What's the Actual Value of a Marijuana Plant?
We've found many examples of police exaggerating the value of marijuana seizures, so I was interested to see this article in The Fresno Bee that debates the value of marijuana plants:
"I don't think most plants [would yield a pound] at any one time, unless it's a massive plant," [NORML's Keith Stroup] said. "What would make more sense would be to weigh the buds," which are the part of the marijuana plant where the intoxicant, a chemical called THC, is located.Special Agent Casey McEnry of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency in San Francisco disagrees.
"We're not weighing the plants," she said. "When I give an estimate, it's based on how many pounds [a plant] is capable of producing."
No it's not, because you have no way of knowing that. Overall yield depends heavily on the strain and the growing conditions/techniques. It varies from a couple ounces to multiple pounds. Ever notice how some kinds of trees grow taller then others? Same principle.
The value of marijuana plants is hardly the biggest lie being passed around in the drug war debate, but it shouldn’t be ignored either. Every day, some poor soul gets sentenced to prison based on erroneous estimates like this. These simplistic calculations frequently serve to falsely equate personal growers with major suppliers, all because law-enforcement officials are too lazy to actually weigh the appropriate part of the plant.
Once again, the people enforcing our drug laws literally do not know what they're talking about.
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Exaggerated Cannabis Plant Yields Can Serve Many Agendas
Comment posted by Giordano on Wed, 10/14/2009 - 3:01amA few of the more evil drug enforcers do know what they’re talking about.
Exaggerating drug weights and drug prices are ways to muddy the legal waters. Microgram hits of LSD suddenly become gram weights of the stuff used to contain or buffer the tiny amounts of Acid, and so forth.
Lawyers are forced to waste valuable time refuting this nonsense. There are even professional witnesses who will perform this function. But it’s always an expensive hassle when lawyers are involved.
It’s the same scheme that dumps multiple drug charges onto drug defendants. The idea is to get the drug war victim to take a plea bargain. Most do. Probably, in some cases, regardless of their actual guilt or innocence. Otherwise, if every drug case were fought to the bitter end, the justice system would grind to a halt.
To that end, the government cannot be seen as derelict in its duty, which in the judicial world is to reach or exceed the previous year’s quotas on arrests, convictions, drug seizures, and forfeitures in particular.
Evidence comes from David Iglesias, the United States Attorney for New Mexico who was one of eight U.S. attorneys involved in a politically motivated firing by the Bush Administration. Iglesias said in his book: In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration, that he couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong when he was dismissed before his term of office expired. He candidly admitted he had met all the expectations of his federal office, including expected quotas of drug arrests, seizures and forfeiture revenue.
Using the drug war, the U.S. government has given itself a license to steal. This license is based on a line drawn in the sand by a few clueless ideologists, theologians and corporatists; a line designed to produce a bureacracy that seeks to justify its existence by sacrificing the hapless teen, construction worker, college student or white collar professional on the alter of drug war hysteria and profits. The scam is institutionalized, and therefore invisible to KoolAid drinking prohibs like Iglesias.
Giordano