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98 Percent Of All Domestically Eradicated Marijuana Is "Ditchweed," DEA Admits
NORML | 09/07/2006

Washington, DC: More than 98 percent of all of the marijuana plants seized by law enforcement in the United States is feral hemp not cultivated cannabis, according to newly released data by the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program and the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.

According to the data, available online at: http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t4382005.pdf, of the estimated 223 million marijuana plants destroyed by law enforcement in 2005, approximately 219 million were classified as "ditchweed," a term the agency uses to define "wild, scattered marijuana plants [with] no evidence of planting, fertilizing, or tending." Unlike cultivated marijuana, feral hemp contains virtually no detectable levels of THC, the psychoactive component in cannabis, and does not contribute to the black market marijuana trade.

Previous DEA reports have indicated that between 98 and 99 percent of all the marijuana plants eradicated by US law enforcement is ditchweed.

NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre criticized the DEA program for spending millions of taxpayers' dollars to predominantly eradicate wild hemp. "The irony, of course, is that industrial hemp is grown legally throughout most the Western world as a commercial crop for its fiber content," he said. "Yet the US government is spending taxpayers' money to target and eradicate this same agricultural commodity."

According to a 2005 Congressional Research Service report, "The United States is the only developed nation in which industrial hemp is not an established crop."

St. Pierre said that most of the hemp plants eradicated by law enforcement are remnants of US-government subsidized crops that existed prior to World War II. "Virtually all wild hemp goes unharvested and presents no legitimate threat to public safety," he said. "As such, it should be of no concern to the federal government or law enforcement."

According to DEA figures, Indiana reported seizing over 212 million ditchweed plants - far more than any other state. Missouri law enforcement confiscated some 4.5 million plants, and Kansas reported eradicating approximately 1.2 million plants. More than half of all states failed to report their ditchweed totals.

California led all 50 states in the number of cultivated cannabis plants eradicated in 2005, with the DEA reporting that more than 2 million plants had been destroyed.

The Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program is a joint federal and state effort funded, in part, by the DEA.

dedbr

you can't plant outside without this crap ferting your good weed and frikin' everything up.......

Damn hemp will be the ruin of outside herb.........till we breed a hemp resistant plant........

Nobody said the DEA was full of brilliant bulbs.......


Some Where In Ded Land........

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dredpiratrobert

Is a perfect example of how the DEA is wasting US taxdollars... I imagine they are well payed, being trained agents, and this is a task that could be done by just about anyone with two legs and two arms. Why are we paying a team of guys $20/hr. per head to pull up weeds that aren't posing a threat or contributing to the drug trade?

It just makes me want to

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Pompo

The hemp you speek of has been around as long as I can remember ( and I'm as old as dirt ). Government waste has been around even longer than that!!!! I wish I could get out of giving them my tax dollars to waste like that. I'ld have more money to buy pot with

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Plainsman1963

And the bad news isn't over yet.

In a lot of the states (such as mine) the ditchweed they are eradicating are the offspring from when hemp was legal.

So instead of saving and storing the seeds from the industrial hemp, to keep the strains alive and viable, they have been destroying the seeds of a viable agricultural product that has acclimatized itself to it's environment to achieve maximum growth/yield.

It's stupid on so many levels.

reggie_the_dog

Farmers could relly use these plants. As for seeds in my homegrown I dont give a damn, there is good smokable feral hemp in Kentucky, Tennessee, all over the south, that I would love to get seeds of and grow. In Illinois on the prarie they find 20 foot tall hemp plants and burn them, think of all that lost cordage and fiber.

dredpiratrobert

The domestic feral hemp represents an important asset to the country and the countrypeople. Eradication of those species is like a sort of "genetic-clensing" and could be a HUGE step backwards.

vladimir

in kansas, ditchweed grows like crazy. i don't know what the point of destroying it is, as ive never heard of anyone who even so much as dreamt of touching that stuff.

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Richi

You guys do have many good ideas ofr the future, but this is where your shine really fades.

*sigh....*

Must really piss off the peoples of the DEA. Working so hard getting into such a prestigious sub-culture of the American government, and you are sent to go pick plants - weeds that is.

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troublemaker_42

Never heard smokable and feral used in the same sentence. Unless weed with less than .01% thc suits you, I wouldn't be smoking it.