Efforts to eradicate marijuana a positive for community
Officers take to the skies near the end of every summer and search some of [West Virginia's] most remote areas looking for fields where local ne’er-do-wells grow fields of marijuana.
The effort by law enforcement results in the destruction of numerous plots of the plant.
We applaud the effort by police to enforce the laws of the land no matter how difficult it might be.
Officers face booby traps and potential confrontations while on seek and destroy marijuana missions. It is more valuable to our communities to spend the money on eradication efforts than it is to allow people to grow this plant, enslave our children with addiction, and allow such dirty money to find its way into our local economy.
If we can get more of our pot farmers in jail, perhaps marijuana’s image in the community might suffer and usage could finally begin to decline.
We hope the all-too-frequent experience of finding a pot field, but never finding the cultivator does not dampen the spirits of our law enforcement community.
Our officers are fighting to defend the laws established to protect this nation.
Let’s do our part to help them accomplish this.
Anyone with information about marijuana growing in or around your neighborhood, please call your local detachment of the West Virginia State Police and let them know about it.
Let’s take a look at the fine job done by our drug warriors in West Virginia. There happens to be this fantastic repository of the government’s marijuana eradication efforts in the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online. According to Table 4.38.2005, “Number of marijuana plants eradicated and seized, arrests made, weapons seized, and value of assets seized”, Under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program, by State, 2005…
WEST VIRGINIA
Total cultivated plants eradicated: 57,600
Total of those plants that were “ditchweed”: 0
Whoa. All those plants you guys ripped up were indoor grows and tended outdoor grows? The outdoor grows accounted for 98.5% of all the plants you ripped up, but not a single wee bit of that was ditchweed (the feral hemp plant that grows wild almost everywhere in America? OK…
Bulk processed marijuana: 407 lbs.
Total value of assets seized: $22,950
Hold on a minute. I may not have gone to one of them fine West Virginia schools, but I still know my cipherin’. According to a 2006 study by Jon Gettman (Marijuana Production in the United States), a pound of marijuana is $1,606 / lb, though police often cite $2,000 – $4,000 / lb. Let’s say $2,000, because it makes the math easier. 407 lbs. of pot times $2,000 equals $814,000 worth of pot.
Now let’s assume those 57,600 plants each produce a pound. I know, it’s asking a lot, but these are all well-tended 21st-century criminal enterprise not-your-father’s-Woodstock-weed outdoor gardens. Besides, that’s a number police often use in estimates; let’s give Johnny Law the benefit of the doubt (because we observe the Golden Rule). 57,600 lbs. times $2,000 equals $115,200,000 worth of pot, plus the $814,000-worth of processed pot, that’s $116,014,000.
West Virginia has a 6% sales tax rate. That seized marijuana represents $6,960,840 in tax revenue lost to that state. That’s if it was sold once; keep in mind in a regulated market it could be sold in bulk to a wholesaler, split up for a retailer, and sold to a consumer, generating tax revenue every step of the way. Also, I doubt the 57,600 plants was all of the plants in West Virginia, not by a long shot.
Jeffrey Miron at Harvard estimated that revenues and savings from taxing and regulating marijuana in West Virginia would raise $22-$23 million every year. With tough times in the coal mining industry, hemp and cannabis farming and production jobs could power the new state economy. From producing the worst greenhouse gas fuel to scrubbing the air with fields of hemp for cleaner biodiesel!
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