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Local pride took another hit today. Fresh off that embarrassing #4 party school ranking from Playboy, a Web site run by a white British blonde reports Miami is not one of the country’s top 40 pot-smoking cities.
Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast compiled a list of America’s most stoned cities in honor of the high holy day, April 20. Tallahassee, Gainesville, and Jacksonville are the only three Florida cities that made the cut. Tally even landed at number 2 because George Clinton lives there.
City rankings are as ubiquitous these days as volcanic ash, but after Playboy‘s slap last week, we’re beginning to get rankled.
Well, if there’s one thing we know here at New Times, it’s…public records. We just checked into the state of Florida’s Domestic Marijuana Eradication program to compare marijuana seizures per county. In 2009, a whopping 20,308 cannabis plants were seized from 342 Miami-Dade grow-houses.
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Some 370 growers were arrested just in our backyard last year. Meanwhile, in Leon
County, where Tallahassee is located, law enforcement seized a paltry
647 plants from 14 sites. We say: pathetic! In Alachua, the seizures
were no less anemic: 680 plants seized from 17 growhouses. In toto, 36
stoners were arrested in Alachua and Leon. Maybe they were too busy
telling stories of the world’s biggest bong to grow any weed themselves?
To compile their pun-heavy list The Beast combined statistics from
several sources: “Sixty percent of our ranking was weighted based on
the most recent National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, twenty percent
derived from the FBI, and the final 20 percent was based on local pot
culture.” The last ingredient, as befits Tina Brown‘s blog, was namechecking
the local celebrity smoker. Check out their photo gallery of
celebrities who “toke” – gag!
Despite the fancy-pants calculus, The Beast didn’t stop to think
geography. For starters, while a lot of marijuana might be smuggled
through the Panhandle, South Florida is still going to be the entry
point for drugs from the Caribbean and South America. Consider our list of
the top 10 Latina lady drug smugglers! As the Drug Enforcement Agency says in its convoluted jargon, “Marijuana smuggled from the
Bahamas is a significant problem as well. Caribbean polydrug
transportation groups bring multi-pound quantities of marijuana into
Florida from Caribbean locations via go fast vessels and other maritime
conveyances.”
Besides, Daily Beast, didn’t you know we hosted Marley Fest, the mecca of recreational pot smokers? Take heart Miami, we might not be home to biggest party school, or even the
most livable surroundings, but we’re still numero uno when it comes to
drugs.
