if someone walks they either
a. snitch
b. have a lawyer who gets evidence dis missed due to illegal search/seizure or other poor police work to get a case dropped
c. live in Alaska. I have never had any problems but theres always people getting raided in Alaska one dude had 100 plus plants and did not go to jail..
Alaska's modern-day gold rush goes to pot
By
S.J. Komarnitsky
Anchorage Daily News
WASILLA, Alaska--The police knew they were close. They could smell it.
The resinous reek in the workshop could mean only one thing: marijuana. But where was the crop? There were no plants, no grow lights in sight.
But behind a panel in the back wall was a secret room. From there, it was a 10-foot drop by ladder to a concrete bunker. Inside a space the size of a small cabin, 400 green leafy plants sported enough bud, about 12 pounds, to keep dozens of tokers happily glazed for months. Estimated street value: $36,000 to $48,000.
Alaska's Matanuska and Susitna valleys are home to carrots, potatoes and giant vegetables, all displayed as the public face of northern agriculture. But the undisputed king of Alaska farming, the most profitable crop, is marijuana. A good batch sells, ounce for ounce, for as much as gold.
Over the past two decades the state has done its best to put this homegrown crop out of business. Police and drug agents have arrested growers by the hundreds, ripped up plants by the thousands and burned them in smoky pyres.
Nowhere in Alaska have pot growing and efforts to stop it been as concentrated as in the bedroom communities some 40 miles north of Anchorage.
But despite the nonstop multimillion-dollar effort that draws from state and local police, the National Guard and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, marijuana farming remains rampant here.
Last year, 211 people in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough were arrested on
suspicion of or charged with growing or selling marijuana. They were men and women, young and old, employed and unemployed. Some were first-timers. Some had been busted before.
Statewide, as many as 113 people are in jail on state marijuana offenses. Another 600 are on probation. A quarter of them are in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, where the cases make up nearly a third of the local probation office caseload. Because no agency tracks marijuana cases, those numbers are estimates based on the most common marijuana charge: misconduct involving a controlled substance in the fourth degree.
Some people question whether this expense of time and money is worth the trouble.
"It's absurd," said Ken Goldman, who was Palmer district attorney for 10 years. "We're penalizing people that are average citizens whose only crime for the most part is they enjoy smoking."
Law-enforcement officials defend the effort as necessary to keep marijuana use in check. But even they estimate at best they intercept 10 percent of the crop. New pot farms pop up to replace old ones, sometimes even in the same place.
Alaska and marijuana have had a long and curious relationship. It was illegal for years. Then in 1975, for all practical purposes, its use in small amounts became legal. In 1990, residents voted to make it illegal. Two years ago, voters made it legal again for people with certain medical conditions to use with a doctor's recommendation.