Free Republic

Some people cancel holidays abroad, others stage yard sales or start shopping at low-cost supermarkets. To that list must now be added a new way to get through economic hard times: grow cannabis. Law enforcers on the west coast of the US and in the middle states straddled by the foothills of the Appalachian mountains are reporting a common trend. It is boom time for marijuana cultivation, and much of the incentive they say is to beat the recession. So far this year, police in parts of the country where cannabis is traditionally grown have chopped down plants with a...

In their most recent trashing of California's environment, pot growers destroyed rare plants on Mount Diablo land that conservationists are buying to protect fragile wildlife and plants. The growers sneaked onto the 208-acre ranch land in the hills above Concord to hack an opening in a thicket of desert olive, the group Save Mount Diablo said. The olive plant, a leftover from long ago when the Bay Area resembled a desert, is found only in two or three places in the county. The pot growers apparently harvested and toted off their cash crop without detection. No people nor pot plants...

In a large raid preceding the harvest season, the Jackson County Sheriff's Department has seized 2,500 marijuana plants with a street value estimated at up to $12.5 million. Two men found at the scattered gardens near Hyatt Lake on Monday remain in Jackson County Jail on immigration holds and the investigation is continuing, Jackson County Sheriff Mike Winters said. Officials had watched the growing operation, believed to be linked to a Mexican drug cartel, and swept in Monday to destroy it just before harvest time, sheriff's Lt. Pat Rowland said. SWAT teams from Jackson and Douglas counties and Oregon State...