As journalists filmed Mexican soldiers burning a record-breaking 300-acre (120 hectare) field of marijuana earlier this month, they learned the old lesson of these public displays: You don't actually get high from all the smoke. The plants have to be more mature and fully dried out to release their active psychedelic properties, and all the fumes waft straight up to the clouds rather than into your lungs. Consequently, soldiers in Mexico happily burn marijuana plantations in front of the cameras every week and still stay sober enough to shoot back at irate gangsters. President Felipe Calderón's war on drugs is shown on TV in clouds of green smoke.
But while the marijuana bonfires demonstrate how the Mexican government is constantly hitting drug cartels, they also illustrate how colossal Mexico's marijuana industry is. The 300-acre plantation was busted in the Baja California desert 200 miles (about 320 km) south of San Diego on July 14. Soldiers say a single harvest could yield 120 tons of cannabis, worth some $160 million. It had a sophisticated irrigation system to water plants that sprang up to 2.5 yd. (2.3 m) high alongside kitchens, bathrooms and sleeping quarters for 60 workers. Close by, in Tijuana, soldiers made a megabust in October when they seized 134 metric tons of vacuum-packed marijuana stacked in tractor trailers. That stash was so big, it filled an entire parking lot and unleashed a particularly apocalyptic-looking blaze.
3 comments:
This story is a non starter!
Canada did it and saved millions!
Why are we still having this stupid debate? Legalize it already or criminalize the manufacture and possession of alcohol - older white America's drug of choice. Let's see how they like being called addicts and criminals.
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