Police Often Lack Basic Knowledge About Marijuana

Posted in Chronicle Blog by Scott Morgan on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 5:51pm
Every year at this time, police around the country start excitedly notifying local papers that they're getting better and better at finding pot in the woods. It's a tiresome ritual, but reporters just love it, and it would never occur to them that the police sometimes donâ??t have a clue what they're talking about:


[Merced Multi-Agency Narcotics Task Force Commander] Compston said more growers are cloning female plants, which produce the valuable buds with higher THC levels, in order to yield a product that will be more profitable on the street. "They are basically making hybrid plants," Compston said. [Merced Sun-Star]

Maybe I'm being picky, but I think it's rather telling that a regional task force commander fundamentally misunderstands how marijuana works. All commercial marijuana is female. Male plants aren't just less profitable, they're worthless and not available for sale. So to suggest that cloning females is some sort of new trade secret is just ridiculous.

Even more amusing is the claim that these plants are hybrids. Clones, by definition, are not hybrids. They are clones, which means they're genetically identical to the mother plant. If the plants are all female, as Compston says, there can be no cross-pollination and therefore no hybrids. It sure is fun to call them "hybrids" though. How scary that sounds.

Of course, the most popular marijuana myth continues to be the pound-per-plant estimate:


Most marijuana plants are valued at $1,000 to $3,000 per plant, based on the measurement that an average plant will yield one pound of finished product per season, according to Merced County Sheriff's Detective Scott Dover. With the newer varieties' higher THC content, however, Dover said it's not uncommon to find a single plant priced up to $5,000.

Dover's right about one thing: it's not uncommon to find police estimating the value of marijuana plants at $5,000. But a marijuana plant capable of actually yielding a pound is hardly the norm. An average plant yields ¼ pound, far less than the standard one pound estimate by which police determine the supposed street value of every crop they eradicate.

The point here isnâ??t just that police are often ignorant about marijuana. That has been obvious for a long time. What's notable is that reporters continue to regurgitate factually incorrect statements from law-enforcement with no effort to verify the accuracy of their claims. This behavior is critical to maintaining support for marijuana prohibition, not only by reinforcing myths about the drug, but also by falsely portraying the effectiveness of efforts to eradicate it.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_...dg:jointsmile:

I think most people that had a high school biology class can tell you a clone is not a hybrid. You notice every year the propaganda machine eats its own shit from last year, and vomits it out again? Marihuana is getting stronger every year! A dog beat his wife, and he had marihuana in his system! The people that grow this deadly drug are making it deadlier still!

A side note: Whenever you hear someone say, "Basically," they are probably an idiot trying to sound intelligent.

A few quotes from the undercover cops that busted me:

Hey, where's my car? He drove off with it. What an idiot. Anyone have a radio?

Nope.

Anyone have a cel phone?

Yeah, but I don't have his number.

What do you need the car for?

Oh, to write down the charges.

Don't you have your little cheat sheet?

No, I forgot that in the car. Dammit, he's not answering his phone.:wtf:

One of our local yokels made the statement in the newspaper that a single plant can yield 6 pounds! I wish!- Granny:hippy:

They weigh the whole plant and claim its worth thousands of dollars. Idiots.

cops are dumbasses they weigh the whole plant and give people 5x the amount of jail time that there evan suppose to give which is only making the jails crowd over evan more and they dont care:mad:

One peice of police/media ignorance i have noticed in the uk is the general termninlogy used when talking about cannabis. For instance, in the uk hashish is called "cannabis resin" when it is obviously not the actual resin also they call actuall buds "herbal cannabis" which is really strange, mabye im being picky but i defo think mabye if the police/media bothered to read some actaul facts on weed instead of propaganda bullshit from the government, for instance i read an article from a supposed top gorvernment scientist on drugs and amoung other things he said and i qoute "smoking a joint is the equivalent to smoking 10 tobacco cigarettes".:wtf: enough said.

lol if yall only knew

Yeah cops are totally dumb, well most of them. Either they're professionaly trained with reverse psychology methods or they're just plain thick.

I've been pulled up by 2-3 different cops for Cannabis possession, and they both said the normal brainwashing shit like "It'll fry your brains out", "It will kill you", "You can overdose from it and have seizures".....stuff like that. I thought thank god for the Internet. If I hadn't known all that and read up that no one has ever died from an overdose of Cannabis, I would have probably shit my pants lol but I thought fuck this copper, he's talking rubbish.

Its not about the truth, its about making the blue suits look good and high news ratings.