Lots Of Pot Grown, Smoked In The State Of WA
It's not a great comparison, but the AP reports today that in dollar value terms Washington grew more pot than cherries in 2005 making the chronic our number 8 agricultural commodity. Ok, it does take a lot of cherries to equal the value of an ounce of pot; probably a bunch of bushels. Pot is artificially expensive so, yeah, you won't have to grow much of it to earn more than whatever our cherry yield is. The thing is that they're only taking into consideration the amount of pot that was seized in 2005. Presumably there's the odd plant here or there in the state that goes un-confiscated and sometimes even gets harvested, dried, sold, sold, sold again and smoked. The article doesn't speculate on how many plants are grown and smoked because really there isn't any evidence. Seattlest ain't the AP, though, and we have no problem whatsoever with baseless claims.
The article says that Washington seized about $270 million dollars worth of marijuana plants last year. Sweet cherries produced in the state brought in around $240 million in 2004. Apples were our number one crop earning $962.5 million. How many pot plants do you think made it to market for every plant seized in 2005? We're going to say at least two plants didn't get busted for every one that did. That triples the size of the pot yield to $720 million. That's not quite apples and it's not quite milk (at $861 million) but it sure beats wheat at $524 million. If we're supposed to be shocked (shocked) at the number 8 that the article gives it doesn't take much to turn that into a 4 and we think our busted:not busted ratio was pretty conservative. Let's say only one out of every seven plants are captured. How about them apples? Now, if meth grew on trees...
