In 2005, the Office of National Drug Control Policy labeled seven states — California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia — as the primary states for marijuana cultivation. They’re known as the “M7 states.” According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, which uses data from the TBI, Tennessee eradicated more than a half million indoor and outdoor marijuana plants in 2008. More than 350,000 of those came from one piece of terrain in Cocke County.
The intelligence center, citing 2008 data from the DEA, states “eradication of indoor and outdoor plants in Tennessee (539,370 plants) accounted for 7 percent of all plants eradicated in the United States (8,013,308).” That year only California (5,322,053 plants) and Washington (580,415) ranked higher.
The DEA Domestic Eradication/Suppression Program supplies $780,000 a year to Tennessee to pay for surveillance equipment and other operating expenses. The state pays for other operating expenses that are already part of their law enforcement budget.
In 2008, about 82 percent — or 442,351 plants — of Tennessee’s marijuana found and destroyed outdoors came from Cocke, Cumberland, Wayne, Lawrence and Hickman counties, according to TBI data provided to the federal government.
The same data showed that only about 100 indoor plants were rooted out in 2008.
Indoor eradication efforts come from law enforcement intelligence gathering and are much less frequent.
Law enforcement agents state the outdoor-grown plants net between $600 to $800 per pound.
The article further notes an effort to introduce the Safe Access to Medical Cannabis Act was introduced into the Tennessee House of Representatives during its last session but was withdrawn after a lack of support in the Senate. Advocates assume it will take them several years to pass the bill.
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