County law enforcement seized 1,500 marijuana plants this summer, with a little help from the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation and their helicopter flyovers of the area.
A few crops come to ripen during Ohio’s summer, for example: tomatoes, corn and marijuana — just to name a few.
But only one sends the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation to Athens County in a helicopter, armed with a trained eye who can spot an illegal three-leafed plant from hundreds of feet above.
Members of marijuana advocacy groups say the flyovers, conducted annually, should be done away with altogether — along with much of the legislation in the state against marijuana.
Several groups, such as the Marijuana Policy Project and the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, both of which have chapters in Southeast Ohio, are working to legalize marijuana in the state.
John Pardee, the president of the Ohio Rights Group, said the seizure of marijuana plants in the area not only wastes valuable state resources, but also hurts those who are growing the plant out of necessity.
“I know a lot of folks down there (in Athens) and this crop is their livelihood,” he said. “If they don’t have a good crop, they’re not going to be able to provide for their families.”
About 17,000 plants have been seized statewide, said David Posten, supervisor of marijuana eradication with the bureau. The program was funded with about $500,000 in federal grant money from the Drug Enforcement Administration earlier this year.
In Ohio, possession of under 100 grams of marijuana is a minor misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $150, though possession charges are slowly loosening.
Posten said that this yield was fairly typical, but was still a higher amount of plants seized than in 2012 or 2013. He attributed the high growth to this year’s ideal weather, noting that in previous years droughts had destroyed crops.
However, the bureau still has to keep a close eye on indoor growth operations the rest of the year.
“The one thing that is probably going to result from the legalization of marijuana in other states (is) more decriminalization of marijuana,” Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said, adding that this year’s seizures will result in one felony case.
Smith cited “less than five criminal cases,” as the outcome of this year’s flyovers. Most of the plants, he said, were sporadic and in small batches with very little evidence leading back to a suspect.
Regardless, law enforcement officials were quick to destroy the crops.
“Marijuana growing is probably going to go stale given the legalization in other states,” Blackburn said. “It’s difficult to grow outdoor marijuana.”
Posten said that each plant carries about a pound of marijuana, worth roughly $1,000. The highest-quality plants are worth closer to $3,500.
It takes an average of three to four days to sweep a county looking for grow operations, though Posten wasn’t willing to disclose exactly what suggests to the BCI that marijuana might be present. He added that three to four days didn’t constitute a “magic number” for finding outdoor growth organizations, with some counties requiring less time spent searching.
“We just have a certain amount of days that we can fly, we want to instill a label and eradicate marijuana,” Athens County Interim Sheriff Rodney Smith said.
But the BCI is calling it a good year for marijuana seizures in Ohio, Posten said.
“It’s not very often you see 17,000 seizures of marijuana,” he said. “That 17,000 pounds we kept off the streets, making the drug trade as minimal as possible.”
— William T. Perkins contributed to this report.
