Mutant Mexican Marijuana
Mexican troops raiding against drug cartels operating in the Western State of Michoacan have discovered a new, mutant strain of marijuana is being grown. This stuff can't be killed with herbicides, grows very quickly, produces enormous yields and can be planted at an time of year. Call it super marijuana. And it has been genetically engineered.
Soldiers fanned out across some of the new fields Tuesday, pulling up plants by the root and burning them, as helicopter gunships clattered overhead to give them cover from a raging drug war in the western state of Michoacan. The plants' roots survive if they are doused with herbicide, said army Gen. Manuel Garcia.
"These plants have been genetically improved," he told a handful of journalists allowed to accompany soldiers on a daylong raid of some 70 marijuana fields. "Before we could cut the plant and destroy it, but this plant will come back to life unless it's taken out by the roots."
The new plants, known as "Colombians," mature in about two months and can be planted at any time of year, meaning authorities will no longer be able to time raids to coincide with twice-yearly harvests.
The hybrid first appeared in Mexico two years ago but has become the plant of choice for drug traffickers Michoacan, a remote mountainous region that lends to itself to drug production.
Yields are so high that traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest in 10 to 12 acres. That makes for smaller, harder-to-detect fields, though some discovered Tuesday had sophisticated irrigation systems with sprinklers, pumps and thousands of yards of tubing.
Although this sounds very aggressive against the drug cartels, the article reminds us that Vicente Fox also acted very aggressively early in his presidency. That kind of petered out with the passage of time. The existence of these plants reminded me of The Day of the Triffids, though. If this stuff starts walking, we got problems.
In the story, the narrator speculates on the plants' origins. He dismisses claims that they evolved naturally, or arrived from space, or were sent as punishment from a deity. Instead, it is suggested that they were bioengineered when he was a child, possibly by real-life biologist Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union. The story does not explain with what information the narrator formed these suspicions.
World news | Gaius Wednesday, 20 December , 2006
By Granddaddy Long Legs, Wednesday, 20 December , 2006 @ 2:39 pm
Fiberweed? Cheech and Chong predicted this.
By Robert, Thursday, 21 December , 2006 @ 11:50 am
Are people really still afraid of marijuana?
If so, they need to grow up (fast).