Authorities discover 30 tons of marijuana, border tunnel.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

30 tons?! thats like a building full

That's 960,000 ounces! or 27,215,542 grams. Assuming short ton.

Assuming the "average" joint being about 0.5 to 0.75 grams that makes this one haul equal to 36.2 to 54.4 million "average" joints.

With MJ running anywhere between $5.00 and $15.00 per gram (East Coast) depending on the source and the strength this one haul is equal to about

$136,000,000 to $408,000,000 Take the average and that is almost a third of a BILLION dollars! This one shipment.

Smuggling MJ is still big business.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Smuggling MJ is still big business.

And very profitable by any interpretation

[Buddahaid]

I wondered where that went. Been looking for days!

[krashkart]

Now the real question:

What is the street value in family-size boxes of Pop Tarts?

[Platapus]

Here is an almost interesting story.

There I was no Shi... uh this is a true story.

I was EOD at Hill AFB, UT. In 1982 we had the largest single air shipment of MJ to come into Utah. It was a four engine cargo aircraft C-54/DC-4. I think the total amount was about 7-10 tons.

It landed in the Utah desert and the DEA popped up and probably killed everyone. Now Utah has a problem. How does one dispose of a few tons of MJ?

Cant bury it, no oceans to dump it. Hmmm what to do.. what to do.

Why not burn it!

Who has the capability of burning tons of MJ in a secure manner? EOD. We had an unlimited limit burn area. So after the mountain of paperwork, which greatly exceeded the amount of MJ, was completed, DEA delivered the cargo to one of our burn pits.

Under the watchful eyes of DEA, we had to bust apart and spread the MJ according to our burn procedures. This took days to do. Those poor DEA guys had to camp out there 24/7 (sucks to be DEA).

Fortunately, I was on one of the teams busting and spreading so it was not too bad. After a while the smell gets you sick, but we were exposed to worse stuff doing burns.

The next team went out the following week for the actual burn. In order to make sure the burn was consistent, we had to have people in the burn pit with long handled rakes to make sure there were no dead zones.

These poor chumps were standing in the middle of burning MJ and Diesel. Now realize that as EOD not only did we have some of the normal clearances, we, at that time, also were under the PRP program as we handled nukes. This meant that your record had to be squeeky clean -- no past drug use at all!

So these chumps were exposed to high levels of MJ and spent the time (3 days for the burn) barfing.

To add insult to injury, because they were exposed to a known supply of MJ, they were used in an Air Force/DOD field experiment on how long MJ stays in the body. Since they knew these guys did not use MJ off duty, they were a pretty good test case for how long MJ stays.

As a "reward" for helping the DEA out with the burn, these guys were subjected to daily urine and blood tests for MONTHS. And to boot, they were decertified (without prejudice) from Nuclear Surety and they lost their PRP status. With the thanks from a grateful government.

When their system was "clean", they were re-certified. At least they could brag that they got decertified for MJ and they got their jobs back.

But daily blood tests for months gotta stynk.

I was so lucky that my team did not do the burn. Sooo lucky.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Platapus

That's 960,000 ounces! or 27,215,542 grams. Assuming short ton.

Assuming the "average" joint being about 0.5 to 0.75 grams that makes this one haul equal to 36.2 to 54.4 million "average" joints.

With MJ running anywhere between $5.00 and $15.00 per gram (East Coast) depending on the source and the strength this one haul is equal to about

$136,000,000 to $408,000,000 Take the average and that is almost a third of a BILLION dollars! This one shipment.

Smuggling MJ is still big business.

And think of the money the government could have made on the taxes, if it was legal, as opposed to the money they spend trying to stop it.

Originally Posted by Buddahaid

I wondered where that went. Been looking for days!

Misplaced...lemme see, how many baggies?

Originally Posted by krashkart

Now the real question:

What is the street value in family-size boxes of Pop Tarts?

Or Doritos? Man, them's some serious munchies!

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Platapus

That's 960,000 ounces! or 27,215,542 grams. Assuming short ton.

Assuming the "average" joint being about 0.5 to 0.75 grams that makes this one haul equal to 36.2 to 54.4 million "average" joints.

thanks for the calculations, when you break it down to numbers of joints it doesn't seem this much - one spliff for every californian
Seriously, I think this amound is a two-week supply, maximum.

Originally Posted by Platapus

With MJ running anywhere between $5.00 and $15.00 per gram (East Coast) depending on the source and the strength this one haul is equal to about

$136,000,000 to $408,000,000 Take the average and that is almost a third of a BILLION dollars! This one shipment.

Smuggling MJ is still big business.

Yes, but this is the same calculation the authorities and the media do: calculating the value by multiplying the price of 1 gram times the weight. As in most consumer goods, the wholesale value is much less. In fact the difference between the wholesale price and the sum which the end consumer of small portions has to pay, is way much bigger than in legal goods.

[Platapus]

Absolutely, and we have not addressed cutting the MJ to increase profits either. These figures are just generalities used to help visualization.