A grow operation in the high country
It's been a while since I've hiked Woods Canyon, near Sedona, Arizona, so I can't kick myself too hard for missing an opportunity to stroll through the woods, sampling the local flora.
The marijuana plantation was apparently discovered by two hikers who then alerted the cops. Can somebody please tell me what sort of rat-bastard stumbles upon a huge grow operation in the wilderness, and rather than stuff his/her backpack with a sample of the goodies, treks out and drops a dime?
Bah! Philistines abound.
Oh well, if the authorities found one grow operation, they probably missed three others. In fact, marijuana farms are frequently found on public land in northern Arizona -- an inevitable result of the plants' illegal status, the ease of doing as you please in the sparsely settled region and the appropriate climate for marijuana cultivation.
The operations are sometimes booby-trapped and often guarded so, despite my light-hearted take on the situation, they do pose a potential danger to unwary hunters and hikers who stumble upon them.
But criminals wouldn't be salting the wilderness with farms, guards and traps if marijuana were legal. That is, it's dangerous to stumble on a grow operation not because of the nasty weed that's been planted in the ground, but because of the nasty laws that have been planted in the books.
Here's a message to those hikers who turned in the Woods Canyon grow operation: If you want to reduce the chance of stumbling into a similar situation in the future, put the screws to your legislators to legalize the stuff. Then the marijuana plantations will operate openly along the interstate and the only weed in the back country will be whatever you tuck into your kit.
Authorities raided a marijuana growing operation about 25 miles south of Flagstaff last week and seized more than 4,000 plants with an estimated value of $1.5 million.
No arrests were made. According to information from the Coconino County Sheriff's Office, officers from several local, state and federal agencies descended on the grow, located in the Coconino National Forest at the bottom of Woods Canyon Wednesday. ...
Lt. Rex Gilliland of the sheriff's office said that the two separate grows are about the size of a football field each. The grows are located south of Schnebly Hill Road about two miles west of Interstate 17. After the crops were seized, they were destroyed.
The marijuana plantation was apparently discovered by two hikers who then alerted the cops. Can somebody please tell me what sort of rat-bastard stumbles upon a huge grow operation in the wilderness, and rather than stuff his/her backpack with a sample of the goodies, treks out and drops a dime?
Bah! Philistines abound.
Oh well, if the authorities found one grow operation, they probably missed three others. In fact, marijuana farms are frequently found on public land in northern Arizona -- an inevitable result of the plants' illegal status, the ease of doing as you please in the sparsely settled region and the appropriate climate for marijuana cultivation.
The operations are sometimes booby-trapped and often guarded so, despite my light-hearted take on the situation, they do pose a potential danger to unwary hunters and hikers who stumble upon them.
But criminals wouldn't be salting the wilderness with farms, guards and traps if marijuana were legal. That is, it's dangerous to stumble on a grow operation not because of the nasty weed that's been planted in the ground, but because of the nasty laws that have been planted in the books.
Here's a message to those hikers who turned in the Woods Canyon grow operation: If you want to reduce the chance of stumbling into a similar situation in the future, put the screws to your legislators to legalize the stuff. Then the marijuana plantations will operate openly along the interstate and the only weed in the back country will be whatever you tuck into your kit.
Labels: drugs and prohibition
posted by J.D. Tuccille at
10:30 AM
5 Comments:
"The marijuana plantation was apparently discovered by two hikers who then alerted the cops. Can somebody please tell me what sort of rat-bastard stumbles upon a huge grow operation in the wilderness, and rather than stuff his/her backpack with a sample of the goodies, treks out and drops a dime?
Id like to second that sentiment. It is too early to take them tho. Gotta wait til they bud out, or so ive heard (wink wink).
When I was a little kid in Las Vegas during the fifties, they were always having to burn marijuana out of fields and ditches; the stuff grew wild as a weed all over the place.
Bobg: That might have been Cannabis Indica, what has lately been referred to as Industrial Hemp. I think it might also be called "Ditchweed" and contains very little of the THC that gets you high. Some years ago I read that, in Kentucky, 75% of the supposed marijuana found growing and that's confiscated is actually Ditchweed.
Industrial Hemp is not indica. It is a variety of sativa.
Perhaps we need to come up with an award along the lines of what the Hitler Youth and the Young Patriots got for turning in their parents.
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