Is Blacksburg becoming "Bongburg"?

It appears that Blacksburg is becoming the “hippy lettuce” capital of Virginia. Today the Roanoke Times reported that agents from the New River Regional Drug Task Force once again seized marijuana plants – and get this – a check for $1,000,000 in a Blacksburg apartment. Wow! I didn’t realize that the drug dealers these days were scratching out checks? Are debit cards next?

Just a few weeks ago agents from the task force seized 331 “trees’ from two different Blacksburg apartments. According to a spokesman for the NRRDTF this find was likely largest of its kind in Blacksburg. One agent from the task force stated, "That is just pretty much the drug of choice in a college atmosphere, alcohol then marijuana." I guess things haven’t changed that much since the late 1980s…

One would think that the demand for high quality “tree” would have decreased in Blacksburg since the dismissal of Marcus Vick from Virginia Tech’s football team (yes, I’m a VT fan, but I couldn’t resist), but apparently this isn’t the case. But seriously, possible the reason why there has been a recent surge in marijuana related bust in Blacksburg is due to increased enforcement activities? (i.e., New River Regional Drug Task Force).

When you consider the insane profits that can be derived from “grow operations” – since high quality marijuana has essentially the same value as gold per gram – it’s easy to see why certain individuals are willing to risk it all for the allure of easy cash. Unfortunately, a whole host of other activities (illegal guns, robbery, organized crime, violence, etc) can be a by-product of this industry too. Regardless, I’d be willing to bet that underground operations – similar to the recent busts in Blacksburg - exist in close proximity to almost all of the Commonwealth’s university communities.

Just maybe the General Assemble would better serve the citizens of the Commonwealth by focusing their energy on evicting a real danger – commercial drug operations - from close proximity to our Universities rather than an occasional – and probably rare - illegal immigrant that might matriculate. Then again, without access to high quality hippy lettuce, there might not be any students enrolled in Virginia’s public universities?!