Why Can't American Drug Gangs and Moron rednecks Do This?
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| stupid |
SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. – Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's
redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S.
public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled
immigrants to cultivate them.
Pot
has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers
have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to
safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands
of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.
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| moron |
"Just
like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they've gone to
mega, monster gardens," said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have "supersized" the marijuana trade.
Interviews
conducted by The Associated Press with law enforcement officials across
the country showed that Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a
spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the last several years.
Local,
state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each
year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities say an estimated 75 percent
to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.
In
2008 alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, police
across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from
about 20,000 outdoor plots.
Growing
marijuana in the U.S. saves traffickers the risk and expense of
smuggling their product across the border and allows gangs to produce
their crops closer to local markets.
Distribution
also becomes less risky. Once the marijuana is harvested and dried on
the hidden farms, drug gangs can drive it to major cities, where it is
distributed to street dealers and sold along with pot that was grown in Mexico.
About the only risk to the Mexican growers, experts say, is that a stray hiker or hunter could stumble onto a hidden field.
The remote plots are nestled under the cover of thick forest canopies in places such as Sequoia National Park,
or hidden high in the rugged-yet-fertile Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Others are secretly planted on remote stretches of Texas ranch land.
All
of the sites are far from the eyes of law enforcement, where growers
can take the time needed to grow far more potent marijuana. Farmers of
these fields use illegal fertilizers to help the plants along, and use
cloned female plants to reduce the amount of seed in the bud that is
dried and eventually sold.
Mexican
gang plots can often be distinguished from those of domestic-based
growers, who usually cultivate much smaller fields with perhaps 100
plants and no security measures.
Some
of the fields tied to the drug gangs have as many as 75,000 plants,
each of which can yield at least a pound of pot annually, according to
federal data reviewed by the AP.
The Sequoia National Forest
in central California is covered in a patchwork of pot fields, most of
which are hidden along mountain creeks and streams, far from hiking
trails. It's the same situation in the nearbyYosemite, Sequoia and Redwood national parks.
Even
if they had the manpower to police the vast wilderness, authorities say
terrain and weather conditions often keep them from finding the farms,
except accidentally.
Many
of the plots are encircled with crude explosives and are patrolled by
guards armed with AK-47s who survey the perimeter from the ground and
from perches high in the trees.
The
farms are growing in sophistication and are increasingly cultivated by
illegal immigrants, many of whom have been brought to the U.S. from Michoacan.
Growers
once slept among their plants, but many of them now have campsites up
to a mile away equipped with separate living and cooking areas.
"It's amazing how they have changed the way they do business," Wood said. "It's their domain."
Drug gangs have also imported marijuana experts and unskilled labor to help find the best land or buildirrigation systems, Wood said.
