| Photo: International Cannagraphic |
| Feral hemp grows on an Indiana roadside. The Indiana State Police spent untold millions of federal dollars, and thousands of man-hours, pulling up 20 million stalks of this ditch weed last year. Trouble is, feral hemp contains no THC. |
Sgt. Lou Perras and a team of state troopers from the Indiana State Police launched a bizarre annual ritual in May: their patently impossible, insanely expensive, and laughably absurd effort to “eradicate marijuana” in the state.
Perras said part of the war on pot includes combating the public’s lighthearted attitude about the friendly weed.
“People have this attitude — ‘It’s just marijuana,'” Perras said. “That’s a sad misrepresentation of the drug,” the earnest lawman intoned soberly.
Perras seems to irrationally believe his team’s doomed efforts will somehow counteract the romanticism marijuana enjoys. The growing public acceptance of marijuana use — and its legality for medicinal usage in 14 states and counting — is making Perras’s job tougher this growing season, the drug warrior whined.
“Marijuana will grow almost everywhere,” Perras whimpered. “All it needs is sunlight and water.”
Although Perras is correct on that point, beyond that, he quickly leaves the realm of rationality.
Heading up Indiana’s Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression program — which, year after year, has received fat funding from the federal government, paid for with assets seized (stolen) from “drug dealers” — has gone from a seasonal to a year-round job.
Thankfully, this year Perras’s team is doing their asinine job with less money. His budget was cut by $250,000, about a third less than a year ago, due to a shift in federal funding priorities (thank you, Obama Administration). Local “drug task forces” (translation: armed goons with Rambo complexes who steal pot and seize property) are also — horrors! — facing cutbacks.
“It makes us be more resourceful and even better stewards of taxpayers’ dollars, like not using the helicopter as much, and relying more on tips from citizens and other investigative techniques,” said Sgt. Tony Slocum.
| Photo: Indiana State Police |
| These clueless clowns waste untold millions of dollars of your tax money, year after year — and the federal money keeps rolling in. |
Slocum is with the Indiana State Police post in Peru, Indiana, a district in which state troopers working with the program annually pull up about 2,000 pot plants.
Less money means snitches, I mean tipsters, are more important than ever to the pot “eradication” program. State police have issued news releases in recent weeks encouraging “the media” to publicize the Indiana State Police Marijuana Tip Line.
As a civic-minded editor, I am more than happy to do so, but I wonder if the Indiana State Police realize that when I publicize the number for their Marijuana Tip Line, 888-873-1694, they will likely be deluged with spurious “tips” on marijuana patches that never existed. You think? Oh well.
“Please remember, if you wish to stay anonymous you can,” the State Police helpfully say in a news release.
In 2009, state police assigned to the program claim to have seized more than 37,000 cultivated plants and made more than 800 arrests.
Notice that they say 37,000 cultivated plants? There’s a reason for that term.
These clowns seized a total of almost 21 million plants in 2008. Assuming that the 2008 and 2009 totals are comparable, that would mean that more than 99.9 percent of the “marijuana” seized consisted of feral hemp — with THC levels so low as to be undetectable.
But that “20.7 million plants” total sounds ever so impressive, doesn’t it? That is, until you realize it means a bunch of clueless cops are spending untold millions of dollars seizing THC-free ditch weed, with less than one percent consisting of actual marijuana.
Of course, the fact that none of this made any impact whatsoever on the availability of pot in Indiana is beside the point… or is it?
Remember, these are federal tax dollars being wasted on this foolishness, which means we are all paying for it.
But those federal tax dollars are the point, if you’re the Indiana State Police. They want to keep that D.C. largesse rolling in.
And that’s why Indiana cops continue, every single year, to pull up millions of THC-free hemp plants, pretending they are removing “marijuana” from the streets, obnoxiously telling the press what a great and “dangerous” job they are doing.