Four Arrested in Colorado for Sabotaging GMO Cannabis Crops

from Earth First! Newswire

BASALT, CO—Four activists were apprehended in their Denver homes last night and charged with uprooting crops of genetically engineered cannabis during two late-night actions.

The crop destruction took place over the course of two separate nights in early January, when individuals pulled up 6,500 genetically engineered marijuana plants on a pair of privately-owned plots of land leased and managed by Syngenta.

The first act of what the FBI considers “economic sabotage and a violation of federal law involving damage to commercial agricultural enterprises” took place during the night of January 4, when about 1,000 weed plants on one property were uprooted. Three nights later, the destruction continued on another property, where another 5,500 pot plants were destroyed.

Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture Don Brown issued a statement about the acts of sabotage. “To my knowledge, this is the first time someone has deliberately taken the cowardly step of uprooting high value plants growing in our state. Regardless of how one feels about marijuana—bioengineered or not—there is no justification for committing these crimes and it is not the kind of behavior we expect to see in Colorado agriculture,” Brown said.

The United States has recently has seen a widespread cultural and legal shift in favor of medical marijuana, and the states of Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Alaska are the first to have legalized the plant for recreational use. This is a huge win for those who previously didn’t have access to the medicine they needed, and will also keep future pot smokers out of prison. However, many stoners’ have feared that the plant’s shove into the spotlight will result in increased scale of production, widespread use of industrial techniques, and genetic tampering—a fear that’s been actualized with Syngenta’s first plots of test crops. Fortunately, this recent case of GMO cannabis sabotage demonstrates that activists concerned about the integrity of the natural world, including the drugs we grow, are willing to risk their freedom to take action.

According to authorities, the four activists didn’t seem to have a special knowledge or tools that allowed them to carry out the act, but were still able to cause massive damage to the test plots. “It looked like people entered the field on foot and destroyed the plants by hand,” said Paul Minehart, head of corporate communications in North America for Syngenta, a global agriculture corporation based in Switzerland that is engineering the cannabis plants to have increased cold tolerance, enabling commercial weed farming to take place in a wider range of climates.

“Our Skywalker OG could maintain dense buds with dank crystals at temperatures far below what non-GMO crops can handle,” added Guy Fontaine, manager of Syngenta’s Colorado plots. “To say this is a bummer would be an understatement.”

Estimates for the damage were not specified, but the financial losses are significant, according to FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele. Though not yet being sold commercially or approved for recreational or medical consumption, the success of these test plots is a vital step in increasing profits from the rapidly-expanding cannabis industry, as well as creating a genetically engineered “super high.”

This is not the first act of sabotage against GMO crops in the US. More than a decade ago, environmental saboteurs vandalized experimental crops across the country in a revolt against high-tech agriculture. Foes of genetic engineering also struck in 2000, when members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) set fire to agriculture offices at Michigan State University. ELF’s position was that genetic engineering was “one of the many threats to the natural world as we know it.”

Though we are not yet aware of the sentences the weed-pulling activists face, they will need our support as they look at the possibilities of jail time and restitution payments. Just as importantly, the growing underground movement against genetically engineered pot needs public support and a public face. April 20th—also known as Four-Twenty, Stoner Christmas, and Danksgiving—is coming up fast. In weed hot-spots like Boulder, Colorado, and Santa Cruz, California, smokers traditionally gather in public places to smoke in protest of laws that make the plant illegal.

Now that these once-a-year activists have realized their dreams of legalization in many parts of the country, can we expect to see them out in the streets again this year, fighting against GE-Mary Jane and for the integrity of the plant they love? Or will they prove themselves to be stay-at-home stoners, waking and baking worry-free while the corporations slowly strangle the wild out of their plant ally?

Where will you be on 4/20?

April fools