A bust near Hemet CA netted “$150MM” in marajuana plants.
The authorities always report street value when they sieze marijuana plants. I’ve been away from that kinda thing for a long time, but back in the day retail price (for Norcal pot) would be maybe 5X by the time it got to the end user. This, of course, varied a lot.
Anyone have any idea what the markup would be for a crop of this size? I’m sure the partners in this endeavor stood to gross nowhere near the stated value.
And, do the cops exaggerate the value of seizures in an attempt to inflate the value of their work? These are plants, not trimmed and bagged bud.
So, how much would all this pot sell for to a distributor once readied for wholesale?
Peace,
mangeorge
I’ve always figured they’re estimating value according to what you’d pay retail if you purchased it a gram at a time from a real weasel of a dealer on the street in front of the police department (minimal amounts and maximum risk pushes the price up). At the prices I’m familiar with ($200/oz), they’d have to have gotten around 23.5 tons of primo, manicured bud in baggies to make a valid claim that it was worth $150 million (feel free to doublecheck my math). No stems, no seeds, no shake. Of course, markets vary. And if this is the insanely great stuff that they speak of in legends and myth, it might be worth $150 million for only 12 tons or so.
But even the numbers I’m throwing around are retail, not wholesale. So you’re correct in thinking the grower was probably not going to reap that much revenue for his crop, but I don’t anything about wholesale level pricing.
What’s “MM”? Million million - $150,000,000,000? Or just million - $150,000,000. Or something else?
M = Thousand
MM = Million. (MxM)
Not everyone agrees.
I always read that as “megamillion” and it confuses me.
I thought that, in this usage, M = one million, and then they double the letter to form a plural. It’s an old US usage similar to “pp” for pages.
Huh. Learn something new every day. I’ve only seen G and K to mean thousand when talking money. I’ve always assumed “$1M” means one million dollars. Guess not.
Aw, I thought someone won the lottery when I read the thread title. It’s the opposite. 
So perhaps we’re all better off saying “$150 million.” These kinds of abbreviations are kind of inappropriate in an international forum, anyway, aren’t they?
Oh, yes. You better believe they do. They usually count the entire weight of the plant – the roots included – and don’t distinguish between the dried material and the fresh. Partly this is to inflate the supposed monetary worth of the seized crop; also, the more weight they can bust someone for, the more severe the criminal charges, hence penalties, will be – and they *want *those charges severe.
That’s what I suspected. You’ll be lucky to get $200-$300 out of one plant when it’s dried and bagged.
So unless they siezed a half a million plants, they’ re exagerrating.
And I think “billion” when I see “G”. 
As far as I’m aware, MM is an internationally recognized abbreviation for “million”. Now if you want to make the argument that it’s better to say “million” because many Americans are ignorant of what MM means, then I could get behind that. IMO, if it’s good enough for The Economist, it’s good enough for SDMB.
Oh, well if it’s just to show how smart you are, then that’s different. I was under the mistaken assumption that clarity and understanding were important.
Oh, crap.
:rolleyes: If you wanted to complain that you didn’t understand, you could have just politely suggested that people write so that Americans can understand it instead of asking whether it’s appropriate to use an international abbreviation on an international message board. Being unfamiliar with a term is not ignorant and is quite understandable. Claiming that everyone should write to suit your unfamiliarity, well…
When I quit smoking over 3 years ago, the going rate was $20/g or $60/eighth ounce. Using the second figure, I get:
150,000,000 / 60 per eighth = 2,500,000 eighths
2,500,000 eighths * 1 ounce / 8 eights * 1 pound / 16 ounces = 19,531 pounds
19,531 pounds * 1 ton / 2,000 pounds = 9.76 tons
Actually you can have the pot for free…and you get a boat too! You just have to come down to the station and pick it up…
I do know that in the US a plant is assumed to be a certain weight of product (I think it’s 1 lb per plant, but it likely varies by state in the US) and that is used in prosecution (usually to try and claim that a defendant was not growing for personal use)…so perhaps the stated amount is based on a such an assumption.
Explainer article on how they price confiscated drugs How do the police put a price tag on seized drugs? (for pot they pretty much guess) but this doesn’t even address the question of raw agricultural product vs. just the smokeable stuff, but there appears to be a per plant price on the DEA’s “price list.” http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=5387 ($5200/plant).
Federal law enforcement and the military, along with state and local law enforcement recently completed a major “garden bust” in the Sequoia National Forest in California. They netted more than 420,000 live plants with an estimated street value in excess of US$1 billion.
Really? Is this number reliable? That’s a lot of money.
Checks out, measures basement closet