$4 million in marijuana found on Santa Barbara beach

[Paul E Ester]

Source: LA Times

Santa Barbara County officials discovered $4-million worth of marijuana next to a boat Sunday at Arroyo Camada Beach.

Officials said they found an estimated 2,000 pounds of marijuana wrapped in plastic bags on the beach.

Santa Barbara County sheriff's officials "located an apparently abandoned 30-foot “Panga” style boat with two outboard engines and 20+ fuel containers on board," the department said in a news release. "Sheriff’s detectives located a significant amount of evidence that was consistent with marijuana smuggling activities, including trash and debris that was strewn about the beach and nearby coastal access trails."

<snip>
This is the second big pot discovery this month in Santa Barbara County.

Earlier this month, marijuana with an estimated value of at least $1 million was discovered Thursday near a boat that had crashed on a beach near Vandenberg Air Force Base.


Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/4-million-in-marijuana-found-on-santa-barbara-beach.html

---

Sheriff’s detectives located a significant amount of evidence that was consistent with marijuana smuggling activities

- like 2000 lbs of weed and a boat.

[Paul E Ester]

1. 20 of these boats found in Santa Barbara over the last year.

Officials say over the last year, more than 20 panga-style boats have been found on the Santa Barbara coastline.

http://www.ksby.com/news/sheriff-s-office-panga-style-boat-around-2-000-pounds-of-marijuana-found-near-santa-barbara-beach/

[eggplant]

2. It's so silly.

Why would anyone bother to import weed into California? Who would choose commercial Mexican crap over locally grown quality weed?

[Paul E Ester]

3. It's on it's way inland is my guess.

Why Santa Barbara, home to Ex Gov. Schwarzenegger?

[marble falls]

10. Because sometimes I like to smoke doobies when I am working in my studio and I don't necessarily ...

want to get off the task at hand. I obtain hydro all the time and I have to obtain commercial Mex by the quarter pound tobe sure to have doobie rollage available. Thank goodness for the importers!

[lexw]

4. There's something screwy going on here.

[Sunlei]

29. agree, those over loaded boats aren't coming from mexico.

[Thegonagle]

5. I wish I found 2,000 lbs of marijuana. At least I'd know what to do with it. Smoke break!

It wasn't the weed and the boat that gave it away though. It was the trash and debris. Trash and debris will get you every time if you don't bring the A-game.

[struggle4progress]

6. Meh. Probably just a coincidence. Some high winds twirled some pot and plastic into bales

and dropped it with other trash near some boat. Happens all the time apparently

[grahamhgreen]

7. Thank God! Now they can return it to the owners!

[Hekate]

8. Yikes. The Panga boat traffickers are intensifying.

I live here, and that's just dangerous.

Oh hell, when will Prohibition end so we can put these criminals out of business?

[marble falls]

11. They're criminal for importing and you're not criminal for smoking it? Isn't that what we call in ..

Teapublicans a "cognitive disconnect"?

[firenewt]

16. Do you drive? Do you only buy domestically produced and refined oil products? Just asking- we

support corporate and criminal terrorists in many ways we are not aware of.

[marble falls]

17. No. I don't. Hydro is local, commercial is imported. Secondly, the criminialization is what makes ..

new criminals, - the market. And the old criminal more bold. Illegalization is what makes makes for high paying jobs for those willing to carry guns. And use them. Mexico isn't any more criminal or revolutionary because I buy pot imported from Mexico. Though there is no doubt guns are run on drug money investment. Legalize it and all of the sudden there's no need for guns. Thirdly, I buy as little petroleum products as I possibly can. Partially because buying US petroleum only benefits the conservatives in this nation who want to infringe my rights.

[Paul E Ester]

18. Don't be naive

Mexico isn't any more criminal or revolutionary because I buy pot imported from Mexico.

When you buy schwag from mexico your money is likely going to the sinaloa cartel run by shorty guzman one of the most murderous criminals in the world.

Cocaine and Marijuana smuggling have resulted in thousands of deaths as the Gulf cartel, the sinaloa cartel, los zetas and others fight over the lucrative black market.

That doesn't mean it should stay illegal, just don't pat yourself on the back for subsidizing a murderous black market.

Marijuana from the emerald triangle is much less likely to be soaked in the blood of campesinos.

[marble falls]

19. BS. Sinaloa doesn't give shit about the comercial pot racket. Now Toot, speed, Cialis...

Viagra .... they're all over it. Keeping it illegal and giving high paying jobs to criminals armed to the teeth is what's wrong. Want to break Sinaloan influence on the pot market assuming it has any interest in it - legalize it. The gangsters will move on to something else.

Doesn't the Prohibition era in this country give you any insight? The shooting did not start until it was made illegal.

[Paul E Ester]

20. 50% of their business

However, experts and studies note that legalization in two U.S. states — even if the federal government allows it — probably won’t put Mexico’s drug cartels out of business.
In the lead-up to the referenda in Mexico and Colorado, the Mexican Competitiveness Institute released a study estimating that Mexico’s cartels would lose $1.425 billion if the initiative passed in Colorado and $1.372 billion if Washington voted to legalize. The organization also predicted that drug trafficking revenues would fall 20 to 30 percent, and the Sinaloa cartel, which would be the most affected, would lose up to 50 percent.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/09/how-marijuana-legalization-will-affect-mexicos-cartels-in-charts/

Shorty would like to thank you for making him rich and funding his murder and corruption.

[marble falls]

21. I don't trust any facts regarding the Mexican drug trade. I've lived close to he border in Texas....

and Arizona close to half my life and I've lived through interdiction as an adult since Nixon tied the border up and introduced the general public to coke and speed and Quaaludes ...... I do not believe Sinaloa gets as much as 50% of their income from commercial weed. Maybe if Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera personally tells me so, but I'm not too sure even then.

But heck. Lets cut to the chase. I don't care if I bought the air-filler cap on his spare tire with the drug profits from this doobie I am about to take out onto the back porch and only one of us will return, when I go to the kitchen and get a dos Equis and a piece of Myer's lemon. The reason is that there's more money in Mexico because of the trade. Just like the defense industry in the US most of the people there are not gangsters. Someone actually has to grow and process the weed. Some folks think that since Loera has been in Sinaloa there's been law and order and less local political corruption. Maybe Mexico needs to clean its house. I don't know. But the criminalization of drugs in this country has fucked up that one. Legalize it.

I buy Mexican swag because I like it and I don't want to smoke hydro all the freaking time. Give me an American version of Mexican commercial and I might just obtain it. I don't like corporate grow houses not being market driven. Like, why can't Detroit give us an electric car? Especially when big oil never came out to help them in the days of bailout. Almost as if cars are razors or canaries and oil is the razor blades and bird seed and pet supplies.

Know what I mean?

[Paul E Ester]

22. I don't know what you mean.

Fuck the mexican cartels.

Fuck commercial brick weed.

Stop supporting murderers and justifying your flawed logic that shorty is bringing law and order to mexico one massacre at a time.

Spend some time on http://www.blogdelnarco.com looking at the depraved handiwork of these murderous gangs and get back to me with how benign the mexican drug trade is.

Peace

[marble falls]

23. Whatever. Law and order to Mexico. Brilliant concept. Any idea on how soon this will happen?.....

200 years of corruption, revolution and counter revolution. And all because I smoke some compensino grown commercial weed. AAALLLLL that on me.

[Paul E Ester]

24. Yes

Next you'll tell me weed grown in clear cut national forests is cool too, cause....

[marble falls]

25. That's a stretch, ain't it? If anything the Mexican grown weed will save the clear cut national ...

forests. Legalize it. There's plenty of acreage for hemp. Jeeez .... clear cut the national forests and all I want to do is burn a little Mexican commercial dope.

[Hekate]

27. Man, are you ignorant of what takes place in our national forests

The cartels come up and plant their "gardens" in sensitive habitat, divert water into it, pollute it, leave behind some guys in the camp to guard the investment with guns -- basically they degrade the habitat and are a danger to innocent hikers. Also their campfires are a danger in our tinder-dry Western forests. Not nice. Not a victimless crime.

Grow your own, why don't you?

[Hekate]

26. Wow. Just wow. I do not smoke pot. I did not smoke it when young, either. I voted to legalize it.

I was in my 50s when a friend pressed me to try some of her stash, and all it did was make my asthma kick up and give me a hangover. So thanks, but no thanks. (Regional forest fires make my asthma kick up, too, just in case you think this was a one-off reaction.)

The Panga boat smugglers are criminals on many levels, just as the Mafia was during the liquor Prohibition era. The Mexican cartels are dangerous, just as the Mafia was. You think the Mafia was your friend, just because they supplied the booze? Think again.

Outlawing a drug with popularity as wide as alcohol was a big, big mistake. Fortunately Prohibition was repealed. Unfortunately, marijuana was misclassified as a drug far more dangerous than alcohol with no utilitarian purpose. That was as big a mistake as Prohibition, and worse, because it has gone on longer, has lumped smokers in with meth users and heroin addicts, and has given felony records to millions of young men and women.

A person does not have to be a pot smoker to recognize that the law itself is criminal. A person does not have to be a narc to recognize that the Mexican cartels are also criminal, and dangerous. I can hold more than one thought in my head at one time.

Okay?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

9. A little green for Saint Pattys day.

[slackmaster]

12. Save the Bales!

[mpcamb]

13. Send it

To the medical clinics.

[Paul E Ester]

15. They don't want no schwag..nt

[Gregorian]

14. One ton of meri, guajira one ton of meri.

Everybody...

[Sunlei]

28. can a 30 foot boat even float with 2k of pot, some people and 20!! full gas cans?

possible 3,000 lbs of total weight? were the bales water soaked? when you look at a map it's hard to figure out where they came from.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Arroyo+Camada+Beach&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&rlz=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&ei=Q-dHUfqBDcTfyQGuyoFY&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAg

America loses massive amounts of tax revenues from the huge underground econemy. Plus we spend billions on 'beach clean-up' and the plants are easy to grow again. panga boats are everywhere.