Today's award goes to the police in Holland. The BBC reports:
A triumph for Dutch police quickly turned out to be an embarrassing mistake after they destroyed what they thought was a field of cannabis plants.
Police on Wednesday announced they had discovered a plantation of some 47,000 illicit cannabis plants with a street value of 4.4m euros (US $6.3m).
They had destroyed much of the crop when they were told the plants belonged to a respected school of agriculture.
They were a type of hemp, being grown as a fibre for use in textiles.
Hemp is related to cannabis, but contains only trace amounts of THC, the psychoactive substance found in marijuana.
They were being grown in the field near Lelystad, Flevoland province under licence by researchers from Wageningen University who were studying the hemp variety as a potential sustainable source of textiles.
"The street value from a drug point of view is less than zero," the university's Simon Vink told AP news agency.
There's more at the link.
Yep. Agricultural hemp is vastly different stuff from the cannabis that smokers seek! One wonders why the police didn't ask themselves why any self-respecting cannabis grower would plant his pot out in broad daylight, where anyone could see it - and in fenced, irrigated fields, at that!
(On the other hand, remembering university students I have known, it might not be beyond the bounds of possibility that a few cannabis plants with a rather higher concentration of THC had been slipped into the industrial hemp plants, to use the latter as camouflage . . . )
Peter
4 comments:
And that in a country where you can smoke weed legally in certain establishments("Coffee shops")
I can just see the conversation. "You destroyed a licensed, permitted industrial-grade HEMP field? What, are you high? How stoned did you have to be to think THAT was a good idea?"
My understanding is that cultivation techniques (favoring buds or fiber-rich stalks) are the main difference between "hemp" and "cannabis."
Chas,
They're very close, but I wouldn't quite say that's true. The difference between MTF and hemp is like the difference between a wild rose patch full of briars and a few pink five-petal flowers and the carefully cultivated rose bushes in specifically bred stripes of vivid oranges and yellows in a tea garden. Or, shall we say, wild grapes vs. Pinot Noir vines - both are climbing vines, but one has been very specifically bred for taste, sugar content, abundance of fruit, and predictability to the point that it is far weaker and needs more pampering than its wild cousin.
Ah, the things I learn from friends in a state where my peers grew up under legalized marijuana, and it's now legal again...
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