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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2017
Busts highlight pot smuggling from legal states
Hard to tell if
grown legally
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
Marijuana grown in Ore-
gon and the handful of other
states where pot is legal is
being smuggled to other parts
of America, authorities say.
It’s often hard to tell if the traf-
ficked weed was grown legally
or illegally, but some say the
fact that pot is leaving these
states at all puts the marijuana
industry at risk.
Here is a look at some
recent notable cases.
Oregon State Police
The Oregon State Police displays 113 pounds of high-quality marijuana found in the
trunk of a Minnesota man’s car after he was stopped for speeding in Bly in February.
Denver
Colorado
officials
announced on June 28 they
had cracked a huge smuggling
ring that, under the cover of the
state’s legal medical marijuana
industry, shipped pot to a half-
dozen other states.
A Denver grand jury
indicted 62 people and 12 busi-
nesses. It was the largest illegal
marijuana operation discov-
ered since Colorado legalized
recreational pot in 2012, Colo-
rado Attorney General Cynthia
Coffman said. Federal agents
also were involved in the bust.
The indictment says the
enterprise produced more than
100 pounds of illegal pot each
month for shipment to Kansas,
Texas, Nebraska, Ohio, Okla-
homa and other states. The ring
operated from 2012 until 2016,
earning an estimated $200,000
a month, Coffman said.
Nebraska Attorney General
Doug Peterson thanked Coff-
man for “exposing the influx of
Colorado marijuana entering
Nebraska,” the Lincoln Jour-
nal Star newspaper reported.
Nebraska and Oklahoma
earlier filed a lawsuit against
Colorado, saying legalized
marijuana in the neighbor-
ing state was spilling into
Nebraska and Oklahoma, com-
plicating their anti-drug efforts
and draining state resources.
The U.S. Supreme Court dis-
missed the lawsuit without
comment.
Two of the men named in
the Colorado indictment were
arrested during an earlier traf-
fic stop in Nebraska with 36
pounds of marijuana packed
into two suitcases in their car.
Bly
An Oregon State Police
trooper stopped a car that was
driving just over the speed
limit in a remote part of Ore-
gon, and right away noticed
there was only one key on the
key ring.
Trooper Austin Hopson’s
training and experience told
him that was a sign that the
driver of the car he stopped
on Feb. 12, 2016, was a mar-
ijuana smuggler. The road has
been known to be used by traf-
fickers seeking to avoid law
enforcement, authorities said.
Plus, the passenger seat
was full of items — including
luggage and a musical instru-
ment case — that would nor-
mally be in the trunk, and the
driver was nervous. Hopson
asked the man, a Minnesotan
who was a former cellist with
the St. Paul Chamber Orches-
tra, if he could search the car.
“At this point, for the
first time during the stop, the
defendant would not make eye
contact with Trooper Hopson.
Instead, the defendant stared
down at his paperwork as his
hands began to shake uncon-
trollably,” a deputy district
attorney said in a filing with
the Klamath County Circuit
Court.
The police searched the
car without the driver’s con-
sent. In the trunk, they found
over 100 pounds of marijuana
in vacuum-packed bags and a
backpack full of cash, the fil-
ing said.
The driver was later let
go and charges were dropped
after a judge ruled police
lacked probable cause to
search the car.
Llano, Texas
A Texas man was piloting
his plane after taking off from
Medford, one of the coun-
try’s richest marijuana-grow-
ing regions, when the aircraft
attracted authorities’ attention.
The U.S. Customs and
Border Protection’s Air and
Marine Operation Center, in
Southern California, began
tracking the single-engine
plane after observing it had a
suspicious flight pattern and
landed in Arizona to refuel,
according to the U.S. Attor-
ney’s Office for the western
district of Texas.
The pilot, Wayne Douglas
Brunet, of Austin, landed at
an unmanned airport in Bul-
verde, Texas, but when he saw
authorities on the ground wait-
ing for him, he took off again.
He then tried to land at the
Lago Vista, Texas, airport but
aborted the landing when he
saw law enforcement officers
again.
Brunet then landed in
Llano, Texas. He tried to run,
tossing a duffel bag and a
cellphone near the runway,
but was arrested. Authorities
seized 15 duffel bags filled
with vacuum-sealed packages
of 230 pounds of marijuana.
Brunet pleaded guilty on
June 28 to possession with
intent to distribute marijuana
and faces up to 20 years in fed-
eral prison. According to a plea
deal, he forfeits his 1969 Piper
PA-30 Comanche airplane,
$5,400 in cash and $3,000 in
prepaid cards.
Marijuana states try to curb smuggling, avert crackdown
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
PORTLAND — Well
before Oregon legalized mar-
ijuana, its verdant, wet for-
ests made it an ideal place for
growing the drug, which often
ended up being funneled out of
the state for big money. Now,
officials suspect pot grown
legally in Oregon and other
states is also being smug-
gled out, and the trafficking
is putting America’s multibil-
lion-dollar marijuana industry
at risk.
In response, pot-legal states
are trying to clamp down
on “diversion” even as U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions
presses for enforcement of fed-
eral laws against marijuana.
Tracking legal weed from
the fields and greenhouses
where it’s grown to the shops
where it’s sold under names
like Blueberry Kush and Cher-
nobyl is their so far main pro-
tective measure.
In Oregon, Gov. Kate
Brown recently signed into law
a requirement that state regula-
tors track from seed to store
all marijuana grown for sale in
Oregon’s legal market. So far,
only recreational marijuana
has been comprehensively
tracked. State House Speaker
Tina Kotek said lawmakers
wanted to ensure “we’re pro-
tecting the new industry that
we’re supporting here.”
“There was a real recog-
nition that things could be
changing in D.C.,” she said.
The Washington State
Liquor and Cannabis Board
says it’s replacing its current
tracking Nov. 1 with a “highly
secure, reliable, scalable and
flexible system.”
California voters approved
using a tracking system run by
Lakeland, Florida-based Fran-
well for its recreational pot
market. Sales become legal
Jan. 1.
Franwell also tracks mari-
juana, using bar-code and radio
frequency identification labels
on packaging and plants, in
Colorado, Oregon, Maryland,
Alaska and Michigan.
“The tracking system is
the most important tool a state
has,” said Adam Crabtree, who
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KATU
KOMO
KING
KOIN
KIRO
KGW
KRCW
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ca’s marijuana. But he’s confi-
dent tracking will help.
“In the first 24 months,
we’re going to have a good
idea who is in the regulated
market and who is in black
market,” McGuire said.
Oregon was the first state to
decriminalize personal posses-
sion, in 1973. It legalized med-
ical marijuana in 1998, and
recreational use in 2014.
Before that, Anthony Tay-
lor hid his large cannabis crop
from aerial surveillance under
a forest canopy east of Port-
land, and tended it when there
was barely enough light to see.
“In those days, marijuana
was REALLY illegal,” said
Taylor, now a licensed mari-
juana processor and lobbyist.
“If you got caught growing
the amounts we were growing,
you were going to go to prison
for a number of years.”
Taylor believes it’s easier
to grow illegally now because
authorities lack the resources
to sniff out every operation.
And growers who sell outside
the state can earn thousands of
dollars per pound, he said.
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THE DAILY
ASTORIAN
T UESDAY E VENING
runs Denver-based Nation-
wide Compliance Specialists
Inc., which helps tax collec-
tors track elusive, cash-heavy
industries like the marijuana
business.
But the systems aren’t fool-
proof. They rely on the users’
honesty, he said.
“We have seen numerous
examples of people ‘forget-
ting’ to tag plants,” Crabtree
said. Colorado’s tracking also
doesn’t apply to home-grown
plants and many noncommer-
cial marijuana caregivers.
In California, implement-
ing a “fully operational, legal
market” could take years, said
state Sen. Mike McGuire, who
represents the “Emerald Trian-
gle” region that’s estimated to
produce 60 percent of Ameri-
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