Weeds in your field

By Rachel Mendell

galioninquirer.com

What to do if you find mar­i­juana in your backyard?

“They should call their local law enforce­ment,” says Mor­row County Sher­iff Steve Ben­ne­man. He has heard of some farm­ers find­ing it in their field and tear­ing it up them­selves, but this presents a prob­lem later. If the farmer destroys the plants, he also destroys evi­dence that law enforce­ment can use in deter­min­ing who is plant­ing, who is grow­ing and who is cul­ti­vat­ing the ille­gal plant. Also, if the farmer knew it was there and destroyed it, he could be held respon­si­ble for destroy­ing evidence.

Each year, law enforce­ment pools resources to do mar­i­juana erad­i­ca­tion by fly­ing over farm fields in search of mar­i­juana cultivation.

Accord­ing to the Ohio State High­way Patrol, avi­a­tion plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the suc­cess rel­a­tive to mar­i­juana erad­i­ca­tion. The patrol main­tains an Avi­a­tion Sec­tion con­sist­ing of 15 uni­formed officer-pilots, two Amer­i­can Euro­copter turbine-powered heli­copters, and 14 Cessna airplanes.

Mar­i­juana plants can be easy to detect from the air, depend­ing on the venue in which they are planted. Col­oration dif­fer­ences and geo­met­ric plant­ing and grow­ing pat­terns on the ground alert pilots to the prob­a­bil­ity of mar­i­juana plants being grown among other agri­cul­tural crops.

Last year, high­way patrol pilots through aer­ial obser­va­tion were respon­si­ble for 564 mar­i­juana plants being erad­i­cated. It is said that a mature mar­i­juana plant has a street value of $1,000. The high­way patrol also has an active mar­i­juana iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and erad­i­ca­tion pro­gram with the Ohio Bureau of Crim­i­nal Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and Investigation.

The ben­e­fits of hav­ing this type of aer­ial detec­tion, which is avail­able to other Ohio law enforce­ment agen­cies, not only deters this type of crime, but also enhances rela­tions between the high­way patrol and other law enforce­ment agen­cies in the state. Also, 19 canine units are an inte­gral part of drug inter­dic­tion success.

Even with recent efforts to legal­ize mar­i­juana and cul­ti­vate it under the label “med­i­c­i­nal,” the Drug Enforce­ment Administration’s stance on mar­i­juana use and prop­a­ga­tion is this: Mar­i­juana is prop­erly cat­e­go­rized under Sched­ule I of the Con­trolled Sub­stances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. § 801, et seq. The clear weight of the cur­rently avail­able evi­dence sup­ports this clas­si­fi­ca­tion, includ­ing evi­dence that smoked mar­i­juana has a high poten­tial for abuse, has no accepted med­i­c­i­nal value in treat­ment in the United States, and evi­dence that there is a gen­eral lack of accepted safety for its use even under med­ical supervision.

Rachel Mendell is edi­tor of The Galion Inquirer.

Posted by Acres Admin on Jul 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.