There's an interesting little story on the Long Beach Press Telegram website today about what has to be the biggest marijuana bust on Catalina Island in recent memory.
“Deputies arrested one man and seized 1,500 pounds of marijuana on a Catalina Island beach, authorities said today,” the story says. “The man was spotted Tuesday on a small beach at Little Harbor. He was standing near bales wrapped in plastic, deputies said.”
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The story doesn't explain what the hell this guy was thinking, standing
on the beach in broad daylight next to a boatload of weed. But
apparently quick thinking witness alerted the proper authorities and next
thing you know, a “sheriff's special weapons team was flown to the
beach, where they arrested the man and confiscated 31 bales of
marijuana.”
31 bales? Last time we checked, Little Harbor was a scenic beach on the ocean side of Catalina, a romantic getaway for campers and the occasional yacht-bound yuppie. There are no legal marijuana dispensaries there, for example, and nothing but sagebrush and buffalo for miles around, so it's unclear what the perp was planning to do with all that pot. Whatever it was, he obviously didn't do it quickly enough.
Supposedly, the weed has a street value of $750,000.
The PT says that the name of the genius at the center of this brilliant crime “was not immediately released.”
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).