VAN BUREN CO., Tenn. – Veteran pilots with the Governor's Task Force on Marijuana Eradication are trained to locate even a single pot plant from hundreds of feet up in the air.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation oversees the task force and T.J. Jordan is the special agent in charge.
He told Nashville's News 2, "If we can make a pot grower's day bad, that's our mission."
The task force flies each day searching for the drug which is sold for millions of dollars on Tennessee streets each year.
Once the pilots locate their target, the teams on the ground move in on four-wheelers guided by the aircraft which serves as aerial GPS units.
Once the ground and teams reach their destination, they chop down the plan by hand and then haul it off for disposal.
On Tuesday, Nashville's News 2 was with the team when they destroyed an operation estimated to be worth nearly $10,000.
"If you do the math, [it's] several million dollars worth of dope off the streets," Jordan said.
According to officials, the state of Tennessee ranks seventh highest for manufacturing marijuana and third highest for eradication.
Thus far, the task force, which then-Governor Lamar Alexander founded in 1983, has destroyed around 200,000 plants.
The task force receives around $780,000 a year in federal funding from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
