cannabisnews.com: Final Tally On Pot Seizure: 48,000 Plants





Final Tally On Pot Seizure: 48,000 Plants
Posted by FoM on September 16, 1999 at 12:32:40 PT
By Dale Rodebaugh, Mercury News Staff Writer 
Source: San Jose Mercury News 
Law enforcement officials Wednesday wrapped up the biggest marijuana seizure in state history. But they're still not sure they got the entire crop, found in a remote canyon in South San Benito County.
More than 48,000 marijuana plants, averaging seven to 11 feet tall and worth $96 million wholesale, were uprooted in numerous gardens along Cantua Creek near the base of 5,248-foot San Benito Mountain, Bob Cooke, commander of the state Department of Justice's local narcotics enforcement team, said at a news conference in Hollister on Wednesday. ``I'm not sure we found all of it,'' Cooke said. Some of the last plants uprooted were found along another creek and might not be part of the original discovery, he said.The area, one of the most remote spots in San Benito County, is 70 miles southeast of Hollister in extremely difficult terrain.Ten suspects, all of them with addresses in Madera, have been arrested at the site over the past week, and are in San Benito County jail on charges of conspiracy to cultivate and distribute marijuana.Twenty-five to 30 agents from numerous law enforcement agencies took turns over three days last weekend uprooting the marijuana plants. Agents started Friday and finished the excavation Monday and Tuesday.The news conference announcing completion of their efforts was attended by Cooke as well as San Benito County's sheriff and undersheriff, Curtis Hill and Kenneth Brown, and two officials from the Bureau of Land Management -- Walter Johnson Jr., the agency's chief of law enforcement, and Roger Bruckner, special agent in charge of law enforcement in California. The marijuana gardens are on BLM land. An earlier report that a 60,000-plant marijuana bust in Glenn County in 1983 was the state's largest is inaccurate, Cooke added. The 60,000 plants accounted for the total amount of marijuana found in Glenn County that year and the plants tended to be ``ditch weed,'' inferior quality marijuana mostly growing wild, he said.The plants growing in the San Benito Mountain area were the well-tended, high-quality type typical of commercial operations conducted by sophisticated growers, Cooke said.Male plants had been uprooted and discarded, leaving only the bud-bearing females -- the source of the tetrahydrocannabinol that produces marijuana's effects.``Each of the plants would produce a minimum of one pound of sinsemilla marijuana. They had buds at least one foot long, and some of them were as long as your forearm,'' Cooke said.Cooke said ditch weed contains about 1.5 percent THC while the average THC content of commercially grown marijuana in California is 15 percent to 20 percent.Authorities were alerted to the marijuana-growing operation in mid-August by a deer hunter, who became suspicious of a group of men in the area. The operation was subsequently put under surveillance, which revealed armed men coming and going.On the evening of Sept. 8, authorities arrested five men approaching the area in a truck loaded with food and tools. The following morning, one of two men tending a marijuana garden was arrested. The other fled into the underbrush.Narcotics officers began eradicating marijuana plants Friday, pulling up more than 26,000, Cook said. That evening, three more suspects were arrested when they arrived at the growing area. On Saturday, the suspect who had fled Thursday surrendered.Published Thursday, September 16, 1999in the San Jose Mercury News 50,000 Pot Plants Confiscated in San Benito County - 9/15/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread2894.shtml
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