6 ms·

Backcountry Drug War

51 points by hownottowrite 8y ago

jonahhorowitz 8y ago
This is so tragic. I wonder if legalizing the recreational use of pot nationally will take enough of the profits out of it to reduce demand for this kind of illegal grow site.
- dkoubsky 8y ago
  Well certainly nobody feels its necessary to run illegal corn growing operations in national parks. But as long as legalized drugs have a significant price premium over black market drugs, then incentives for this behavior would still be in place.
  - wybiral 8y ago
    Counter point: I can probably brew alcohol for cheaper than I can buy it. But the convenience, availability, and legality makes up for the cost.
    - imbusy111 8y ago
      I doubt you can, considering your opportunity cost.
    - Varcht 8y ago
      Counter Counter Point: The supply chain has been a place for a long time and is pretty convenient, I'd say even more so.
    - jstanley 8y ago
      It's not illegal to brew your own alcohol, and it's easy to get started, it's just difficult and time-consuming to do well. (Although it is illegal to distill without a licence).
      - Johnny555 8y ago
        It's not illegal to grow marijuana in my state, and while I know quite a few people that use marijuana recreationally or medically, I only know of a few that grow it themselves even though it's not particularly difficult.
        yellowbuilding 8y ago
        It’s actually laughably easy. I did it once. I had zero gardening experience but did this indoors in a walk-in closet. It probably took a total of a regular work week of actual work and a few days of research beforehand, and I got over 1/4 lb. and was very high quality. But the main thing I got from it was a love of gardening haha.
    - drooogs 8y ago
      alcohol is a bit different than other drugs in that people also appreciate it as a culinary experience. most users of other drugs are not willing to pay 2-10x as much for the same drug in a better tasting form.
      - wybiral 8y ago
        Having been to a legal marijuana shop and having had several pothead friends growing up I can confirm that marijuana users have all kinds of appreciation for culinary aspects of their drug. That's obviously different with pharma drugs, but for plants I think there's a comparison.
        drooogs 8y ago
        honestly I would believe this, but in my experience people are spending the extra money to get strains that are either more potent or have different subjective effects. I've never known anyone who would pay $100 for a gram just for it to taste good.
      - alphabettsy 8y ago
        Lots and lots of stoners would disagree with you. Maybe this isn’t true for some things, but I remembers when ecstasy was really popular hearing people talk about different kinds.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      As far as I know making alcohol is much more work than growing weed though.
      - wybiral 8y ago
        Alcohol is really easy to brew and relatively easy to distill. Now, making good alcohol is another story. But for that matter, growing good weed is another story and properly dry-curing it is too (it's not as simple as dehydrating the crap out of it to get good pot for smoking).
        yellowbuilding 8y ago
        Exactly. Growing extremely high quality weed is a piece of cake. The plant does all the work, and all you have to pay it is light and water (a large amount). Those things are mostly invincible.
      - lsc 8y ago
        leave juice out in an area with yeast (so... almost anywhere) and the juice will ferment. You'll get more alcohol faster if you dump in some yeast (even the stuff for making bread would work, if we are trying to do this without anything designed to make alcohol) It probably will be super gross at this point, but will get you drunk. Search amazon for 'countertop water distiller' for under a hundred bucks, they'll ship you a "countertop water distiller" - run your spoilt juice through that thing a few times, and i'm not saying it will be good vodka; it won't... but it will be mostly alcohol, and it will be something you could probably choke down when mixed with something that tastes strong enough. I mean, making booze that tastes good, that's an art. but if you just wanna get drunk? Probably easier than making decent bread.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Well, illegal growing in a state where marijuana is legal seems strange but if you read the article, the grows described here are primarily targeting the illegal markets in other states.
    - scruple 8y ago
      That isn't entirely true. There's a thriving black and grey market around THC oil today, in particular, in California. Counterfeits are a well-known problem. It's not improbable to think that the oil for those counterfeits could come from illegal grow ops.
  - cf498 8y ago
    Well we dont really see illegal tobacco growing operations despite the significant tax burden. The significant price premium must be significantly above the cost of production.
    - p1necone 8y ago
      The stigma against smoking tobacco is increasing more and more though, and there is an increasingly popular and cheaper nicotine alternative in vaping.
    - thanksDr 8y ago
      We do see black market tobacco sales, however.
      - cf498 8y ago
        But only smuggled. We also dont see commercially viable Heroin production and poppy cultivation in the destination countries, despite the favorable climate. Growing and producing some drugs inland is just not a viable option, despite an significant price premium caused by smuggling.
- Varcht 8y ago
  Anecdotally... Many of my neighbors started smoking when it was legalized here. Neighbors on both sides toke pretty much every day in their backyards. Well actually at first they vaped mostly, that wasn't so noxious, just occasionally caught a whiff of it. Now it seems they have figured out they can buy weed from the resident dealer for a lot less without all those pesky taxes, at least I see them talking to him a lot more often these days.
- hermitdev 8y ago
  I could think you could look at the end of Prohibition as a similar case study. Is there still illegal alcohol? For sure. But, it is far less profitable and far less violent than it was during Prohibition. That said, I'm fine with legalizing marijuana. Not so much so with the likes of cocaine, meth or heroine. Soft drugs, sure, hard drugs, keep a leash on it.
  - drooogs 8y ago
    > That said, I'm fine with legalizing marijuana. Not so much so with the likes of cocaine, meth or heroine. Soft drugs, sure, hard drugs, keep a leash on it. I realize that this is becoming a popular opinion, but why? I almost understand the full prohibition mindset more. as long as there are any illegal drugs with strong demand, people are going to get killed over it. legalizing weed isn't going to make much difference; there's way more money in the hard stuff. so I gotta ask, do you think you will personally be hurt if hard drugs are legal (or even decriminalized), or are you taking it upon yourself to protect other people from themselves?
    - dtwest 8y ago
      Is it wrong to want the others around you to not have access to drugs that can destroy their lives? I'm of the legalize everything mindset, but heroin (and fentanyl) have killed many people I personally know. Weed has not. It is not illogical for people to want to treat them differently.
      - betenoire 8y ago
        Not wrong at all, but not wanting others to have access to drugs and supporting laws that marginally accomplish it at great cost (esp. to other people who may not be around you) are two different things.
      - drooogs 8y ago
        > Is it wrong to want the others around you to not have access to drugs that can destroy their lives? it's fine for you to want that; it's not okay for you to support the use of state violence to make it so. I also have lost many friends and years of my own life to heroin. worrying about the cops didn't help any of us.
rl3 8y ago
While it feels odd to be advocating surveillance, a massive network of UAVs equipped with infrared imaging would be very useful here. Have that same network double as forest fire early warning, and it'd probably pay for itself.
- hermitdev 8y ago
  Having grown up in Western Montana in the 80s and 90s on the edge of the national forest, we became very accustomed to having unmarked black helicopters flying low and slow over our land. Closest thing to nefarious was my brother & I taking shots at soda cans with the .22 rifle & 20 gauge shotgun. We also had low and slow flying Cessnas for fire spotting, and we were also in the flight line of retardant bombers flying south. So, summers were generally pretty noisy for us as far as aircraft noise goes. The Cessnas & retardant bombers were flying so low, slow & close to the house, you could read the tail numbers with your naked eye. The old bombers in particular really stuggled to gain altitude. We were about 20 miles from the airport, and about 1000 feet over the value floor, and they were seldom higher than straight out horizontal from our deck. Don't need UAVs for forest fire detection - already have MODIS [0] (and other) satellite imagery for that. New fires are detected via infrared usually in less than 24 hours. [0] https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/ https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/
  - rl3 8y ago
    >New fires are detected via infrared usually in less than 24 hours. That's not enough. Per the forecasted fire danger map[0]: "Extreme - Fires start quickly, spread furiously, and burn intensely. All fires are potentially serious. Development into high intensity burning will usually be faster and occur from smaller fires than in the very high fire danger class. Direct attack is rarely possible and may be dangerous except immediately after ignition." The lesser two classes have similar narratives. Given the speed at which fire spreads, earlier the detection the merrier. As an aside, I was going to suggest artillery as a potential candidate for immediate response, but it seems that's already been thought up.[1] [0] https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/current.php?sensor=modis&extent=conus&type=firedanger https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/current.php?sensor=modis&extent=... [1] https://wildfiretoday.com/2016/08/25/boeing-wants-to-fight-wildfires-with-a-howitzer/ https://wildfiretoday.com/2016/08/25/boeing-wants-to-fight-w...
sathackr 8y ago
So I can't view the site in a mobile browser without rotating to portrait "please rotate your device", and when I force desktop browser, I can't zoom. Why do sites do things like this?
- mirimir 8y ago
  I can't even open the site in Firefox. Had to get the text-only version from Google cache. And yes, why make it so hard to read (you know) text?
- everybodyknows 8y ago
  Hmm, viewabiliy okay for me on Nexus 7 tablet, with Firefox. OTOH, both copy-paste and reader mode are broken.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >Why do sites do things like this? My guess? Because the ads they are serving aren't mobile-responsive, this forces you to see them as is.
gumby 8y ago
Legalization hasn't helped. I have a vacation house (shack, really) in Calaveras county. There was a recent referendum question banning growing pot. It was portrayed as "you wouldn't want this next to your house/your wheat/your vines" but really it was funded by the pot growers who didn't want the legal competition. It's a problem because I like hiking up there but there are no go zones where you have to be afraid of running across pot growers or meth labs. Fortunately at least they aren't interested in the higher altitude areas. But a good part of the land in the county is simply public land (there's only one town in the county) so you have to be a local to stay out of trouble.
- jzawodn 8y ago
  Which town in Calaveras? (We're not far away, in Groveland...)
  - gumby 8y ago
    I'm in Murphys, and the place that's most scary is up along the south part of the Arnold Rim Trail, though there are others. But once you get up by Alpine I think you're safe, out of hunting season at least.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  The article claims that the drugs are grown for sale into out of state black markets, so legalization is having an impact, but it will need to be legalized federally to put the illegal grows out of operation.

51 points by hownottowrite 8y ago

This is so tragic. I wonder if legalizing the recreational use of pot nationally will take enough of the profits out of it to reduce demand for this kind of illegal grow site.

dkoubsky 8y ago
Well certainly nobody feels its necessary to run illegal corn growing operations in national parks. But as long as legalized drugs have a significant price premium over black market drugs, then incentives for this behavior would still be in place.
- wybiral 8y ago
  Counter point: I can probably brew alcohol for cheaper than I can buy it. But the convenience, availability, and legality makes up for the cost.
  - imbusy111 8y ago
    I doubt you can, considering your opportunity cost.
  - Varcht 8y ago
    Counter Counter Point: The supply chain has been a place for a long time and is pretty convenient, I'd say even more so.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    It's not illegal to brew your own alcohol, and it's easy to get started, it's just difficult and time-consuming to do well. (Although it is illegal to distill without a licence).
    - Johnny555 8y ago
      It's not illegal to grow marijuana in my state, and while I know quite a few people that use marijuana recreationally or medically, I only know of a few that grow it themselves even though it's not particularly difficult.
      - yellowbuilding 8y ago
        It’s actually laughably easy. I did it once. I had zero gardening experience but did this indoors in a walk-in closet. It probably took a total of a regular work week of actual work and a few days of research beforehand, and I got over 1/4 lb. and was very high quality. But the main thing I got from it was a love of gardening haha.
  - drooogs 8y ago
    alcohol is a bit different than other drugs in that people also appreciate it as a culinary experience. most users of other drugs are not willing to pay 2-10x as much for the same drug in a better tasting form.
    - wybiral 8y ago
      Having been to a legal marijuana shop and having had several pothead friends growing up I can confirm that marijuana users have all kinds of appreciation for culinary aspects of their drug. That's obviously different with pharma drugs, but for plants I think there's a comparison.
      - drooogs 8y ago
        honestly I would believe this, but in my experience people are spending the extra money to get strains that are either more potent or have different subjective effects. I've never known anyone who would pay $100 for a gram just for it to taste good.
    - alphabettsy 8y ago
      Lots and lots of stoners would disagree with you. Maybe this isn’t true for some things, but I remembers when ecstasy was really popular hearing people talk about different kinds.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    As far as I know making alcohol is much more work than growing weed though.
    - wybiral 8y ago
      Alcohol is really easy to brew and relatively easy to distill. Now, making good alcohol is another story. But for that matter, growing good weed is another story and properly dry-curing it is too (it's not as simple as dehydrating the crap out of it to get good pot for smoking).
      - yellowbuilding 8y ago
        Exactly. Growing extremely high quality weed is a piece of cake. The plant does all the work, and all you have to pay it is light and water (a large amount). Those things are mostly invincible.
    - lsc 8y ago
      leave juice out in an area with yeast (so... almost anywhere) and the juice will ferment. You'll get more alcohol faster if you dump in some yeast (even the stuff for making bread would work, if we are trying to do this without anything designed to make alcohol) It probably will be super gross at this point, but will get you drunk. Search amazon for 'countertop water distiller' for under a hundred bucks, they'll ship you a "countertop water distiller" - run your spoilt juice through that thing a few times, and i'm not saying it will be good vodka; it won't... but it will be mostly alcohol, and it will be something you could probably choke down when mixed with something that tastes strong enough. I mean, making booze that tastes good, that's an art. but if you just wanna get drunk? Probably easier than making decent bread.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Well, illegal growing in a state where marijuana is legal seems strange but if you read the article, the grows described here are primarily targeting the illegal markets in other states.
  - scruple 8y ago
    That isn't entirely true. There's a thriving black and grey market around THC oil today, in particular, in California. Counterfeits are a well-known problem. It's not improbable to think that the oil for those counterfeits could come from illegal grow ops.
- cf498 8y ago
  Well we dont really see illegal tobacco growing operations despite the significant tax burden. The significant price premium must be significantly above the cost of production.
  - p1necone 8y ago
    The stigma against smoking tobacco is increasing more and more though, and there is an increasingly popular and cheaper nicotine alternative in vaping.
  - thanksDr 8y ago
    We do see black market tobacco sales, however.
    - cf498 8y ago
      But only smuggled. We also dont see commercially viable Heroin production and poppy cultivation in the destination countries, despite the favorable climate. Growing and producing some drugs inland is just not a viable option, despite an significant price premium caused by smuggling.
Varcht 8y ago
Anecdotally... Many of my neighbors started smoking when it was legalized here. Neighbors on both sides toke pretty much every day in their backyards. Well actually at first they vaped mostly, that wasn't so noxious, just occasionally caught a whiff of it. Now it seems they have figured out they can buy weed from the resident dealer for a lot less without all those pesky taxes, at least I see them talking to him a lot more often these days.
hermitdev 8y ago
I could think you could look at the end of Prohibition as a similar case study. Is there still illegal alcohol? For sure. But, it is far less profitable and far less violent than it was during Prohibition. That said, I'm fine with legalizing marijuana. Not so much so with the likes of cocaine, meth or heroine. Soft drugs, sure, hard drugs, keep a leash on it.
- drooogs 8y ago
  > That said, I'm fine with legalizing marijuana. Not so much so with the likes of cocaine, meth or heroine. Soft drugs, sure, hard drugs, keep a leash on it. I realize that this is becoming a popular opinion, but why? I almost understand the full prohibition mindset more. as long as there are any illegal drugs with strong demand, people are going to get killed over it. legalizing weed isn't going to make much difference; there's way more money in the hard stuff. so I gotta ask, do you think you will personally be hurt if hard drugs are legal (or even decriminalized), or are you taking it upon yourself to protect other people from themselves?
  - dtwest 8y ago
    Is it wrong to want the others around you to not have access to drugs that can destroy their lives? I'm of the legalize everything mindset, but heroin (and fentanyl) have killed many people I personally know. Weed has not. It is not illogical for people to want to treat them differently.
    - betenoire 8y ago
      Not wrong at all, but not wanting others to have access to drugs and supporting laws that marginally accomplish it at great cost (esp. to other people who may not be around you) are two different things.
    - drooogs 8y ago
      > Is it wrong to want the others around you to not have access to drugs that can destroy their lives? it's fine for you to want that; it's not okay for you to support the use of state violence to make it so. I also have lost many friends and years of my own life to heroin. worrying about the cops didn't help any of us.

rl3 8y ago

While it feels odd to be advocating surveillance, a massive network of UAVs equipped with infrared imaging would be very useful here. Have that same network double as forest fire early warning, and it'd probably pay for itself.

hermitdev 8y ago
Having grown up in Western Montana in the 80s and 90s on the edge of the national forest, we became very accustomed to having unmarked black helicopters flying low and slow over our land. Closest thing to nefarious was my brother & I taking shots at soda cans with the .22 rifle & 20 gauge shotgun. We also had low and slow flying Cessnas for fire spotting, and we were also in the flight line of retardant bombers flying south. So, summers were generally pretty noisy for us as far as aircraft noise goes. The Cessnas & retardant bombers were flying so low, slow & close to the house, you could read the tail numbers with your naked eye. The old bombers in particular really stuggled to gain altitude. We were about 20 miles from the airport, and about 1000 feet over the value floor, and they were seldom higher than straight out horizontal from our deck. Don't need UAVs for forest fire detection - already have MODIS [0] (and other) satellite imagery for that. New fires are detected via infrared usually in less than 24 hours. [0] https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/ https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/
- rl3 8y ago
  >New fires are detected via infrared usually in less than 24 hours. That's not enough. Per the forecasted fire danger map[0]: "Extreme - Fires start quickly, spread furiously, and burn intensely. All fires are potentially serious. Development into high intensity burning will usually be faster and occur from smaller fires than in the very high fire danger class. Direct attack is rarely possible and may be dangerous except immediately after ignition." The lesser two classes have similar narratives. Given the speed at which fire spreads, earlier the detection the merrier. As an aside, I was going to suggest artillery as a potential candidate for immediate response, but it seems that's already been thought up.[1] [0] https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/current.php?sensor=modis&extent=conus&type=firedanger https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/current.php?sensor=modis&extent=... [1] https://wildfiretoday.com/2016/08/25/boeing-wants-to-fight-wildfires-with-a-howitzer/ https://wildfiretoday.com/2016/08/25/boeing-wants-to-fight-w...

sathackr 8y ago

So I can't view the site in a mobile browser without rotating to portrait "please rotate your device", and when I force desktop browser, I can't zoom. Why do sites do things like this?

mirimir 8y ago
I can't even open the site in Firefox. Had to get the text-only version from Google cache. And yes, why make it so hard to read (you know) text?
everybodyknows 8y ago
Hmm, viewabiliy okay for me on Nexus 7 tablet, with Firefox. OTOH, both copy-paste and reader mode are broken.
ryanmercer 8y ago
>Why do sites do things like this? My guess? Because the ads they are serving aren't mobile-responsive, this forces you to see them as is.

gumby 8y ago

Legalization hasn't helped. I have a vacation house (shack, really) in Calaveras county. There was a recent referendum question banning growing pot. It was portrayed as "you wouldn't want this next to your house/your wheat/your vines" but really it was funded by the pot growers who didn't want the legal competition. It's a problem because I like hiking up there but there are no go zones where you have to be afraid of running across pot growers or meth labs. Fortunately at least they aren't interested in the higher altitude areas. But a good part of the land in the county is simply public land (there's only one town in the county) so you have to be a local to stay out of trouble.

jzawodn 8y ago
Which town in Calaveras? (We're not far away, in Groveland...)
- gumby 8y ago
  I'm in Murphys, and the place that's most scary is up along the south part of the Arnold Rim Trail, though there are others. But once you get up by Alpine I think you're safe, out of hunting season at least.
bryanlarsen 8y ago
The article claims that the drugs are grown for sale into out of state black markets, so legalization is having an impact, but it will need to be legalized federally to put the illegal grows out of operation.