By Ramone Tarnaski

Clackamas County is in Oregon, and to be honest, it's about as stupid as they come. Agriculture and timber production are the main activities of the region, but it seems that within the county there is a significant amount of legal cannabis cultivation.

Last week, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office reported that officers arrested four young boys with large bags in a parking lot in the city of Portland, Oregon, on their way home from school. The sheriff's press release said that green foliage protruded from the opening of at least one of the bags.

Greed is a disaster for many, and here it certainly seems to be the case: one of the subjects carried a large bushel of plants in his arm next to his bag. A man was walking in the parking lot of a local grocery store and was carrying the same bag like the one shown above. In the test subjects, they touched mud on their feet and ankles, and the green leaves pricked their pockets, the press release said.

What distinguishes hemp from marijuana is the content of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the intoxicating cannabinoid. In total, the participants had more than 1,000 grams of hemp, which turned out to be twice as much THC as the thieves had assumed.

Hemp is so low that it has no recreational value according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is illegal in the US.

The four now face charges of theft and theft, and their hopes of parole have gone up in smoke. There are many hemp farmers who tolerate burglaries and thefts due to the low price of hemp and the high demand in the USA.

US gun laws allow farmers to arm themselves with any type of high-powered firearm, and that applies to farmers as well as thieves. Theft is dangerous, especially when there are firearms involved, so you have to be constantly vigilant and do what you can when you know thieves are going to do the same.

It is nice to see the participants of the hemp industry in Vermont supporting each other, but a more telling case is a grower who felled and removed an entire crop of 50 hemp plants, stealing about 500 pounds of biomass. The owner of the harvest received several offers of help, including from the owners of VT Terps, who donated 50 of their plants.