CAMP can't keep up with pot growers

Newshawk: Suzanne Wills
Pubdate: 13 Oct 05
Source: USA Today
Contact: editor [at] usatoday.com.
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/usafront.htm
Webpage:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-12-pot-growers-cover_x.htm
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Drug agents can't keep up with pot growers

By John Ritter, USA TODAY
NORTHERN MENDOCINO COUNTY, Calif.

- In the waning days of a record season, a helicopter buzzes treetops
here in a remote corner of the "Emerald Triangle," redwood country
notorious as the USA's premier producer of marijuana. (Photo gallery:
Rooting out pot hot spots)
State narcotics officers from CAMP - Campaign Against Marijuana
Planting - are searching for "gardens" to eradicate and find six on a
warm, cloudless day.
They strap onto a 150-foot cable dangling from the chopper, drop into
the pot patches, hack down the plants and bundle them for the chopper
to haul back to a landing zone.
Perhaps $500,000 worth of America's favorite illegal drug is trucked
off for burial. It's not a big day by CAMP standards: 813 plants that
fill a pickup bed. In this ever-growing illicit market, agents
routinely find plots of 5,000 and 10,000 plants that require dump
trucks to dispose of.
In the 2005 growing season, CAMP says it so far has destroyed more
plants than ever - 1.1 million worth $4.5 billion on the street, up
from 621,000 plants last year. But agents still lost ground to
growers. No longer is marijuana cultivation the cottage industry that
flourished in the 1960s and '70s after waves of counterculture
migrants bought cheap land in the northern California mountains and
grew pot for their own use and extra income.
Mexican criminals using sophisticated methods have spread the
marijuana industry across California, traditionally the nation's main
domestic source because of a mild climate and vast stretches of
isolated landscape ideal for clandestine growing, say the authorities.
As recently as 10 years ago, the Emerald Triangle counties of
Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity grew virtually all of the state's
pot. Now every California county that's not desert has a problem.
Because of tighter security on the southern U.S. border, Mexicans
simply made a business decision to move north.
"In the last two or three years almost 100% of the gardens we've
eradicated are Mexican drug cartel gardens," says James Parker, the
senior narcotics agent who oversees CAMP. "It's alarming if you think
about it."
Today's high potency weed is so valuable - $5,000 or more for a pound
of buds on the East Coast - that big operators employ armed guards
who camp in pot gardens for months, nurturing plants that grow to 15
feet and taller. A state Fish and Game officer was wounded and a
suspect shot and killed in a Santa Clara County bust in June, the
fourth incident in two years.
Scarring the landscape
There would be more violence if growers weren't able to flee at the
sound of a helicopter looking for gardens, says Jack Nelsen, CAMP's
regional operations commander here. "This time of year, they won't go
far -- the plants are worth too much," he says. "If we don't come
back soon enough they'll be in there harvesting until we do."
Fishermen and hikers stumble onto armed men in the woods who threaten
them and demand that they leave. Pot-growing has become epidemic both
on privately owned timber tracts and public lands in California,
including national forests and parks.
"A lot of terrain is so rugged and dense with foliage you wouldn't
think about taking your family to those areas," Parker says. "It's
amazing how much work these Mexicans put in to get a crop out."
Growers scar the landscape by crudely terracing hillsides that erode
under winter rain. They spill pesticides, fertilizer and diesel fuel
used to power generators that run extensive drip-irrigation systems.
They dam creeks for water sources, plant salsa gardens, disfigure
trees and leave behind tons of garbage, human waste and litter.
"They'll pour fertilizer right into a stream, then irrigate out of
it," says Alexandra Picavet, a Sequoia National Park ranger. "That
creates algae blooms, hurts fish and animals and contaminates
downstream." Since 2001, officers have destroyed 105 pot gardens
covering 181 acres in the park but have had enough money to clean up
fewer than half the sites. "We think that for every one we've been
able to eradicate, there's another one out there," Picavet says.
CAMP's critics equate the program with Prohibition in the 1930s.
"Look at the amount of economic value we're destroying," says Dale
Gieringer, director of California NORML, the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "This could be legally taxed and
regulated and we could all be making money off it. We never saw this
lawlessness until there were drug laws and CAMP." NORML estimates
that Californians' pot consumption could yield at least $250 million
a year in sales taxes.
Gieringer also says that, despite the government's assertion, there
is no evidence that Mexican cartels are involved in the cultivation.
Roger Rodoni is a cattle rancher and registered Republican who has
represented a conservative district in Humboldt County - conservative
by local standards, anyway - on the board of supervisors since 1997.
He calls CAMP "an exercise in futility."
"It's a vast expenditure of public funds that for all practical
purposes does no good," Rodoni, 65, says. Demand for marijuana keeps
growing, and CAMP has done little to stem the supply, he says. As
evidence he points to a drop in the price of "the quality stuff'"
from $6,000 a pound a few years ago to $3,000 today.
A June report for Taxpayers for Common Sense by Harvard economist
Jeffrey Miron found that despite billions of dollars spent on
marijuana suppression - nearly $4 billion by the federal government
in 2004 alone - usage is about the same as 30 years ago.
CAMP, an arm of the state attorney general's office, was formed in
1983 to help understaffed local authorities ferret out large-scale
marijuana crops grown for profit, particularly in isolated areas far
from roads where helicopters were needed. Five eradication teams
deployed in different regions of the state operated this year on a
$1.1 million budget, about three-quarters of it supplied by the
federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
CAMP agents, with help from local sheriff's deputies and loaners from
the National Guard, the state forestry department, the U.S. Forest
Service and the National Park Service, have arrested 42 suspects,
seized 76 weapons and raided 742 gardens.
But CAMP has made little headway penetrating and prosecuting the
Mexican hierarchies allegedly behind most of the busted gardens.
"They're similar to al-Qaeda, they're cells," says Sgt. James "Rusty"
Noe of the Mendocino County sheriff's office. "We go out and find
some guy in the garden and we arrest him, he's not going to know
anything."
Since last year, two CAMP investigative teams have concentrated on
tracking the Mexican drug bosses, and arrests have been made in
Fresno and Redding. Parker says he'll ask for three more
investigative units for 2006.
CAMP teams start reconnaissance flights in early spring as growers
are preparing gardens - clearing land, setting up water systems,
hauling in supplies and setting up campsites. When agents see a
garden from the helicopter they fix its location with GPS.
Growers adapt to surveillance
Seizures have risen dramatically because of more aggressive air
surveillance and larger gardens. But growers have adapted, CAMP's
Nelsen says. They used to plant uniform plots in open ground -
marijuana thrives in full sunlight - but those were easily spotted,
even from an airplane at 5,000 feet.
Now gardens are tucked under the forest canopy, often on steep
slopes, and strung out along hillside contours so they're much harder
to see. Growers expect many of their gardens to be busted, so they
put as many plants in the ground in as many locations as they can.
"It's a lot like what they do on the border," Parker says. "They'll
try to send 70 cars through thinking a few are going to get picked
off and that it's a cost of doing business."
These days, other counties have eclipsed the Emerald Triangle in
confiscated marijuana. Shasta County led the state as of last week,
according to CAMP figures: 209,864 plants eradicated compared with
52,133 all of last year.
The Central Valley counties of Tulare and Fresno, two of the nation's
biggest agricultural producers, now rank No. 2 and 4. Mendocino had
the fifth most plants seized, and Humboldt has slipped to No. 12.
CAMP doesn't operate in California's two most populous counties, Los
Angeles and San Diego, because authorities there have ample resources
to go after marijuana themselves, Parker says.
"The Mexicans have basically found out how easy it is to find
locations and find people to work these gardens," Nelsen says. "These
organizations are even moving into some of the eastern counties in
snow country."
Cultivation of medical marijuana, legalized by California voters in
1996, has expanded the supply, particularly from indoor production,
and complicated efforts to crack down on the illegal market.
CAMP doesn't bother with medical marijuana growers, even large ones
who say they're providing pot to many sick people. "We're not here to
take anyone's medicine away," Nelsen says.
But medical marijuana has made it harder to figure out who the bad
guys are, Noe says. The law left it up to counties and cities to set
guidelines. Some have zero tolerance for medical marijuana; others
have set limits on the number of plants. Mendocino County is wide
open.
"The amount of marijuana cultivated in this county almost doubled
because anybody can grow it in their backyard," Noe says. "The
criminal element has taken advantage of the law."
Mendocino County started going after pot growers in the early 1980s
after a spate of violence. Six deputy sheriffs, a sergeant, a legal
secretary and an evidence technician operated on a $500,000 budget,
Noe says. Today, it's Noe, a deputy and a $300,000 budget.
But with CAMP's help, the cops are more effective, he says, more than
doubling the number of plants destroyed in the county compared with
early years.
And each of those plants carries a lot more kick today. No more of
the baggies with stems and seeds that baby boomers remember from
their college days. Growers learned to "sex" the plants - cull the
males early in the season to deny the females pollination and prevent
buds from going to seed.
In a futile effort to attract pollen, the female plants produce more
and more THC, the active ingredient and the source of marijuana's
"high." The plant's buds get fatter and fatter. By September, they're
sticky with THC and ready to harvest. "Back in the '60s and '70s the
stuff imported from Mexico, there wasn't much bud to it," Noe says.
"If it was good quality maybe the THC was 5%."
Tests nowadays find THC content as high as 21%, he says.
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