cannabisnews.com: Large-Scale Marijuana Fields Found in SW Virginia





Large-Scale Marijuana Fields Found in SW Virginia
Posted by FoM on August 18, 2000 at 09:39:23 PT
By The Associated Press
Source: Knoxville News-Sentinel
The recent discovery of large marijuana fields in far southwest Virginia has state officials trying to determine whether illegal growers are returning to large-scale operations. "It's definitely got us wondering," said state police 1st Sgt. J.C. Lewis, director of Virginia's marijuana eradication program. "It's really too early to tell if we have a trend going. 
But in recent years, we've been used to seeing more plots and fewer plants." In the past half-decade, growers have scattered their crop among several small fields to avoid detection from helicopters. But on Friday, Russell County deputies found a field of 5,404 pot plants in the western part of the county. The find is the biggest in Russell since 1985, when authorities discovered 17,000 plants growing near Kent's Ridge, Sheriff Trigg Fields said last week. On July 31, Wise County deputies found a field of 3,865 pot plants outside the community of Derby, near the Kentucky line. Days later, they found smaller fields with 676 plants. The wholesale value of the pot found in the two fields is between $9.4 million and $18.8 million, according to official estimates. The pot raids in Wise and Russell counties are part of the state's eradication effort that begins each spring. Local deputies used state police and National Guard helicopters to spot the fields. The size of the two fields runs counter to the way growers have operated in the past five years, Lewis said. Typical plots once contained between 2,000 and 6,000 plants, visible from airplanes because of marijuana's distinctive bluish tint. Growers in the mid-1990s began to scale back, putting an average of 80 plants in each of four or five separate fields. The result was a decline in the amount of marijuana police seized each year. In 1994, police destroyed 39,338 plants in Virginia. But that number began to drop as growers distributed crops over several locations. From July 1, 1998, to June 30, 1999, the last year for which statistics are available, Virginia authorities seized 15,051 plants. The state kicked off its eradication effort this year in southwest Virginia. Other than the two big fields in Wise and Russell, the size of the discovered pot fields is typical, Lewis said. In Lee County, deputies have destroyed 837 plants; in Scott County, 24; in Buchanan County, 280; in Washington County, 59; in Tazewell County, 49. Authorities will likely make many more raids as harvest time approaches, Lewis said. The fields were on private property, and no one has been arrested. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, saying its calculations are based on federal data, estimated that Virginia produces about $197 million worth of pot annually. Far southwest Virginia, where much of the state's marijuana grows, is ringed on three sides by a 65-county area of West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee that the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has labeled a "high-intensity drug trafficking area." Lebanon, Va.Published: Friday, August 18, 2000 Copyright © 1999-2000, The Knoxville News-Sentinel Co.  Related Articles & Web Site:NORMLhttp://www.norml.org/Marijuana Garden Worth $40 Million Destroyedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6748.shtmlCalif. Reports Record Crackdown On Marijuana Crop http://cannabisnews.com/news/3/thread3451.shtmlFinal Tally On Pot Seizure: 48,000 Plants http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread2906.shtml50,000 Pot Plants Confiscated in San Benito County http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread2894.shtml 
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