Federal agents descended on Menominee County Friday morning to destroy an industrial hemp crop, the chairman of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin says.
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it seized about 30,000 marijuana plants.
Jorge Rodas was the first reporter on the scene on County Road M west of Suring Friday morning. He saw a number of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. He also saw agents using front-end loaders to load plants into county highway department trucks. Agents were working at several locations for most of the morning.
Menominee County deputies were standing guard, dressed in tactical gear with assault rifles.
Undercover officers were at the scene, in addition to officials from Menominee and Oconto counties. The scene along County M borders Oconto County and the Menominee Indian reservation.
According to the DEA, it had a search warrant from a federal judge in Green Bay to search a home, outbuilding, and about 20 acres of tribal land in Menominee County.
The DEA says an investigation found people other than Menominee Tribe Members were planting and tending to marijuana plants on the tribal land.
No arrests were made.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Tribal Chairman Gary Besaw accused the federal agencies of "improperly and unnecessarily" destroying the tribe's hemp crop.
Marijuana and hemp both derive from the cannabis plant. Marijuana has higher levels of THC, which gives marijuana its psychological and physiological effects. Hemp is lower in THC and is cultivated for a range of uses from health products and plastics to paper and clothing.
Besaw said the tribe was growing "low THC, non-psychotropic" hemp under an agreement with the College of the Menominee Nation, to grow, cultivate and study industrial hemp. He said it was in accordance with the 2014 Farm Bill, which allows growing industrial hemp in some circumstances.
He said the Bureau of Indian Affairs took samples of the crop for testing earlier this week.
The tribe's statement read:
There has been disagreement between the Tribe and Acting U.S. Attorney Greg Haanstad as to whether the Tribe's actions in cultivating its industrial hemp crop was in compliance with the 2014 Farm Bill. The Tribe has worked tirelessly to find a solution to this disagreement, including offering to destroy itself certain strains of the industrial hemp crop that both sides had identified as problematic and offering to file a Declaratory Judgment Action in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to allow a federal judge to decide the disputed issues. These offers by the Tribe were rejected in favor of the aggressive unilateral action we saw today.
The tribe says it plans to take the matter to court.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.
http://ift.tt/1PNQb2O Federal Agents Invade Tribal Lands to Destroy Legal Industrial Hemp Crop via top scoring links : news http://ift.tt/1W9SFxe
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment