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.
