When huge drug busts make the news, Tennessee is not the first location that comes to mind.

Usually big marijuana hauls by the police happen in the Pacific Northwest, along the Mexican border or along the coast in Florida. Not this time. In the buckle of the Bible Belt South, police shut down an operation and confiscated 362,000 plants with an estimated street value of nearly half a billion dollars at $434 million.

The mega find was in an isolated wooded area of Obion County two hours north of Memphis in the Northwest corner of the Volunteer State. The local sheriff’s department was tipped off about the veritable marijuana plantation. When the officers trekked through the woods to the location they found acres of weed still in the ground and some already harvested and hanging on drying racks. The green-thumbed growers fled the site upon hearing the approach of the authorities. No arrests have been made yet.

Officials estimate the camp next to the crop was occupied by as many as six people. There is no evidence that Willie Nelson was among the six. The growers left a meal on the table in their camp kitchen when they hurriedly evacuated the scene. Cots, generators and hundreds of yards of pvc pipes for irrigation were found in addition to the huge ganja haul. The growers dug tunnels, not to cross the U.S. border into San Diego, but as a place to hide their generators and muffle the noise they make.

Once the police brought the illegal harvest back to their department, they needed 400 gallons of diesel to burn and dispose of the weed. That had to create a lot of smoke. There is no report on how many people stood downwind from the burn.

Image

“Nothing makes me prouder than coming home with six Grammys, then coming to the BRITs and winning album of the year.  I’m so proud to be British and to be flying the flag and I’m so proud to be in the room with all of you,” said Adele. Then presenter James Corden stepped in, interrupting [...]

Forget about Moneyball, the game-changing baseball philosophy that values getting men on base over defensive metrics, speed, body type, or other traditional tools lusted over by scouts.  The Oakland A’s are going to experience first hand the power of Mannyball.  Manny Ramirez, the long-haired slugger last seen with the Tampa Bay Rays last season before [...]

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and a time in which members of the Catholic Church give up the things they enjoy, such as meat on Friday, to prove their devotion to God.  But that’s tomorrow.  Tonight?  Ahh, tonight is the night to drink it up, party like crazy, and have one [...]

Saturday Night Live cleverly made its barbed points about the racism surrounding the coverage of the NBA’s newest star. The meteoric rise in popularity of second-year NBA player Jeremy Lin has created a buzz in his Knicks’ city of New York and around the world. As only the fourth Asian-American to play in the history [...]

In a scene straight out of the Old West, the Glenn M. Anderson Federal Building’s seventh floor was the scene of a shootout.  No, a rogue nut didn’t get through security and it wasn’t an act of terrorism.  One federal agent shot another federal agent, then was subsequently killed by a third federal agent in [...]

Once you start smoking, it’s very difficult to quit.  A few cigarettes a day can quickly become a dangerous habit, so it’s best to never start.  However, once you do start, quitting aids like nicotine gum and those new electronic cigarettes can help.  Electronic cigarettes are those little cigarette-shaped things with the light in one [...]

When you operate a restaurant in which people over 350 pounds eat free, this kind of thing is going to happen.  At the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Triple Bypass Burger nearly lived up to its name one Saturday night.  A 40-year-old man walks into the Heart Attack Grill, orders a Triple [...]