Each year there are hundreds of marijuana busts occur in the United States.  These busts can range anywhere form a small personal amount to large distribution amounts.  Below is a list of 5 of the largest marijuana amounts the law has made arrests for in the United States:

1. Houston, TX 2007
Law enforcement authorities in Houston, TX, seized more than 19,000 pounds of marijuana stored inside two yellow school buses in a remote area Southwest of the city In March, 2007.  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents believed the massive reserve was part of a Mexican drug-smuggling operation.  The marijuana had an estimate street value of $13 million.

2. San Diego Coast 1984
In November, 1984, a U.S. Coast Guard unit discovered 26,000 pounds of marijuana  aboard the 63-foot yacht, named Arrakis, one hundred and fifty miles off the coast of San Diego. This bust is reportedly the largest to date in the West Coast.

3. Mexican-US Border 2007
In 2007, U.S. authorities seized 27,229 pounds of marijuana, as well as 9,512 pounds of cocaine, 705 pounds of methamphetamine, 11 pounds of heroin and approximately $45.2 million dollars from a Mexican cartel.  This was a “significant blow” to the Mexico-based “Victor Emillio Cazares-Gastellum” drug trafficking ring.  The bust, named “Operation Imperial Emperor,” led to the arrest of more than 400 members of the cartel and the confiscation of $6 million in property assets, 100 weapons and 94 vehicles.

4. Queens, NY 2009
In 2009, as part of a crackdown on a Canadian drug smuggling operation, Federal drug agents captured 50,000 pounds of marijuana stashed into a “nondescript” Queens, NY, home.  The street value of what was seized is $150 million.  The marijuana was originally grown in hydroponic farms inside British Columbia homes then driven east and smuggled across the border inside cars with secret compartments. Ten people were arrested in the seize.

5. Fresno County, CA 2009
In July 2009, law enforcement authorities seized at least 330,000 marijuana plants from fields in Fresno County, CA.  The plants were worth an amazing $1 billion.  Named “Operation Save Our Sierra” lasted more than a week and a half, and resulted in the arrest of 82 suspects with links to Mexican drug cartels. “Fresno County is roughly the size of Connecticut, and the drug traffickers target these areas because they know there is not that significant of a law-enforcement presence,” Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims told CNN. “The chances of getting caught are slim.” Or, rather, were.

Also known has hemp back in the day, marijuana is a natural plant, grown in wild in Central and South Asia thousands of years ago. Traces of people smoking Marijuana go back as far as 4500 B.C.  China is known principally for its tea and opium, the great number of its people, and the huge amount of Chinese restaurants, also hemp originates from China.  They were able to spin yarn for clothing, fishing nets, rope and many other uses. The first medicinal applications were described two thousand years later. It was used for rheumatism, gout, malaria, and a number of other disorders.

Hemp travelled to Arabia from China, and appeared in the writings of the Greek philosopher Herodote. He describes ritual use of burning hemp by the Syrian Skytes. Hemp grows everywhere and is used everywhere. It came to Europe from India and the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, hemp’s intoxicating effect was described by Boccaccio and Rabelais, among others. Later, it was used by Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas in the Latin Quarter in Paris. Scholars do not agree as to whether the Spaniards were the original importers of cannabis to America. It is certainly true that Colombus’ ships were outfitted with hemp rope, and sails made from hemp cloth. The plant spread quickly in America, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century, large-scale hemp plantations proceeded in order to supply the needs of the ship – and clothing industries.  Marijuana is big all over the world, used for recreational, medical and industrial use, with many of different countries either already have or are on the verge to legalizing the plant.  In the US, legalizing marijuana has been one of the most talked about subjects for each upcoming voting elections.

The legal history of cannabis in the United States relates to the regulation of marijuana use for medical or recreational purposes.  Regulations and restrictions on the sale of marijuana as a drug began as early as 1860. Increased restrictions and labeling of cannabis as a poison began in many states from 1906 onward, and outright prohibitions began in the 1920s. By the mid-1930s Cannabis was regulated as a drug in every state, including 35 states that adopted the Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act.

Marijuana has been used many years before any of the regulations were in place. Christopher Columbus brought over Cannabis with him on his journey where he discovered America.   In 1619 Jamestown colony law declared that all settlers were required to grow hemp.  Even George Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon as one of his three primary crops. Thomas Jefferson grew hemp as a secondary crop at Monticello. The use of hemp for rope and fabric was universal throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States. As early as 1853, recreational cannabis was listed as a “fashionable narcotic”

On October 2, 1937, without any open debate, scientific enquiry, or political objection, President Roosevelt signed the Marijuana Tax Law. The law made it illegal to possess marijuana in the U.S. without a special tax stamp issued by the U.S. Treasury Department.  On the very day the Marijunana Tax Stamp Act was passed, the FBI and Denver police raided the Lexington Hotel and arrested two people: Samuel R. Caldwell and Moses Baca. Three days later, Caldwell, a 58 year old unemployed laborer, became first person in the U.S. to be convicted of selling of marijuana without a tax stamp. He was sentenced to four years of hard labor in Leavenworth Penitentiary.

In 1956, The Narcotic Control Act put marijuana in the same drug class as heroin and added more severe penalties. A first conviction of possession of marijuana was punishable by a mandatory two to 10 years in prison.

In the 1960s, anti-drug movement was widely distributed with the message that smoking marijuana would not only make you lazy and irresponsible. In 1968 the United States Department of the Treasury subsidiary the Bureau of Narcotics and the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare subsidiary the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control merged to create the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs as a United States Department of Justice.  In 1969,  congress passed Controlled Substances Act which eliminated mandatory minimums and reduced penalties for possession of marijuana.

In the 1970s, many places in the United States started to abolish state laws and other local regulations that banned possession or sale of marijuana.  In the 1970s, smoking marijuana became popular among middle-class adults, and activists revamped the movement for decriminalization. By 1972, approximately 24 million Americans had tried marijuana.  Nixon won the election on a campaign-platform for restoring law and order in the country.  He launched Operation Intercept. Two thousand customs agents were deployed along the Mexican border in a military-style search and seizure mission to stop the flow of marijuana. Virtually no marijuana was found among the 5 million people who were searched and after three weeks the operation was abandoned. Nixon then decided to concentrate on police training to fight the war against marijuana. Almost immediately, marijuan-related arrests and convictions increased dramatically.  In 1972, all of the government’s existing drug agencies were combined into one super-powerful agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, thus the DEA was born.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration launched its own war on drugs. An average of one person every 38 seconds was arrested for violating marijuana laws.  During the Reagan Administration,  the Sentencing Reform Act provisions of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 created the Sentencing Commission, which established mandatory sentencing guidelines.  The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 reinstated mandatory prison sentences, including large scale cannabis distribution.  Later an amendment created a three strike law, which created mandatory 25-years imprisonment for repeated serious crimes – serious drug offenses is in on that list – and allowed the death penalty to be used against “drug kingpins.”  Judge Francis Law, a DEA administrative law judge, held hearings on the medical benefits of marijuana. He found that marijuana has a clearly established medical use and recommended that it be reclassified as a prescription drug. However, no action was taken to reclassify marijuana based on Law’s findings.

In 1996 California voters passed Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana. The Oakland Cannibis Buyers’ Cooperative was created to “provide seriously ill patients with a safe and reliable source of medical cannabis, information and patient support” in accordance with Proposition 215.  In January 1998 the U.S. Government sued Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative for violating federal laws created as a result of Contolled Substances Act of 1970. On May 14, 2001, the United States Supreme Court ruled in  United States vs. Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Coop that federal anti-drug laws do not permit an exception for medical cannabis and rejected the common-law medical necessity defense to crimes enacted under the Controlled Substances Act because Congress concluded cannabis has “no currently accepted medical use” when the act was passed in 1970.  Although Canada became the first country in the world to legalize medical marijuana in 2003, the U.S. Federal Government has been resistant to changing marijuana laws. Currently marijuana activists are working for marijuana reform and fighting for medical marijuana laws. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has patented medical marijuana. US Patent 6630507 was assigned to the United States of America, as represented by the Department of Health and Human services on October 7, 2003 and protects “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants”  Today Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington have passed medical marijuana laws. Several other states are also considering legalizing medical marijuana.