Last year, vice officers, with help from the state and the use of military helicopters, destroyed more than 26,000 marijuana plants and seedlings. Lt. Marty Curnan, who currently heads up vice for the county police, said it used to be
Last year, vice officers, with help from the state and the use of military helicopters, destroyed more than 26,000 marijuana plants and seedlings.
Lt. Marty Curnan, who currently heads up vice for the county police, said it used to be much worse.
“I’ve been doing this (marijuana eradication) since it started in 1978. It’s not like it was 20 years ago before the forfeiture laws (persons convicted of marijuana cultivation or possession of the drug in large quantities can have their house, car and other personal property seized),” Curnan said.
Curnan told the Kaua’i County Council last Thursday that 20 years ago he could find 50,000 plants in three or four days.
“It was everywhere,” Curnan said.
Nowadays, according to Curnan, growers are moving into abandoned plantation lands that are returning to pasture.
“Marijuana (on Kaua’i) is being grown on public lands mostly,” Curnan. It’s not grown much in backyards anymore,” Curnan noted.
He said that police feel marijuana use is important to curtail because it leads to harder drug use.
“Marijuana is a gateway drug. Something to start off on. I’m not saying everyone who smokes marijuana uses hard drugs. But everyone who does hard drugs does marijuana too,” Curnan said.
The laws prohibiting marijuana cultivation are such that more than a person’s health is at risk.
Anyone caught with 25 plants or seedlings, or more, faces a maximum 10 years in prison, a maximum fine of $10,000, and the aforementioned foreclosure of personal property.
If convicted, the grower doesn’t get back the property or the time lost in prison.
Possession of less than 25 plants is a misdemeanor with correspondingly lower penalties.
Curnan was in front of council Thursday morning, seeking approval to accept and spend a $33,000 Byrne Memorial grant through the State Attorney general’s office to help investigate more marijuana offenses.
Curnan also sought council approval to accept and spend a $172,000 DEA grant for marijuana eradication.
The council approved accepting the monies which will be used in various, as yet unspecified operations.
Curnan said that KPD has destroyed an average of 31,000 plants and seedlings per annum the past decade.
In 2001, when Kaua’i confiscated and destroyed 26,000 plants and seedlings, Oahu authorities were destroying nearly 33,000 plants and seedlings.
Maui destroyed more than 82,000 plants. Big Island authorities destroyed more than 383,000 plants and seedlings.
When asked by council what his wish list for the next few years contained, Curnan once again sought more manpower.
“I’ve seen over my 25 years that there never is an ample amount of manpower to do the job I think we could do. We just don’t have the bodies,” Curnan said.
Vice currently has 10 full-time officers and five investigators.
“There is a War on Drugs and we are trying to do whatever we can on Kaua’i. We are not winning this war. Drugs are a problem in the community. Ninety-five percent of the burglaries and thefts on this island are connected to drugs,” Curnan said.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net
