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Four Tons Of Marijuana Found Floating On The High Seas

It would take a lot of marijuana plants such as these to make four tons.
Justin Sullivan
/
Getty Images
It would take a lot of marijuana plants such as these to make four tons.

Who dumped the dope?

That's the question of the day along the coast of Southern California as authorities try to figure out how four tons of marijuana — more than 150 bales — got into the Pacific Ocean near Orange County's Dana Point Harbor. They were found this weekend about 15 miles out to sea.

According to the Orange County Register, Border Patrol spokesman Michael Jimenez says that in most other cases when bales of pot have been recovered from the ocean, traffickers have dropped them into the drink as they tried to escape arrest. But this time, there was no such chase and "the bales were floating with no boat in sight," Jimenez told the newspaper.

The bales were worth about $3 million. It seems unlikely, though, that anyone will come to claim the contraband.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
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