Ozarks lawmen are fighting the war on drugs on the ground and from the sky.
It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack; deputies went looking for pot in cornfields Thursday.
kspr's joanna small was along for the ride.. Joanna what did they find?
Total, they found about 40 plants in two locations.
That could equate to 40 pounds of marijuana.
But they aren't always that lucky.
Sometime it's a hit or miss attempt to stop drugs at the source.
"I-44 runs right through Lawrence County; probably thousands of pounds of marijuana a month travel up and down that highway.”
Lieutenant Brad DeLay's goal is to reduce that amount- at the root.
He is part of the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department Cannabis Eradication Team.
“Before we go out we do usually receive tips, either from private citizens or informants, sometimes officers get tips based on contacts,” DeLay explains.
The Missouri Highway Patrol volunteers its helicopter to follow up on those tips from above.
If the pilot spots a plot of plants, he radios down to the deputies and they make contact with the cannabis candidates.
The first stop of the day proved fruitful- the officers unearthed 12 plants from in between haystacks.
Most of the plants are wild and it's tough to tell if they're cultivated.
One way, though, is if they're in a cornfield.
A lot of people will strategically place plants between stalks.
These 8-foot specimens were next to a cornfield, but there were other signs they'd been tended to, such as fertilizer and mulch in the soil around them.
Still, the DEA says 90% of the plants found through this method across the nation are naturally occurring.
And DeLay says for that reason, they can rarely ever prosecute the property owner.
“We do get fortunate every once in a while to put a name and ownership to the plants,” DeLay recalls.
But not Thursday.
In total, 40 plants were removed and will be destroyed at the end of the day.
In addition, explains officer Geoff Evans, "it seems fun, playing around, digging in the weeds”- no pun intended.
Lawrence County's largest find ever was 9,000 plants.
They extracted them from none other than a cornfield, and in that case, they were actually able to prosecute the landowner.