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xxdr_zombiexx

Whiskey still, pot discovered
By Kelly Townsend | The Times-Journal |Published April 20, 2004

When DeKalb County Sheriff’s Lt. Jimmy Harris responded to a domestic call Sunday night, he found a little more than he had bargained for originally.

Harris, searching for 59-year-old Joe England, stumbled across 167 growing marijuana plants and a whiskey still.

According to Harris, he received a call around 6 p.m. that someone had fired a shot at a neighbor’s dog on 5534 County Road 221 in Collinsville.

When he arrived, Harris said he spoke with neighbors and began looking for England, the owner of the trailer and who neighbor’s suspected firing a shot at their dog.

While searching the back of the trailer, Harris found the still.

“I didn’t see anyone, but I did find a large vat with big copper tubes and a stainless steel pot,” Harris said. “It looked to me as if the owner was making moonshine, so the first thing I did was call DeKalb County Alcohol Beverage Commission Agent Tom Oliver to see what needed to be done.”

While Harris waited for Oliver, he said a vehicle with four people pulled into the driveway. As the vehicle stopped, according to Harris, one of the passengers jumped out and took off into the woods. That, according to the car’s other passengers, was England.

Collinsville officer Jeremy Bell and Sheriff Deputy Mike Edmondson found England trying to hid on ridge. While the two were chasing England, Harris said he found a garden near the home with 167 pot plants about 4 inches tall.

Inside the home, , Harris said officers found three 33 gallon green garbage cans in the living room filled with sour mash, along with two to three quarts of White Lightening.

“This is not something you see much of anymore,” Harris said. “In the old days, you saw whiskey stills all the time but now it is very rare.”

[zombienote: Might have just a little to with the elimination of prohibition of alcohol...]

According to Harris, there were also three bags of marijuana seeds and several bags of miracle grow inside the home.

[zombienote: Is Miracle-Gro now a "dual-use" item?]

Harris said Oliver arrived on the scene and all the marijuana plants were confiscated along with the moonshine.

England is facing charges of first-degree possession of marijuana and manufacturing, and more charges could come from ABC.

England is in the DeKalb County jail awaiting bond.

[zombienote: Bullet? What bullet? Tiny marijuana plants are a much more pressing concern than bullets sailing through the area.

The alcohol was confiscated but is not sufficient to warrant charges of "manufacturing". Interesting.

Marijuana is GROWN, not "manufactured: I love how cops and "the Law" spin the simplest thing - a weed - into an imminent disaster, which they save people from. I am surprised we don't have pictures of the boys high-fiving for saving lives....I can hear them now..."Them plants was over 4 inches tall. Millions of lives were at risk. We done good."]

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Herb Ninja

Its rare because alcohol is relatively legal. But moonshiners still exist because its cheaper to make it yourself without extra taxes and paying for somebody elses labor to make it. If you tax a product too much, its not uncommon that black markets for that product appear. I think the best option is legalizing marijuana and alcohol completely and having very small or no extra tax on alcohol or marijuana. And obviously if your just making it for personal use without sale, there should be no extra tax. Peace, HN-

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xxdr_zombiexx

Egg-zactly.

NYC has seen -no handy link -a rise in black market cigarettes as the city or state hiked the tax on them. It crossed the "line" and prohibition dynamics predictably have ensued.

Oddly, its in the Dupont Memos on one's copy of "The Emporer has no Clothes" that it was the federal government's ability to tax that was utilized to prohibit the touching of cannabis.
See: THE MARIHUANA TAX ACT OF 1937

Economics

Excessive taxation, just as much as prohibiton, can create a black market. A high tax is essentially a price floor (it makes the price artificially high) and therefore at any given level of demand, less of the product is sold than would normally be sold. If the difference between the "true" demand and the "artificial" (lowered due to the tax) demand is large enough a black market will exist to cater to that demand. Small, reasonable taxation usually does not create a black market, since it does not change demand very much and therefore does not provide enough demand to make a black market profitable. Prohibition is simply a more extreme variation of the same effect, by making the product illegal there is artificially zero demand when in reality there is a certain amount of demand -- in the case of prohibition, the entire weight of the demand is dealt with via black markets.

Niteshift

The alcohol was confiscated but is not sufficient to warrant charges of "manufacturing". Interesting.

The article says: more charges could come from ABC. That is the Alcohol enforcement folks.

There are some laws that only specific agencies can enforce. For example, you local city cop can't charge someone with most federal crimes (unless they are also a federal officer. And there are even state laws that only certain agencies can charge a person with. Likewise, a FBI agent can't arrest a person for violating a city ordinance.

So DeKalb county made the charges they were able to make, then turned the other part (the alcohol) over to the state agency that has the jurisdiction over that.

That's not ignoring it or playing favorites, that's simply following the jurisdictional boundaries under the statutes.

Bullet? What bullet? Tiny marijuana plants are a much more pressing concern than bullets sailing through the area.

Maybe there was no evidence that it even happened. Not every allegation by a complainant is true or correct.

Case in point: I took a call a few months ago where a person complained that there were people shooting towards her house. I found the people shooting. They had .22 rifles, shooting cans on the edge of a canal. They were shooting east, the complainants house was due south of them almost 90 degrees. It is possible that a round richocheted and went over her house, but they weren't shooting in her direction. They were on private property, in an unincorporated area, and not firing in the direction of any buildings.

While the complainant wasn't lying, she wasn't factually correct either. They were breaking no law, so other than talking with them about safety and the dangers of richochets, there was nothing to do with them. No law was violated.

Could they have turned and fired over her house? Sure. Could I prove that? Nope. Should I arrest someone for something I KNOW that I can't prove?

NYC has seen -no handy link -a rise in black market cigarettes as the city or state hiked the tax on them.

It's not just NYC. The whole state of MA has seen the same thing. They put a MINIMUM price on a carton of cigarettes that is higher than you can buy them retail in my state. Because of the profit potential, we found a state-wide problem with people burglarizing stores to steal cartons of smokes to take north and sell in places like MA and NYC. If your profit is $25-30 per carton, you can imagine the amount of money we're talking about for a truckload.

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