What kind of dope thinks any medical marijuana operation would throw away valuable product?

Apparently dopes with bolt cutters.

Someone has been cutting off the padlock and breaking the security bars on a Dumpster for a medical marijuana grow operation in a building near the Middle Shooks Run neighborhood.

The problem for neighbors is that the knucklehead Dumpster divers keep taking the trash bags to the nearby Shooks Run Trail to rifle the bags and dump the contents.

Neighbor Nancy Strong stumbled onto the trend a couple weeks ago as she biked the trail. As she picked up the trash, she found the name of a business, called it and learned it was a medical marijuana growing operation a few blocks away.

It seems that thieves were targeting their huge trash bin in hopes of scoring marijuana residue, buds, stems and seeds.

Nancy figured it was a one-time problem. Until a few days later when she found another big bag of trash dumped in the same spot.

This time, she called the building landlord, attorney Anthony Cross. She learned the trash bin was busted open by thieves using bolt cutters.

Nancy went home and sent out an email to the neighborhood to alert others to watch for Dumpster diving thieves.

She knew how to reach her neighbors because she’s on the board of the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood Association.

The thieves are dopes because there’s little chance of anything usable being tossed out in the trash, said Julie Postlethwait of the medical marijuana enforcement agency with the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Postlethwait said it’s very unlikely anything of value would be found in the trash. She said growers harvest their product from the buds of marijuana plants and extract everything before tossing stems, seeds and stalks.

And rules drafted for the operation of medical marijuana facilities will require all plant waste to be put in a grinder and combined with non-usable waste, such as oil, to prevent Dumpster divers from finding anything usable.

Shooks Run Trail looking north from Pikes Peak Avenue

The rules are under review and expected to be formally adopted in a few months.

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