It’s that time of year again. The illegal marijuana farmers are getting ready to cash in their crops. So the police are out and about looking for grows and trying to take down the operations before the weed gets into the national supply chain. These are illegal grows, not protected under the New Mexico medical marijuana law.
According to KRQE, Bernalilllo County Sheriffs officers have been busy tracking and destroying grow operations. They’ve gotten five in the last month. The plots range from as few as a dozen plants up to 30 or so. In New Mexico, the trick is to plant marijuana at the base of those scrawny pinion trees – the trees block the view of helicopters on the hunt, but don’t block enough sunlight to ruin the crop.
This time of year, the pinion trees turn brownish, while the marijuana growing underneath stays green. This is how they are spotted by deputies flying overhead. The other strategy, keeping plots on the small side, is a trade-off by the growers. They figure that multiple, smaller plots will keep all of them from being found. The percentage that remains undiscovered may yield enough profit to make the whole enterprise worthwhile.
From the police point of view, the costs to find and destroy illegal marijuana grows are substantial. In one of the recent incidents, it took 15 officers an 8-hour day to get rid of the plants. Add to that the costs of running the helicopter and other vehicles and the costs start to mount up. That’s also a full 8-hour shift without those deputies available to address other matters.
On the criminal’s side of this economic battle, they have several months of tending a plot out the window – including the costs of equipment for irrigation and costs for fertilizer. The risks seem worth it though for them. After all, a successful grow puts the marijuana in the US already – no smuggling risks.
How big is the problem of illegal marijuana cultivation in NM? No one really knows. We can only track what we find, not what stays hidden and harvested. California, the example most often mentioned, has marijuana as the number one cash crop in the state.
