Heavily Armed Police Storm Home, Seize Okra Plants

Embarrassed officers eventually apologized and finally left the property. But they remove some of the very suspicious okra leaves with them for analysis, and probably to add to salads back at the station. Georgia state patrol told WSB-TV in Atlanta that “we’ve not been able to identify it as of yet. But it did have quite a number of characteristics that were similar to a cannabis plant.”

Seriously? Do none of these people eat greens or salad at all? Like cannabis, okra is green, but the similarity ends there. It doesn’t look at all like marijuana!

However, this is not the first time authorities have been gunning for okra. Armed okra raids and similar incursions are good reason for taxpayers to be skeptical about the intelligence helicopters checking out gardens via binoculars. They fly about the cities looking for drugs in suburban back yards. There is also the privacy rights and issues having heavily-armed police burst into your home with no grounds for suspicion beyond what somebody thought he saw from several hundred yards up in a helicopter. Of course, you might be a tea party member or an Evangelical Christian…that could be the difference.

Marijuana eradication programs, like the one that sent the helicopter up above the Georgia man’s house, are typically funded partly via the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Cannabis Eradication Program. Many of these funds come from the controversial asset forfeiture programs, which allow law enforcement officials to seize property from citizens never even charged – much less convicted – of a crime.

The Cannabis Eradication programs have historically inflated the size of their hauls by including non-psychoactive “ditchweed” in their totals of plants seized. In past years, ditchweed accounted for up to 98 percent of seized outdoor plant totals. According to the ONDCP, ditchweed still makes up an unspecified percent of outdoor plants seized.

Source: Washington Post

It is also unclear how many of the seized plants are actually okra. Try some salt on it to know for sure.