Cranial Gas – Desultory Musings

Pot a “Weapon of Mass Effect”

somebody’s smoking something

Ronald Colburn, the deputy chief of the Border Patrol, was on the hot seat. He explained his agency’s long-term strategy to shore up the 4,000-mile border. Then, while responding to a question from Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, about how agents determine whether someone poses a threat, he equated weed with weapons:

“There were nearly a million people that weren’t successful in crossing both borders this year. And speaking of weapons of mass effect, 2 million pounds of marijuana is a weapon of mass effect that we prevented from happening this year along the border.”

Go to 1:30:40 on this clip to see the response in its entirety.

What is a weapon of mass effect? We had a hard time finding a good definition of this term. Homeland Security, which includes the Border Patrol, says in a report on chemical security that “a Weapon of Mass Effect is an industrial gas that can be used as a weapon without reacting with other chemicals to create a third material.”