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Courtesy Indiana State Police
A police photo of marijuana planted in between corn in Harrison County, Ind. The drought across the Midwest is allowing police to easier sight green marijuana crop from the air, next to browning, dry corn.
Police in Indiana say they're finding an unexpected benefit to the drought baking the American Midwest: Marijuana crops are easier to find.
Many of the cornfields across the state's parched lands are dry and brown, making the distinctive green marijuana crops stand out "like a sore thumb," according to State Police Sgt. Jerry Goodin.
The State Police on Tuesday cut down 30 newly flowering marijuana plants, The Courier-Journal in Kentucky reported. If allowed to fully mature, these plants would be worth over $30,000, according to The Courier-Journal. Possessing or growing marijuana in Indiana is illegal, Goodin said, and so far in 2012, nearly 30,000 plants have been cut across the state.
Trained troopers fly over the land in airplanes and helicopters to look for the green crop.
"It’s called 'spotting,'" said Goodin. "This year, their jobs are much easier, because much of the foliage (around the marijuana crop) has browned and died."
"A lot of people think we use infrared scopes, but we don’t," Indiana Trooper Mike Bennett, coordinator of the state police Marijuana Eradication Team, told The Courier-Journal. "Marijuana has a distinct green color.”
In most of these cases, Goodin said, farmers had no idea that the pot was on their land: "It’s people who come in and sneak in and plant it."
Courtesy Indiana State Police
Marijuana captured by police in Scott County, Ind.
Despite drought conditions, these marijuana squatters still spend time tending their plants because of the money they can reap, according to Goodin.
Related: The economics of pot legalization
Police say that although arrests are the goal when they find these crops, the planters' identities might never be known.
"By eradicating it, hopefully it will discourage that person who’s doing it," Goodin said.
On Tuesday, Indiana State Police also got rid of about 100 other marijuana plants in rural areas of the state's Harrison and Clark Counties, The Courier-Journal reported.
But humans aren't always the culprit. Goodin said wild marijuana continues to grow across Indiana, after farmers during World War II grew hemp to produce rope.
Over in Kentucky, state police Sgt. Richard Saint-Blancard said the drought "really does not make that much of a difference" in marijuana eradication efforts.
Private farms are not the only lands prone to covert marijuana operations.
Through the end of August, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration is leading "Operation Mountain Sweep," an effort to target large-scale marijuana growing operations on public lands in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The operation began July 1 and so far more than 578,000 plants, estimated by the DEA to be worth more than $1 billion, have been found.
Federal data indicates the number of live marijuana plants eradicated in outdoor and indoor grow operations has dropped in most states in the past three years, The Associated Press reported in early August. While authorities can't point to an exact reason, the AP reported that during those same three years, the amount of bulk processed marijuana seized doubled.
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More bad news
Officer Blunt: "Yep, we got kinda suspicious when they was six feet tall and still didn't have any tomatoes on 'em."
Great, so the drought enables the government to waste more tax-payer money on a pointless effort.
Great, so the drought enables the government to waste more tax-payer money on a pointless effort.
Even worse is that 'ditch weed' as it's sometimes referred to in the mid-west is worthless due to pollination and cross pollination with wild seed spread by doves. The hemp industry introduced hemp to this country some few hundreds of years back in white history. Hemp has virtually zero value as a smoking substance. If the cops would try smoking it they'd see what a headache this hemp causes. My thought is that the supposed 'crop' of marijuana they're drooling about is simply doves roosting in the corn shade and their droppings are sprouting with hemp seed.
The good crop is grown isolated from pollination which means greenhouses, basements, and closets. Anyone who knows about growing a simple garden probably understands more about pollination and the worthless crops one can get by accidental cross pollination. Happens all the time in my garden with summer squash. The cops ought to learn a little before wasting their time and our taxpayer monies busting these supposed crops of weed.
I sometimes weep for the stupidity and ignorance of our species . . .
um given the state of the country tax it ......release all pot peoples taking room in the jails and prisons. Oh and Bias journalism ...... Drought Benefit .....yeah that not taking a side is it.... i realize opinion piece but still.
Easy pickin's for the lazy pigs and their war on drugs who like nothing more than an easy pot bust; non-violent, unthreatening people generally minding their own business. Predators is all they are, the cops, the people running the privatized prison-for-profit scam and the babysitters, aka, the prison guards. These lowlife bottom feeders lobby congress to keep pot illegal, despite the fact it's been known for years the drug is next to harmless, and prey on the users for filling their prisons, their pockets and giving them job security. If they had any conscience at all they'd demand an end to the failed war on drugs, demand that pot be legal and concentrate on serious criminals, not manufactured criminals. What an ugly government we have. Anybody out there ready to start a new one? One that serves the people?
The amount revealed shows that there's a huge market demand. It makes sense to legalize this product, tax it, use part of the revenue to enforce regulations and educational/health programs similar to those connected to alcohol and tobacco. And rescind laws that prohibit farmers from raising hemp, which is a valuable crop less damaging to soil and society than tobacco.
Yeah, millions of people suffering, ranches and farms going under all over the US, wildlife and farm animals suffering, wildfires out of control, all due to the drought, but son of a b*tch, the cops are having an easier time finding hooch. Kinda warms your little pea pickin' heart, don't it?
This is the stupidest article I've ever read and, no, I don't smoke dope.
Hell no, the good little piggies get to totally ruin peoples lives and confiscate their property and money before they send them to the for profit prisons owned by their bosses.
Unexpected benefit?? Total malarkey. Concentrate on something worthwhile for a change, and not waste funds on something that's going to go on regardless.
What an utter waste of time and resources.
It's the new "moonshine"!!!!!!!!!!!
It's NOT the new moonshine. Ditch weed is worthless as a smoking substance. If you don't believe me come out to the midwest and try some. What you get is a headache. The stuff is actually derived from the dregs of the hemp industry this country had going at one time in our history. Too bad our p[public SERVANTS don't know this simple fact.
This is a crisis! We need to do something before it's too late.
Right on sir!
Tengo una idea.stop illegals from coming across the border and u might make a dent.
Go after the AMERICANS who hire them.
Uh, legalize it and the criminal activity is no longer criminal...
Yes, we need to do something fast. Put more planes in the air. Let find ALL that crap while we can.
I find it hard to believe the farmers don't know. All farmers I know, walk their fields.
Wow: listen to the druggies cry. LOL.
and listen to the one guy complain about pot. you're outta your element and behind a generation or two.
The sun has baked your brains, desert dog. I see the mental affliction that Gov. brewer and sheriff arpaio suffer from has spread to the peasantry, assuming the 1% hire trolls to post their propaganda. Have you been smoking that tumbleweed? I think we need to quarantine your state, just to keep the rest of the world safe. I'm assuming you're one of those guys who want to build a 1000-foot high fence so the mexican folks don't come across the border and steal those precious lettuce-picking jobs nobody else seems to want until our hungry, impoverished buddies from the south come looking for work.
Before we seal you off from the saner side of the fence, could we interest you in taking michelle bachmann off our hands?
And all us tax-payers are crying with them!
Most of us know that individuals who use illegal drugs are going to get high—no matter what, so why do you not prefer they acquire them in stores that check IDs and pay taxes? Gifting the market in narcotics to ruthless criminals, foreign terrorists, and corrupt law enforcement officials is seriously compromising our future.
Why do you wish to continue with a policy that has proven itself to be a poison in the veins of our once so "proud & free" nation? Even if you cannot bear the thought of people using drugs, there is absolutely nothing you, or any government, can do to stop them. We have spent 40 years and trillions of dollars on this dangerous farce; Prohibition will not suddenly and miraculously start showing different results. Do you actually believe you may personally have something to lose If we were to begin basing our drug policy on science & logic instead of ignorance, hate and lies?
Maybe you're a police officer, a prison guard, or a local/national politician. Possibly you're scared of losing employment, overtime pay, the many kickbacks, and those regular fat bribes. But what good will any of that do you once our society has followed Mexico over the dystopian abyss of dismembered bodies, vats of acid, and marauding thugs carrying gold-plated AK-47s with leopard-skinned gunstocks?
Kindly allow us to forgo the next level of your sycophantic prohibition-engendered mayhem.
We Americans are so brilliant! Take a natural & profitable crop that grows well in a climate we are influencing & spend billions to destroy it! I am glad to see the tide of public opinion is turning slowly...
I myself cannot wait until all branches of law enforcement have fleets of inexpensive drones that can weed this scourge out of our nation for good. Imagine it, differently badged drones zipping all over the place making us safe. Maybe in cases like this they can even add fire or something so they could just burn it on sight. That sounds like a perfect world to me, how bout everyone else?
You keep on fighting the good fight there Tumbleweed and hitting those nails right on the head!
Dick, you are re-dick-ulous. Prohibition does not work. You will NEVER eradicate what the free market wants. You can spend trillions of $ trying and it won't happen.
fly flame thrower drones zipping through the sky? thats sounds like a perfect world to you? you sir are off your fng nut. what about chainsaw wielding robots too? or pave the united states so you cant grow anything.
The hidden meaning here is that WERE they growing HEMP this year, it would still be a BUMPER CROP as it is DROUGHT RESISTANT!
Stop subsidizing CORN and start allowing HEMP production!!
They grow their prohibitionists big, mean, and stupid in Arizona, don't they?
All the farmers you know walk through hundreds of acres of cornfields? Highly unlikely. Wow listen to the troll rant.
Well pugsley: If you live in the city, you'll probably think that's a lot of walking. LOL.
Hmmm.....I wonder why they didn't bother to mention the lost revenue to the for profit prison system because there were no arrests?
Mr. Arizona has been smoking too much tumbleweed. Most folks in New York City don't have cars and walk everywhere.
This is why you don't grow outside. It's all about hydroponics, Baby!
Just another example of big goverment wasting millions of our taxpayer dollars on more trivial crap.
Right on!
Hit the drug dealers where it hurts.
Right, so the Mexi-Mob can make more money filling the supply gap. Classic Al Capone economics.
Healthy Green Weed in the middle of scorched corn. Maybe should look at that. Pot can be used to add to or refined to use as fuel itself. (Grow corn for food) With same crop can use fiber, and pulp (rope, paper , biodegradable plastics) The remainder of the seed being mashed for oil, can be caked for animal feed.(High in protein and amino acids) There's lots of other uses, and it's Drought resistant to boot.
Free the Weed!!!
Much Love,
Da Pup
>:o):
Excellent logic ...but even though it would create a thriving new group of tax paying businesses there are some who would not benifit. You know who they are! :)
Alley--food causes obesity is many people. Shouldn't we ban food?
Nice logic, eh?
Let's look at it from a different angle.
If we stopped destroying the domestic growth of marijuana, then there would be less drug traffic coming into the US. Then our jails would be full of domestic growers instead of illegal smugglers.
Make it legal. Then the government can tax and create laws to regulate it. That's what they do best.
Please note that I said make laws. Effectively enforcing is something different.
I never could understand what good our government sees in putting an 18 year-old kid in jail for possession of a joint. Members of Congress have gotten away with more severe crimes that hurt more people.
Our jails are full of domestic growers. It's a big money scam on the people, with for-profit prisons making billions while spending millions on lobbying Congress to keep it illegal. Look up Prisons Corporation of America - they are one of the biggest corporate prison builders and operators where they like to keep people locked up because they make their money off the reimbursements the feds give them for each prisoner and for running the joint as a whole. We as people are nothing more than livestock to this horrible construct, created by our wonderful whores in Congress who sell themselves to the highest bidder to buy their re-election, which occurs at a higher rate than Soviet communists did in their legislative body during the cold war. Meanwhile, otherwise innocent and harmless pot smokers are being shuttled from the court system to the prison system, paying thousands in fines and making tons of money for the profiteers. This is a government for and by the people, designed to serve our needs and provide for the general welfare? This country is so far off the tracks, we're going to need a whole new train.
stop making sense,some people cant handle it.your absolutely right!but since thats not what they tell you on the news,it must not be true.evil government+stupid citizens=dooooooooooooooooooooooom.
Yes yes yes, Back in the day I was so happy Marijuana was illegal. It made it so easy and lucrative to sell it to YOUR kids at school. Too bad I don't do that anymore. @!$%# it was tax free and all the parents must have thought it was a good idea as well. Why else would they want to keep it illegal?????
The reality is the cash crop should not be corn but industrial Hemp the center for our Bio-fuel prohibition of cannabis is treason against or Basic Rights. This drug war is nothing more than Welfare for the Blood sucking Prohibition Bed Bugs of society causing more destruction to citizens and people of color since before the civil war. We need to educate the still victim of Yellow journalism.
Really... What proof is there even that it could be a cash crop?
Dick- there is a plethora of proof. Do some research.
The Canadians have proven that non-drug hemp can be a profitable crop. In 2011, they cultivated 40,000 acres and average revenue from seed was $1000 per acre.
Source:
Dick-fantastic, it's not difficult to research the hemp industry we had at one time in this country. What is difficult to get into people's heads is that smoking hemp doesn't do anything except give you a headache. Hemp grows wild all over the mid west spread by doves who enjoy the seed as a food source. When they roost in the shady corn they make their little droppings which sprout new hemp plants.
ALL CAPS: GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEADS THAT HEMP IS NOT THE DRUG PLANT. HEMP IS A FIBER PLANT.
* Prohibition kills more people and ruins more lives than the drugs it attempts to prohibit.
* Due to Prohibition (historically proven to be an utter failure at every level), the availability of most of these mood-altering drugs has become so universal and unfettered that in any city of the civilized world, any one of us would be able to procure practically any drug we wish within an hour.
* Throughout history, the prohibition of any mind-altering substance has always exploded usage rates, overcrowded jails, fueled organized crime, created rampant corruption of law-enforcement, even whole governments while inducing an incalculable amount of suffering and death.
* The CIA was/is running Heroin from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, and moving Cocaine from Central America. This has been well documented by the 1989 Kerry Committee, as well as academic researchers such as Alfred McCoy, Peter Dale Scott, and the late Gary Webb.
* It's not even possible to keep drugs out of prisons, but prohibitionists wish to waste trillions of dollars in an utterly futile attempt to keep them off our streets.
* The United States jails a larger percentage of it's own citizens than any other country in the world, including those run by the worst totalitarian regimes, yet it has far higher use/addiction rates than most other countries.
As a conservative-leaning libertarian, I wish more self-described "conservatives" would wake up to the fact that there is NOTHING conservative about cannabis prohibition. Conservatives are supposed to believe in principles like limited government, individual liberty, respect for the 10th Amendment, and opposition to the "nanny-state." Conservatives are supposed to be committed to ending hugely-expensive government programs with a proven track record of failure. It’s pretty hard to square any of those with support for the war on (some) drugs. It’s painfully clear that most “conservative” opposition to drug policy reform stems from the misguided belief that this is a “liberal” issue (and should therefore be reflexively opposed). It’s not. The drug war has been a bipartisan disaster. There’s also an extremely tired “culture war” as
pect to conservative opposition. “But only ‘hippies’ and 'leftists' like pot.” Um… no, that’s simply not true. And even if cannabis (or any other drug) is disproportionately enjoyed by “liberals,” THAT’S NOT A PRINCIPLED REASON FOR CRIMINALIZING IT! It's also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Conservatives" might get a larger share of the "stoner" vote if the former group weren't so eager to arrest and incarcerate the latter.
Opponents of reform like to say that “marijuana isn’t harmless.” Of course, very few things in this world are (and non-toxic, non-violence-promoting cannabis is clearly LESS harmful than legal booze). But more importantly, that’s not the question. The question is not even whether the benefits of cannabis outweigh its risks. The question is who decides in a free society: adult citizens for themselves or politicians for all of us? The question is should we continue to spend billions we don’t have (and forego billions more in lost tax revenue) on an unwinnable and increasingly unpopular war, a war that only empowers and enriches organized crime, fuels gang violence, promotes official corruption, undermines respect for the law, turns millions of ordinary Americans into “criminals,” and drives a huge wedge between police and the communities they're supposed to "serve and protect"? The question is should we be sending men with guns to arrest our fellow citizens and lock them in cages for the “crime” of possessing a plant (or engaging in consensual exchanges for its sale)? This madness can’t end soon enough.
And if that appeal to principle doesn't sway you, consider this political reality. Support for maintaining the idiocy of cannabis prohibition is CRUMBLING. Run a Google image search for “cannabis Gallup poll” and look at the trendline. In 1969 (the year polling began), only 12% of Americans wanted to legalize pot. In the mid-90s that number had crept up to 24%. Last year, support for reform hit 50% and it continues to grow FAST. (The Internet era has not been kind to the drug warriors and their propaganda.) An even more recent Rasmussen poll showed 56% support for re-legalizing cannabis with only 36% opposed. Support for reform also gets stronger the younger the demographic (support goes from a low of 31% among those 65+ to a high of 62% among 18-29 year-olds). It’s all over but the shouting at this point. I don’t know if it will happen this year, next year, or 5 years from now, but it WILL happen. Let's get it over with already and put this shameful chapter in our country's history behind us.
I'm glad to see someone write as eloquently and factual as yourself, thank u' for the input, couldn't of said it better myself, Thank You.
Very good post. Congrats! I agree.
When will this madness ever stop. People going to jail for a stupid litle plant, the Government creating a war on it's own citizens over it, and the majority of the people want to finally decriminalize it, unbeliveable. Well what can you expect from a government that wants to regulate a womans body again, and the right wing bible thumping idiots out there, that carry a bible and hate their fellow man.
How effing sad to read about the very serious that we are experiencing and then discover that the only positive thing about it is "that it makes it easier for the police community to find hundreds of millions of marijuana plants that are illegal to cultivate and that those "GD things are drought resistant, beyond belief, while corn is not?"
Maybe they should just legalize the stuff -----because it is not going away and our country is not the only country in the world where vast numbers of people use it.
I have seen more than a few corpses of former Taliban that had hashish in their possession.
LTC Rattus, USA, ret.
"in most cases,the farmer didnt know it was in his feild" i love that part.i wouldnt admit it either.
The only way to stop the growing of Marijuana in the USA is to take a grower, put him on a cross and skin him alive on television. Oops, I hope the Feds don't read this stuff. Don't want to give them any ideas.
Quoting Jim Maddux "The only way to stop the growing of Marijuana in the USA is to take a grower, put him on a cross and skin him alive on television."
Too bad for you that the Constitution doesn't allow for that. You sound like you work for the Mexican Cartels. Both the DEA and Mexican Cartels do not approve of domestic marijuana production. It reduces the profits for both the cartels and the DOJ that sells them guns with "Fast and Furious".
The seeds are spread mostly by doves. Hemp grows everywhere in the mid west. It's a remnant from that industry started a couple of hundred years back by foresighted European types who knew the value of hemp as a fiber source. The reefer madness we are still enduring in this country keeps the hemp industry from flourishing in these times of badly needed bio resources. Hemp is one possible key element as a resource.
Get over the confusion folks - HEMP is not smokable. If you want to get a buzz you will need to smoke something more than the stuff spread by roosting doves in cornfields.
In the mean time, we have a busfull of illegals driving around demanding their rights? WOW! It's called discretionary law enforcement, pick on the US citizens, let the illegals have free reighn, nauseating justice!!
It's not possible for the police to be finding marijuana plants in these cornfields because marijuana's illegal in this country. Unless of course Mr. Ramachandran's suggesting that the federal marijuana prohibition DOESN'T WORK?
And if it doesn't work -- if it doesn't even prevent children from getting marijuana -- then why are taxpayers forced to pay $40 Billion a year to fund it? And why are we forced to continue the prohibition when it causes 10,000 brutal murders and 800,000 needless arrests every year?
Any policy that causes FAR more harm than good should be ended!
It was Harry Anslinger's paranoia that chained our country to the UN's "Single Convention" treaty - a treaty so "binding" that it prevents even Congress from EVER ending the prohibition. But Anslinger wasn't one of the founding fathers! There is NO reason for us to stay in the Single Convention and to keep marijuana illegal when this flawed policy undermines the safety of OUR children and erodes the security of OUR nation!
The single convention treaty allows for licensed marijuana production, as well as poppies.