Mexican drug cartels suspected in area

[kentuck]

http://www.thetimestribune.com/local/local_story_266085901.html

<snip>
Officers with the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force are arresting people on a near daily basis across Appalachia — but for the first time, they’re finding evidence that Mexican drug organizations are growing marijuana in the area.

HIDTA officers were flying over Whitley County Monday, searching for marijuana plants across fields in secluded areas. Helicopter HIDTA searches over Appalachia began June 25 and will continue into October.

“We’re actually flying and searching for it (marijuana) every single day throughout the state of Kentucky,” said David Keller, deputy director at the Appalachian HIDA office.

One particular focus for HIDTA and the U.S. Attorney’s Office has been a “zero tolerance” policy for growing marijuana on federal lands. Keller said growing a single plant on federal property — usually national forests — becomes a federal offense.

<snip>
Kellers remembers a time, as recent as the late 1990s, when it wasn’t safe to go into the Daniel Boone National Forest because growers placed traps or had armed workers watching their illegal crops.

“We are basically taking our forests back from the cultivators,” Keller said. “...We’re seeing less on public land — with the exception of these Mexican trafficking organizations that have recently appeared, like in Knox County this year.”

Drug cartel-run grows started moving into California four or five years ago, he said, and they are now starting to crop up in Eastern Kentucky. Part of that has to do with increased U.S. border security and the difficulty in moving drugs. Part of it is the Appalachian climate, perfect for growing in what has been dubbed “The Marijuana Belt.”

Mexican-grown marijuana brings in from $700-$1,200 a pound, Keller said. That’s compared to $2,000-3,000 a pound for Appalachian grown plants.

“We saw one in Knox County that we believe was grown by a Mexican drug trafficking organization, and one in Campbell County,” Keller said. HIDTA officials are basing that belief on “the characteristics of the grows and cultivation sites. There are a large number of plants, they stay on the site, camp out and watch the site daily, and you determine it by the debris they leave behind, by what they eat.”

...more

[jwirr]

1. For God's sake legalize this stuff and cut the head off the illegal cartels.

Aside - possible motive for killing of starkman?

[kentuck]

2. That's only 15-20 miles from the Daniel Boone Forest..

in Clay County.

[Cirque du So-What]

3. Here's a story about a pot-growing operation in my neck of the woods

6,000 pot plants plucked in record Perry County bust
Wednesday, August 6, 2008 3:22 AM
By Randy Ludlow

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

10TV
Most of the 6,000 marijuana plants found in Perry County were 5 to 7 feet tall and planted in rows like corn.

A group of pot planters will miss out on the multimillion-dollar marijuana profit they long-cultivated in the Perry County countryside.

More than one-half acre of marijuana plants has been plucked to disrupt a sophisticated growing operation nurturing more than 6,000 plants in an isolated area of abandoned strip mines.

<snip>

Labels on some of the food items were in Spanish, and a religious symbol and saying written in Spanish were found carved into a tree, the sheriff said.

more...

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/08/06/Perry_pot.ART_ART_08-06-08_B1_CTAURG1.html

Further reason to end the ludicrous "war on drugs."

[OregonBlue]

4. So what? Mexican drug cartels would not want to call attention to their grow operations. I am

willing to (briefly) consider that it could have been a meth crazed druggie, but to believe that professional growers would invite this kind of scrutiny is ludicrous. If that's what it was, would the police still be insisting that this "could have been a suicide", now that we've learned the circumstances in which he was found? Just not buying it.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Legalize it, dry up the market.... end all the drama. n/t

[RagAss]

6. They need the drama...keeps them employed and politicians paid off !

[endless october]

7. end the drug war.

problem solved.

who do i need to cast a vote for to get that done?

[Warpy]

8. Mexican drug cartels are not growers

If they're in the area, they're setting up distribution pipelines.

Why the hell this country is still fighting a witless and futile war against pot is a mystery to me.

We lost the drug war decades ago. Junkies still get their junk and smokers still get their weed. They're just paying more for it than they should while risking their lives on adulterants.

The war on drugs is the biggest failure this country has ever been engaged in, worse even than Prohibition.

It's time to end it.

[OregonBlue]

9. Agreed. But I think that Kentuck was trying to make the point that the cartels might have killed

this guy, a scenario I find highly unbelievable. Why would they want the area crawling with cops and FEDS? How would that benefit them. As far as legalization goes, right on. The war on drugs is a great big money making for profit scheme.

[Warpy]

10. Yeah, it doesn't make sense

The only thing that makes sense are some local tweakers/cookers who are hooked on right wing "news."

Whoever did it simply is not playing with tight screws.

[kentuck]

11. Another possibility is that it may have been a hate crime?

Maybe it didn't say "Fed"?

[foucaults petulance]

12. I guess this has been happening around the country. It happened in my state

What pisses me off is that the people who cultivated the weed destroyed the area! It had native plants, etc. and they just cut some down to do their planting and set up irrigation. Someone noticed something suspicious and they caught these guys (they were Mexican who were cultivating the plants). The scary thing is that in some areas, they booby trap it and people have died, if I am not mistaken! And it's on public land (like national forests) so it's easy to go hiking and wander onto their weed farm by accident.