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(Not) High and (Very) Dry

By Jocelyn Geboy in News on Jan 9, 2007 3:50PM

If you're a fan of the weed, like to smoke grass, are down with mary jane, get mellow with reefer, do the diggity dank, or just plain like to get high, you may have a hard time with all that if you're not growing it or have some out-of-state connections. The Tribune tells it straight: "Chicago police have seized about 2,800 pounds of marijuana in a four-day series of drug busts, representing the largest cannabis confiscation in recent years, officers said Sunday evening."

2007_01marijuana.jpgThe busts started on Thursday, ended on Sunday and were helped by people from the community and informants. The first nab yielded 465 pounds of marijuana. Let's face it. We can't even get our minds around that. It's like trying to figure out how long it would take to count to a million, one second at a time. What is interesting is that the article immediately continues, "The next day, Officers Raphael Mitchem and Mark Eldridge were staking out a home in the 4400 block of South Homan Avenue after being tipped off that drugs were stored inside." Gee, you think that some of "the informants" came from Thursday's bust?

We're guessing this wasn't a stab in the dark, because they found 1,070 pounds in that house. Saturday was chump change, with them getting 42 pounds (who even cares!? 42 pounds?) and a shotgun that was in reach of four kids.

Leaving the Southwest side, it was up to the Northwest side for the grand prize of 1,200 pounds of marijuana ... and a gun. Along with all the drugs were varying amounts of money totaling approximately $55,000. The total street value of the drugs is estimated to be $7.5 million. We're pretty much just marvelling that anyone has that much weed in one place, ever. Or that much anything, really. That's literally a ton of weed. Mindboggling, really.

And, we're not going to get too philosophical or get into the finer points of it all, but wouldn't this all be a moot point if this were legalized? Or at least they'd find ways of making ridiculous amounts of money without holding actual guns to people's heads, ey?

Image via Riude.