Orange County Harbor Patrol spent Sunday recovering huge quantities of marijuana from the water off the Californian coast, as impressed gawkers asked, “Anyone lose their stash?”
Based on the quantity, it looks like a lot of people did.
The Huffington Post reports 180 bales of marijuana wrapped in garbage bags, containing more than 8,000 pounds of drugs at a street value over $4 million, were discovered floating about 15 miles from Dana Point Sunday around noon. It took federal, state and law enforcement authorities working together into the evening to retrieve all of the bundles. It was then turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol, according to an official statement from the agency.
The Coastguard, ICE, local harbor patrols, and Border Patrol have seen a recent increase in ocean drug smuggling. The U.S. Border Patrol reports that combined figures from these and other maritime agencies show a leap from 45 smuggling events in 2008 to 183 in 2011, and 203 apprehensions in ’08 compared with a staggering 631 in 2011. Their report does not seem to assess whether there has been an uptick in crime or improvements in law enforcement efforts.
However we do know someone somewhere had a lot of explaining to do Monday morning about their lost shipment of marijuana.
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