I-80 a gauntlet for pot smugglers

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

By Matthew Irwin

Wyoming Highway Patrol doesn’t provide special training or increase troopers on Interstate-80 during harvest season, but marijuana-related arrests on the cross-country corridor always go up from October to January, according to a WHP spokesman.

“Seizures normally go up in the month of October until about now,” Sgt. Stephen Townsend said. “It’s been later this year, may have been due to the weather.”
Troopers may have been too busy with car accidents, he said, or growers may have decided to wait for the roads to clear.

An early bust on I-80 this season yielded 40 pounds in the back of a U-Haul in November. More recently, on Jan. 29, 20 pounds were found in a four-door sedan and three pounds in a Penske rental moving truck. Troopers made at least four other busts on I-80 in January alone.

Two major interstate highways, I-80 and I-90, run through Wyoming. A third east-west corridor, I-70, runs through Colorado. Of the three, however, I-80 is the straightest shot from the West Coast, where Townsend said the marijuana is either smuggled from Mexico or Canada, or grown right there in the state.

WHP officials are in contact with thier counterparts in Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Montana, who all report an uptick in busts during the fall, Townsend said, but it’s unclear whether the late busts on I-80 this season are part of a larger trend.
Townsend said that smugglers do not use any particular vehicle, and in fact have been caught in just about everything from sports cars to 18-wheelers, in which they hide the pot among other cargo.

The vehicles were pulled over for traffic violations, and not because troopers were tipped off or otherwise looking for them, Townsend said. The November bust followed a stop for swerving outside Cheyenne. On Christmas Day, a man ignored the closed highway between Cheyenne and Laramie. Townsend was unable by deadline to provide causes for the Jan. 29 stops. They took place outside of Elk Mountain and Rawlins.  JHW 

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I-80 a gauntlet for pot smugglers | Planet JH News Article: General News

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