Marijuana seizures up in major production areas

Marijuana seizures are up in key growing areas such as California and Central Appalachia, reports Roger Alford, a Kentucky correspondent for The Associated Press. (Alford photo: Kentucky State Trooper Trooper Mac McDonald carries a bundle of marijuana along railroad tracks near Barbourville, Ky.)

A federal official says hard economic times and tighter border controls preventing importation of Mexican marijuana are probably responsible for the surge in seizures, but our experience with agriculture and the pot business lead us to think that the wetter-than-usual growing season in Central Appalachia also has something to do with it. National figures for seizures this year aren't available yet.

Alford writes, "Growers in Appalachia are often hard-luck entrepreneurs supplementing their income by growing marijuana, authorities say. ... The plants' street value of about $2,000 each creates an often irresistible draw in communities where long-standing poverty has been fed over the years by the shuttering of factories and coal mines. ... Troopers thrashing through the thick mountain brush there typically find plots that could easily be tended by a single grower, while officers in the two western states have focused on larger fields run by Mexican cartels with immigrant labor." (Read more)