News of the Weird February 21 2009
Big-tipping priests, human fat fuel and more
LEAD STORY: One Industry That Needs No Stimulus: 1) Drug officials in California’s Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties (north of San Francisco) estimated in January that two-thirds of the area’s economy is based on probably illegal marijuana farming (illegal under federal law, but permitted for medical use by the state). One federal agent told MSNBC, “Nobody produces any better marijuana than they do right here.” 2) In January, the director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime acknowledged that during the bleak banking days of September and October 2008, with panic in the economy over the shortage of cash, often the main source available to some banks was drug dealers’ steady deposits of money to be laundered.