250 Marijuana Plants Go Up In Smoke

Some people hoping to cash in on Tennessee's biggest money-making crop will be disappointed to find out some of their operation has been destroyed.

The Sequatchie County Sheriff's Office found several large patches of marijuana on top of Cagle Mountain. Sheriff Ronnie Hitchcock said people who thought they'd make money feeding the huge appetite for marijuana will get a rude awakening.

Pictures of the seizure show it wasn't the way some growers wanted their weed to blaze up. They show  Sheriff Hitchcock and his deputies destroying about 250 marijuana plants they confiscated and brought back to the Justice Center parking lot.

"I'm sure someone's not happy this morning, if they go looking for it," Sheriff Hitchcock said with a grin.

The pot plants were spotted by accident during a surveillance operation in Warren County.

"A helicopter had flown in from a neighboring county and they crossed in our county about four or five miles and they called and said they spotted some marijuana patches," Sheriff Hitchcock explained.

Hitchcock said once he got the GPS coordinates he and his deputies went down a dirt road then hiked several miles into thick underbrush to find five pot patches. Most plants were two to five feet tall and seemed healthy and strong from generous summer rains.

The more mature plants were already producing the juicy buds growers and smokers want. Those flowering buds contain the highest concentration of the sticky and intoxicating substance called THC.

"Probably the best harvesting time would be early September to mid September, they're trying to get it before the end of September because on the mountains you get frost in the last part of September," Sheriff Hitchcock said.

Marijuana grows just about anywhere and everywhere in the south, from the high spots like the seizure on Cagle Mountain to remote woodlands and embedded in farm crops like corn.

No one has been charged in this siezure since no one knows who went deep into the woods to plant the marijuana. Deputies doused the plants with diesel fuel and burned them so they'll never burn in the pipes of users.

They are valued at up to $90,000, which seems like a lot. But there's always more hidden from the eyes of lawmen.

"I'm sure there's marijuana there we haven't found, but without a helicopter to fly and spot it we probably would have never found it because it's out in nowhere," Sheriff Hitchcock added.

According to several sources on the web, from marijuana advocates to government sites, marijuana is the number-one cash crop in the United States. Annual revenues are estimated at $35.8-billion a year, much more than next biggest cash crop, corn, which produces about $23.3-billion a year.

Tennessee is the second largest producing state, with an estimated $4.8-billion worth of marijuana grown each year. California ranks first at $13.8-billion annually.