Word: cropped
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...drive pickup trucks, a redwood home perched on a hilltop in Northern California, a three-bedroom house with an outdoor Jacuzzi near the beach in Los Angeles and a custom-built vacation hideaway in Hawaii. Then he opened up a plastic bag and pinched out a sample of the crop that has made his fortune of nearly $1 million: marijuana...
...Fernando Ed, it seems, is no isolated case. Today illegally grown pot is the nation's fourth largest cash crop. Law-enforcement officials insist that it ranks just behind corn, soybeans and wheat in market value. Last year's marijuana harvest had an estimated street value of $8.5 billion; in each of more than 30 states, law-defying entrepreneurs produced crops worth at least $100 million at retail. California's harvest, worth an almost unbelievable but reasonably documented $1.5 billion at retail, led the list. Hawaii was second; its $750 million crop rivaled the sugar-cane...
...business bloomed in the late 1970s after the Nixon Administration pressured Mexico to spray its grass crop with paraquat, a potent weed killer. U.S. smokers, frightened of potential lung damage from tainted Mexican grass, turned to growing their own. That reliance on the domestic weed was further heightened when the DEA cracked down on the smuggling of Colombian marijuana into the U.S. Today, though many growers cultivate small quantities of pot strictly for their own or friends' use, 100,000 or so, according to NORML, the pro-pot lobby group, are commercial growers. They supply about...
...preferred crop today is sinsemilla (a seedless marijuana produced through intensive cultivation of only the female plant) that has a very high concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. Sinsemilla produces a heady euphoria and sells for around $2,000 per lb. This is roughly the yield from a single plant. The sinsemilla produced by U.S. growers is so prized that seeds have been smuggled into Mexico and Colombia to enrich crops there...
Officials admit that they are managing to seize only 5% to 10% of the domestic crop at best. The DEA contends that enforcement could become more efficient if the newly discovered marijuana fields were to be sprayed with paraquat. The state of Florida, in apparent agreement, has announced that it will spray some fields with the herb killer. The Florida plan has prompted critical editorials in local newspapers as well as a lawsuit from NORML. In addition, the Chevron Chemical Co., a distributor of paraquat, has fired off a warning letter to the U.S. Department of Justice...