The DEA Is Willing To Pay You To Burn Thousands Of Pound Of Marijuana… But There’s A Catch
The United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) announced that they were looking for contractors in Houston, Texas, willing to burn up 1,000 pounds of cannabis an hour for 8 hours a day.
Among the requirements listed out by the DEA, they say that they need a contractor who can effectively incinerate dense bales or bricks of cannabis, some weighing between 40 to 60 pounds each. “The incinerator facility shall have a secured fence around it. The facility fencing should exceed a height to ensure prevention by the public from viewing the incineration process,” they say. The cannabis will be wrapped in different ways including cardboard, duct tape, aluminum foil, Saran Wrap, packing tape, scotch tape, and even wrapping paper.
“The integrity of the destruction process shall be such that the material to be destroyed cannot be redirected or retrieved once it is committed to destruction,” reads the DEA notice. The cannabis should be burned “to a point where there are no detectable levels, as measured by standard analytics methods, of byproduct from the destruction process. DEA shall inspect the incinerator to ensure no drug residue remains.”
Naturally, this resulted in them getting flooded with phone calls from concerned private citizens about the matter.
The announcement was made by the KHOU of Houston, and after the reaction they received, the DEA released a statement to the television station.
“Although we appreciate local citizens’ willingness to offer their help, this is a complicated, large-scale government contract we’re required by law to bid every few years, and there are usually only a handful of companies with the necessary facilities and resources to help us dispose of this material. While it makes an interesting headline, the truth is far more prosaic – our agents working across the Houston Division makes a huge number of great cases, and as a result, we seize a tremendous amount of illegal drugs. Arranging for the save and effective destruction of these drugs is just part of the job,” reads the statement.
The DEA also says that they already do have a candidate in mind: “This is anticipated to be a sole source award to Tucson Iron & Metal,” reads their notice. The company is the only one close enough to Corpus Christi, McAllen, Laredo, Brownsville, and Eagle Pass, where it is assumed that the seized cannabis is in storage.
What’s The Catch?
Well, interested applicants in the Houston area might think this is their chance to get away with smoking weed on the job.
Unfortunately, there’s a catch: the DEA will require you to work under the watch of a closed-circuit camera so that they can make sure that you are properly destroying all the evidence.
Additionally, at all sites of burning, a DEA personnel will be present. The agency “reserves the right to access the video feed as necessary to ensure the proper destruction of its drugs and safety of its representatives.”
DEA Confirms They Find No Fentanyl In Confiscated Cannabis
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the White House are trying to spread unfounded claims that traces of the deadly opioid fentanyl is present in cannabis.
Kellyanne Conway, the government’s spokesperson on the opioid crisis, warned during a news conference last week that fentanyl is present in drugs including cannabis. “People are unwittingly ingesting it,” she says. “It’s laced into heroin, marijuana, meth, cocaine, and it’s also just being distributed by itself.”
However, Jill Head, a senior chemist at the DEA said earlier this month that they haven’t found any fentanyl in seized cannabis.
“It’s crazy that this story is coming out from our leaders,” Dan Ciccarone, an epidemiologist at the University of California, disclosed to BuzzFeed News. “It shows that concerns about fentanyl have reached the level of moral panic. Fear outweighs rational evidence. There is scant evidence for cannabis laced with fentanyl.”
This false information on fentanyl-laced cannabis is partially due to some police reports showing that extremely sensitive test strips that are able to detect fentanyl at minute concentrations. However, for people who illegally sell or consume different kinds of drugs including fentanyl, it wouldn’t be surprising for some of these amounts to make it into the cannabis they’re handling.
And that’s another reason why you should stop buying from your dealer.
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