(Columbus Dispatch) MEIGS COUNTY, Ohio — State Highway Patrol Sgt. Dick Meadows and Capt. Paul Pride went down a gully, crossed a creek and rode up a steep hill. When their ATVs could no longer navigate the terrain, they pushed their way through briars so thick that thorns snagged even the smallest patches of their uncovered skin.
They yanked out about 20 plants, most about 5 feet tall.
This is how they roll, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification & Investigation’s Marijuana Eradication Unit, a part of the attorney general’s office.
Using $360,000 to $480,000 in earmarked federal funds each year to pay for the helicopter, overtime and related costs, four state drug agents and any local law-enforcement officers they can enlist spend nearly every weekday all summer scouring Ohio’s countryside for marijuana plants.
In other news from the state of Ohio:
(Cleveland.com) While Senate Republican leaders weren’t giving up details, other sources said deep cuts to the Department of Development and an early childhood developmental program, Help Me Grow, were among the trims floated. A health care expansion sought by Strickland, a Democrat, to cover 110,000 Ohioans through various moves including raising the age of dependency to 29 was also being discussed as an area to cut.
(American Libraries) Public libraries throughout Ohio have altered their landing pages to alert patrons about Gov. Ted Strickland’s draconian June 19 proposal to slash a total of $227.3 million over the next two years from the state’s Public Library Fund.
(Save Ohio History) [1986 was the] last time the state of Ohio invested less than $8 million in the Ohio Historical Society. Nevertheless, Governor Strickland’s new FY 2010-11 budget framework, unveiled late Friday, June 19, would reduce the state budget for the Society from $13.5 million in 2008 to as little as $7.5 million annually each of the next two years, a reduction of 45 percent.
We know that less than a half million dollars spent on a helicopter for pulling weeds won’t completely save the historical society, libraries, or early childhood developmental program, but it would pay the salaries of about ten teachers. Regardless, at least the money is well-spent locking up criminal weed growers, right?
Few people are prosecuted for what authorities find, said Robert Beegle, the sheriff of Meigs County, which is by far Ohio’s most pot-prolific county. He knows that cannabis blankets his Appalachian hills, and he is grateful for the state’s help in removing it.
But there isn’t enough time, money or manpower to charge those responsible.
“A lot of times, we know who it belongs to,” said Beegle, who oversees a county where the median household income is about $32,000 and last month’s unemployment rate was 16.7 percent. “But knowing it and proving it are two entirely differently things.”
OK, so we can’t lock up the weed growers, but at least these efforts are keeping marijuana away from the kids of Ohio, right?
(Ohio Youth Risk Behavior Survey) The trend of students who used marijuana in the past 30 days shows the overall percentage has not changed significantly over time from 1993 to 2007.
Well, even if we lose the libraries, historical society, and special needs programs and even if the past fourteen years of eradication efforts haven’t kept 1 out of 5 Ohio teenagers from smoking pot, at least these law enforcement officers are making some overtime getting out in the country on a nice sunny weekend. It’s not like they have anything else to attend to in Ohio.
(Dayton Daily News) The city’s fourth homicide in six days prompted police Chief Richard Biehl on Friday, Aug. 21, to ask the community to rally behind his department and find those responsible for the recent killings.
The barrage that includes nine shootings in those six days has irked Biehl, who said he is taking the crime wave “personally.”
The city’s 30 homicides are as many as this time last year, but come nine months into Biehl’s Community Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence program.
(ONNtv) CINCINNATI — According to a Cincinnati Enquirer analysis Hamilton County’s inmate population is growing at a steady pace, and with the county’s Queensgate jail closed some residents worry about a crime wave.
County officials decided to shut down the facility because of budget cuts. That means limited jail space and possibly more criminals out on the streets.
I know the unemployment rate in Ohio is huge, especially for an ex-con, but maybe with some luck they can get a job tending an outdoor marijuana grow in the Appalachian hills.
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I couldn’t have said it better. Considering all of the crap that has happened here in the state of California in the last 6 years (MJ and non-MJ related), no incumbent who is supposedly “representing” me is getting my vote come next election. It’s been my personal mission for the last few months to persuade all of my family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors to vote all incumbents, from the national to the local levels, out of office. I don’t about their affiliations, I don’t care about their credentials, nor do I care what good they allegedly done while in office. There’s gonna be a grand Exodus of politicians in California.
I was hoping our elected officals were going to finally prioritize our tax money and drop this wasteful spending. I must of been dreaming when I heard over half the states are running deficits. No money for teachers, social programs, or health care, but of course we have money to weed wack a medical plant and trample on your rights. 2010 = year we vote every incumbent out !
What’s even funnier is when they find plots that haven’t been feminized, they’re ripping up male plants and putting them in a big helicopter bin and flying them over the countryside, with the wind from the copter rotors spreading seeds all down below.
[...] During budget crisis, Ohio spends $360K-$480K ripping up marijuana [...]
typical, waste money on doing nothing, a big dog and pony show! These growers are planting many many plots, its almost like they are giving one plot up as an offering to the “cop gods” to have the other 5 plots survive.
What a joke, what a waste, makes me sick!
P.S.: Forgot to say great post!
typical, waste money on doing nothing, a big dog and pony show! These growers are planting many many plots, its almost like they are giving one plot up as an offering to the “cop gods” to have the other 5 plots survive.
What a joke, what a waste, makes me sick!
Wow. Doesn’t get more cut and dry then that. What a waste.
Wow, this is the kind of thing that gives me a real headache. These are the people we’ve given the keys of the treasury to. People who react to situations based on established values that have ceased be relevant in this world (indeed if they ever were). Just like the evolution denial and global warming denial people, they put no value on the facts. This rejection of the scientific method among our elected officials reveals to me that we must replace them with sensible people who wont look us in the eyes and make extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence.
Well said. A really complete example of wasted resources.