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MARIJUANA SHIPMENTS Pot goes postal Package shippers say people regularly try to ship marijuana out of state Comment By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier MailTribune.com By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Feb. 16, 2016 at 5:04 PM By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Feb. 16, 2016 at 5:04 PM » Social News On a recent afternoon, Dan Laird laid 6 pounds of marijuana on the counter of his Grants Pass shipping store. The pot, which was in six vacuum-sealed bags, wasn't his; he intercepted it when a woman tried to ship it out of his store a few days earlier. He planned to turn it over to drug agents after showing it to the Grants Pass Daily Courier. Laird, who owns Box It on Redwood Avenue, says illegal traffickers try to mail drugs, mostly pot, from his store on Redwood Avenue all the time — he estimates once a week. He's sick of it. "Who would've thought when we opened up that it would turn into this kind of business?" he said. It isn't just a nuisance; Laird has been threatened, assaulted and held at gunpoint by drug traffickers, he said. About a year ago, two men, whose shipment had been confiscated by the U.S. Postal Service, confronted him in his parking lot and demanded that he somehow get it back. When he said he couldn't help them, they hit him with a pipe, cracking his ribs. He fought back, breaking one suspect's jaw, he said. Years before that, following the interception of a much larger pot shipment, Laird said a man came into his store, pointed a gun at him, and said, "If you don't give me my drugs back, I'm going to kill you. They're going to kill me." And then there was the bribery attempt. "We even got approached again by one guy who offered us $5,000 cash if we would let him ship his product through us," Laird said. Recreational marijuana is now legal in Oregon, but that doesn't mean the black market has vanished. And because marijuana is still banned on the federal level, it's illegal to ship it across state lines. But it happens all the time. In November, authorities in Bingham County, Idaho, seized 4 pounds of marijuana after it was intercepted by local FedEx workers. It had been sent from a shipping store in Grants Pass. In 2013, a Grants Pass man was given a 20-day jail sentence for trying to ship 60 pounds of marijuana to New York. That same year, a Williams man received a similar sentence after a drug-sniffing dog found $28,000 in cash in a heat-sealed bag at a FedEx facility in Medford, leading to the seizure of 161 pounds of pot and 23 guns from his home — a medical marijuana grow site. The year before that, a medical marijuana grower from Grants Pass who pooled his crops with other growers' crops and shipped it out of state in used furniture containers bound for Goodwill was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for drug and gun crimes. Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel said conditions are ripe in this area for people to set up illegal marijuana enterprises. "I think you're going to have a lot of people that are going to choose to go down that road just because the opportunity certainly is there," he said. Southern Oregon has prime growing conditions and is known for producing high-quality marijuana. On top of that, there's barely a law enforcement presence in rural areas. Daniel has only a handful of patrol deputies these days, although Oregon State Police helps out when it can. Daniel said he doesn't have the resources to go after marijuana traffickers. "We're scrambling to keep our head above water on just the disturbances and the person-to-person crimes," he said. That means shipping-store owners are sometimes on the front lines in the battle against drug trafficking. Julie Names, senior associate at Inside the Box on Northeast F Street, said that if a package reeks of marijuana, she won't accept it. "If we can smell it, then we refuse it," she said. "We will not ship it, absolutely not." Shawn Butler, owner of Speedy Pack & Ship on Williams Highway, said drug shipping is "definitely an issue." He said he'll open a package if it gets returned to his store only because it's undeliverable. He then makes an effort to contact the sender and waits 30 days before looking inside. If he finds drugs in a package, he calls OSP. Beyond that, he said, it's hard to know what's in the parcels that go out. "The best thing that we can do is ask them if there's anything dangerous, fragile, perishable, liquids," he said. Jeremy Leder, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said that if the Postal Service uncovers a marijuana shipment, the sender will be sent a letter saying, in effect, "You're not allowed to do this even though it's legal in Oregon or Washington." He added that in certain cases, more serious action is taken. Despite the legalization of recreational marijuana in Oregon, Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger said the black market will continue to thrive. Kruger, who is part of a federally funded High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force focused on the Portland region, thinks state legislators and the authors of Measure 91, which legalized recreational pot in Oregon, have failed to create serious consequences for marijuana traffickers. "The state of Oregon is failing miserably in that regard," Kruger said. He said 634 pounds of marijuana were seized in a tri-county area that includes Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties in 2014 — most of it intercepted as it was being shipped. In 2015, that number jumped to 753 pounds. By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier MailTribune.com By Melissa McRobbie Grants Pass Daily Courier Posted Feb. 16, 2016 at 5:04 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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