Dope goes, uh, up in smoke

CLEVELAND (AP) — Inside a 3,500-degree furnace, it doesn’t take long for illegal drugs and other contraband to go up in smoke.

Four times a year, a special agency at the State Highway Patrol burns confiscated drugs and guns at different steel mills across Ohio. The loot is kept in a room in Columbus until criminal cases are resolved and the evidence is no longer needed.

Destroying the contraband ensures it won’t end up back on the streets or in schools, said Sgt. D.J. Smith a member of the patrol’s Special Response Team, which conducted its latest burn Thursday at the ArcelorMittal steel plant along the Cuyahoga River.

The troopers watched as 4,000 pounds of marijuana, cocaine and heroin and 59 guns burned up. The contraband was valued at $6 million.

A forklift hoisted pallets of drugs into a 40-foot-long scrap pan. A crane lifted the pan about 80 feet into the air to a basic-oxygen furnace capable of holding up to 272 tons of material.

The pan tilted. The crane’s cables screamed. The drugs and scrap steel fell into the pear-shaped vessel.

The drugs went up in smoke.