MARIJUANA WARNING ISSUED

Oklahoma narcotics agents are spreading the word: Don't smoke red dope.
Since the end of June, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs
Control agents have been spraying fields of wild-growing marijuana with weed
killer laced with red dye.

Spraying is a much faster technique to permanently kill the marijuana. The
red dye is to warn the public the plants have been sprayed with weed killer,
said Mark Woodward, OBN spokesman.

The northwest part of the state has an abundance of wild-growing marijuana
because farmers in the area used to grow marijuana for the production of
hemp.

"Because the plant reproduces itself, there are fields and fields of the
stuff and it's just a nuisance," Woodward said.

During two weeks in June, an estimated 9.5 million plants were destroyed in
Blaine, Custer, Ellis, Grant and Woodward counties.

Officers will continue to destroy the plants until the fall. Farmers who
want to spray wild marijuana on their land can get free herbicide from the
Bureau of Narcotics.

The federal spraying program, which started in 1997, is more effective than
cutting or pulling the plants because pulled plants simply grow back the
following summer, Woodward said.

The weed killer sprayed on the plants is harmful to people who smoke the
marijuana, but studies have shown that a person would need to smoke about 47
herbicide-laced cigarettes before it would harm them, Woodward said.

Although illegal, marijuana was the No. 1 cash crop in Oklahoma in the 1980s
and early 1990s, Woodward said.

Now, with aggressive eradication programs, and by using helicopters and
fixed-wing aircraft to spot and destroy the plants, it is no longer the
problem it once was, he said.

Major County Sheriff Tom Schaffer said wild marijuana remains a problem for
law officers.

"This year so far we have pulled about 14,000 plants and sprayed another
12,000," he said.

"It is still a big problem with us, even though a lot of people don't think
it is."