcement, anxious to break someone, anyones head. Waco and Ruby Ridge are prime examples. But this in no way indicates that all in law enforcement are tainted.
However the topic of this particular thread is three people being harmed by a booby trapped pot plant. Pot is against the law, like it or not, that's the law. If I were to decide to go be an outlaw, there would be some rules for myself. Rule number one would be to have the class to see to it that no one is hurt but possibly myself for my choices. I don't agree that it's ok to attempt to hurt law enforcement for enforcing the law, I'll never agree to that. No freaking plant, or the money made from it, is worth harm to another individual. Should people be free to smoke pot, yes they should and I will vote for any law repealing this absudity, but that the limit on how far I will go on this particular issue. I certainly will not say, "good job" to someone that booby traps pot plants.
No, that's yet another falsehood on your part. It's by avoiding the regulations and taxes that are part of the legal process that moonshiners make money.
Oh, and moonshining didn't disappear at the end of prohibition, contary to your earlier false position.
You're batting .000 so far.
Tobacco isn't illegal ; it's just being taxed to the point, in many states, that it became profitable to smuggle.
Good grief, indeed. What you seem to imply that you desire, is against historical facts. Man has ALWAYS had rules against certain behaviors and certain things. Yes, taxation plays a part ; but only indirectly.
Are you on the side of the cretins, who booby-trapped their pot plants ?
If you would have read a little closer, I think you can get past the hype pretty quickly and realize this is confined to poor rural areas of Appalachia....where there has always been moonshine. Notice the article says it is dying out everywhere else.
However, as member of the FR One-liner Club, you don't strike me as the type that often engages in indepth quantitative analysis.
Over the past three years, Operation Lightning Strike broke up a multimillion-dollar ring supplying tons of sugar, bottling supplies and other equipment and ingredients to make thousands of gallons of moonshine.More than 30 people were charged in the operation, and 26 pleaded guilty, including the "godfather" of moonshine in Rocky Mount, Va. — William Gray "Dee" Stanley — who was sentenced to 41 months in prison in January. Federal officials say Stanley and other members of his family ran an illegal liquor business for some 30 years before finally being shut down.
The joint federal-state operation also shut down the Farmers Exchange in Rocky Mount, which authorities say sold enough sugar to moonshiners to make almost 1.5 million gallons of the backcountry booze.
The assertion that moonshining disappeared with the repeal of prohibition is false. Moonshining declined in the face of enforcement, it rose as enforcement declined.
Here's the real reason Einstein:
The low cost and the long moonshine tradition keep the illegal liquor trade going.
"The clientele hasn't changed that much," says Driskill. "It's generally sold by the shot in a nip joint."
The cheapest white lightning can sell for as little as $5 a gallon, or a fifth to a tenth the cost of legitimate liquor. In unlicensed bars — called nip joints or shot houses — it runs 50 cents or dollar a shot.
The low cost accounts for much of its popularity. Authorities say Virginia moonshine makes its way to illegal saloons from New York to Georgia, often concentrating in the poorest neighborhoods.
The real reason is a generally higher income level across the country, making most able to buy legal alcohol. However, high taxes on liquor and a complete ban on manufacturing unlicensed distilled spirits effectively perpetuate the moonshine business in poor Appalachia. Raise the cost by taxing or imposing barriers, and you create illicit trade. Legalize it, and the trade disappears.
The end of prohibition was NOT the end of moonshining.
Wrong.
In the late 1960s, federal agents put more resources into the fight. They began night infrared flights to spot illegal stills cooking in the night.By 1980, major moonshine operations had been largely vanquished, Allison says.
But as the federal government focused its attention elsewhere, the moonshine trade resurfaced.
"It's supply and demand," Allison says simply.
The reality is far worse...
If I were in their shoes why would I fight with multi-multi-billion dollar gangster industries, when I can get a piece of the action instead? Better to use the loser taxpayers' money to fund police suppression of the "illegal" drug competition, and make wealthy and powerful allies among the drug underworld.
Prices and profits are kept high. These are simple little flowers, but the WoD makes them worth their weight in $$$. Everybody wins.
Thanks for giving the actual reason.
You tried.
Bump. The truth is in everyone's face; some just don't want to acknowledge it.
Don't fool yourself. These people hate laws, they hate law enforcement and they seem to hate America.
I may not agree with all the above agendas and where they have gone, but they have been effective. If you want your way in America play the game. Become a victim, get hollywood and others to show you as a great person whose life is destroyed by others, and get as much sympathy as you can. And like dominos the laws will change.
I think the police have gone a bit too far, and so have the idiot drug dealers who care nothing about anyone or who they destroy in their quest for money by getting kids addicted and helping in anyway they can to destroy the minds and lives of others. Alcohol is a dangerous enough mind altering drug to be floating around, as can be witnessed on the daily news, adding more to the equation will not help any. People don't obey the laws regarding alcohol, I seriously doubt if we legalize all drugs people will just go 'well, cool, I will just do them in my home and not bother anyone'. BS.
What is it with our quest to be 'out of it'? I vote we make one place in each city a drug allowed zone. Any drug you want, 24 hours a day. You can't leave with any, but you can do all you want there. Tax it, let people buy it, and for those too poor I am sure we will require welfare to cover it so they can have the 'priveldge' of getting wasted as well. Then the addicts will be off the street, not allowed to leave until out from under the haze, they will have the freedom to do as they wish and we will have the peace of mind that nothing new will be prowling the streets without a mind. I see drunks leave the bar every night near my house. I accept it, we have allowed that forever in our country - but I sure as hell don't want to add to it.
Freedom comes with responsibility, and while I am sure every user would promise to be responsible it would be like getting someone to promise to do something before they were plastered. So I favor a compromise as I mentioned above, something we all could live with. It will be legalized, it's only a matter of time.
I live in a small town with a lot of drug trafficking (they have a task force for the area called the route 23 drug task force), about the only crime in the town is drug related or alcohol related. And those crimes are not because people can't get the drugs - it because they are on them. When I was a deputy the worst people I saw were wacked out on something, several were in for killing others and did not even realize it for a few hours. I guess summing up my question is this: I can understand people wanting the freedom to do drugs, I honestly do - my question is why do you want to do them? I can understand alcohol, hell I can get a good flavored wine, a tasty beer, and so on. I don't even drink wine to get drunk, I have a nice glass of zinfadel for the flavor. But why, why do people want to get blitzed off their a$$es or whacked out on crack? It is a legimate question, I am not saying because they have no reason they shouldn't, I just want to know why they do.
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