The communities in question are between about 15 and 25 miles from me. Considering the proximity of those communities to my house, I'm not horribly unhappy about the police action - especially since the largest portion of the money the growers hoped to make would likely have come from selling the illegal weed in my own community.
McDowell County is far from being an isolate case: rural economies throughout Appalachia and the Southeast grow enough marijuana that it is thought to be Virginia's single largest cash crop - surpasing tobacco in the state. Police have been helped this year by the drought in their efforts to locate marijuana: while everything else turns brown, canabis usually retains a nice blue-green tint that makes it easy to see from the air.
There's a well known song which tries to place the growing of marijuana in the historical context of moonshine: we all have to make a living somehow and there just isn't much to do in rural Appalachia, so we grow weeds to keep from starving and sell them to flatlanders....
I don't think I buy that that for reasons I will probably deal with in a seperate article on the history of moonshine. Steve Earle (a Texan who, to my knowledge, has never lived in Appalachia) made Copperhead Road a classic image of East Tennessee life.
Marijuana resembles moonshine mostly just by being illegal.
The problem of marijuana farming in the mountains highlights two aspects of Appalachian culture: economic distress and contempt for central government authority.
Until someone finds a way to bring economic relief to central Appalachia, marijuana will remain a problem. And whatever you think of medical uses for the plant, or of US drug laws, or whatever, Appalachia as a drug catrel isn't an image that appeals to me...
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