Cops call for backup after heavy Maine rains create bumper crop of pot PORTLAND, Maine -- This summer's wet and warm weather sparked a bumper crop of mar1juana, and state drug agents are rolling in reinforcements. During the past month, Maine Drug Enforcement agents have located and destroyed nearly 500 mar1juana plants in seven communities. The agents used airplanes and global-positioning devices in their searches. But even before those raids, police across the state had already destroyed 5,400 pot plants, 70 percent more than they had at the same time last year. Police said the plants would have yielded more than a ton of mar1juana and been worth an estimated $4 million on the street if they had reached maturity. Still, overall seizures are down from 2000, when nearly 17,000 plants were pulled. A combination of fewer police and a shift in priorities to heroin, cocaine and prescription drug abuse has pulled some of the attention away from pot. "We're pretty snowed in with heroin and crack,'' said Ken Pike, supervisor of the York County MDEA office. --- let it grow, dudes...
Well, I would call this a waste of police resources, but this IS Maine we're talking about here, so there's no actual crime going on or anything...
