{"id":34258,"date":"2019-04-03T17:00:13","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T01:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/04\/03\/the-dea-has-found-someone-to-burn-1000-pounds-of-cannabis-per-hour\/"},"modified":"2019-04-04T12:49:52","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T20:49:52","slug":"the-dea-has-found-someone-to-burn-1000-pounds-of-cannabis-per-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/04\/03\/the-dea-has-found-someone-to-burn-1000-pounds-of-cannabis-per-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"The DEA Has Found Someone to Burn 1,000 Pounds of Cannabis per Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

While the announcement that the Drug Enforcement Administration was looking for someone to burn the massive amounts of marijuana they need to destroy in Texas\u00a0is still making laps<\/a>\u00a0on the web, not much has been noted about the fact the DEA has now awarded the contract to a Tuscon, Arizona company.<\/p>\n

The awarding of the contract was a scoop from\u00a0KJZZ<\/a>, Phoenix\u2019s NPR affiliate. They reported that the Houston Division of the DEA had selected\u00a0Tucson Iron & Metal<\/a>\u00a0as the only viable vendor in the area where they need to send the weed.<\/p>\n

At the very least, the Arizona company will be\u00a0destroying four tons of marijuana a day<\/a>. But that was just the baseline for entry into the running, so who knows what the facility is entirely capable of. When we reached out, Tucson Iron & Metal quickly rejected our queries into how they got the gig and said they had no comment.<\/p>\n

The DEA, however, did respond to our inquiries about how the agency made the decision to go with Tucson Iron & Metal as the vendor to burn thousands of pounds of cannabis.<\/p>\n

From the Lion\u2019s Mouth<\/h4>\n

DEA Special Agent Sammy Parks told Cannabis Now that the office wasn\u2019t able to describe the process, mainly because the awarding part is handled by a separate entity. \u201cThere is a process for how contracts are awarded government-wide, it\u2019s for everything we do. It doesn\u2019t just stand alone for a vendor looking to dispose of our evidence,\u201d Parks said.<\/p>\n

But the DEA will be the one executing the operation. According to the prior notice, agents and armed contractors will be onsite to supervise the burns that will go for a minimum of eight hours at a time.<\/p>\n

We asked Parks how large the backlog of marijuana the division needs to destroy is.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not structured to store thousands and thousands of pounds of drugs. It builds up and it builds up, then we eventually have to dispose of it, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt varies,\u201d he replied. \u201cThis is bulk drugs, significant seizures.\u201d After speaking on the actual size of the area covered by the Houston field office, Parks noted, \u201cThere is no set standard to how much drugs we seize per quarter. There is no mechanism in place for that. It varies every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parks said the DEA works to destroy the cannabis evidence as soon as the cases are adjudicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not structured to store thousands and thousands of pounds of drugs. It builds up and it builds up, then we eventually have to dispose of it, right? Which may sound odd, but it\u2019s a part of our job,\u201d Parks said.<\/p>\n

We asked if the Houston Division of the DEA saw more confiscations than other places further west along the border. Parks said he couldn\u2019t speak to those exact kinds of comparisons, but he said they certainly have some of the hot spots for marijuana trafficking on the border where a lot if the seizures are happening on almost a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Parks mentioned the ongoing media blitz around the initial announcement they were looking for a vendor. \u201cIf you just query \u2018DEA burning marijuana,\u2019 there are so many results. We got an influx of calls. There was a lot.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the DEA\u2019s\u00a02018 National Drug Threat Assessment<\/a>, despite the tons of weed being taken off the street by the Houston field division, the availability of marijuana remains high locally. The report also noted the scale of the amount of marijuana flowing into Texas. In 2016, the seizures in Laredo were up 22 percent, totaling over 68,000 kilos. Right next door in the Rio Grande Valley district, where Houston is located, they took in over 140,000 kilos.<\/p>\n

If the DEA wanted to destroy all that marijuana in one go, given the requirements set forth in the initial announcement, they would have to run the furnace for roughly 458 hours straight, or 19 days.<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0we spoke to the DEA about burning cannabis. What would\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0ask them about?<\/p>\n

The post The DEA Has Found Someone to Burn 1,000 Pounds of Cannabis per Hour<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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\nRead More: The DEA Has Found Someone to Burn 1,000 Pounds of Cannabis per Hour<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the announcement that the Drug Enforcement Administration was looking for someone to burn the massive amounts of marijuana they need to destroy in Texas\u00a0is still making laps\u00a0on the web, not much has been noted about the fact the DEA has now awarded the contract to a Tuscon, Arizona company.Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[200,50,848,90,2176,9598,726],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34259,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34258\/revisions\/34259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}