SPECIAL UNITS TAKING DOWN MARIJUANA

It's crunch time in the annual struggle by police and the National Guard to
wipe out as much of Kentucky's outdoor marijuana crop as possible.

Pot growers harvest their crops before the killing frosts of October,
meaning September is the last full month for police to find the small
patches hidden on hillsides around the state and cut them down.

Spotters in helicopters will spend as much time as they can this month
searching for pot; ground teams will spend day after sweaty day hiking the
woods to cut marijuana and haul it out to burn, while growers who have
nurtured the plants all summer dodge the law and hope they harvest before
police or thieves find it.

"The race is on right now," said state police Sgt. Ronnie Ray, who
supervises efforts to destroy marijuana.

The cat-and-mouse game has been tougher on growers this year. After the
number of arrests slipped in 2000, state police have concentrated more this
year on arresting growers, instead of just cutting their crops.

Police have spent more time trying to gather information on who is growing
pot, and also have increased the amount of surveillance they do once a crop
is located. Instead of cutting some patches right away, police hide in the
woods for three to five days at a time to catch growers as they slip in to
tend the plants, said Lt. Donald J. Gill, head of the state police
Marijuana Suppression Unit.

"They take their food, their water, everything," Gill said. "They find them
a spot and dig in."

The result has been an increase in arrests so far over last year. By late
August 2000, police across Kentucky had arrested 179 people for outdoor pot
crops and 53 for indoor crops, a total of 232. This year, the number as of
Aug. 28 was 217 arrests for outdoor cultivation and 64 inside, a total of 281.

"That's where you're making a deterrent, is putting people in jail," Gill said.

The number of plants destroyed is down from 350,399 about this time last
year to 328,977, in part because trying to make arrests is more
time-consuming, Gill said.

Kentucky has long been one of the top pot-producing states in the nation.
The state always ranks in the top five, along with California, Hawaii and
Tennessee, said Susan Feld, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration.

The DEA considers Kentucky a "source" state, meaning much of the
high-quality pot grown here is sold out of state.

State police estimate they destroy 50 percent to 70 percent of the outdoor
crop each year. Last year, police eradicated 466,841 plants and estimated
they would have had a value of $937 million, or about $2,000 each.

Many of the plants destroyed each year are small or worthless. But others
would be worth more than $2,000, so the estimate is legitimate, police say.

But the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which
advocates legalization of marijuana, estimated in 1997 that police
destroyed only 35 percent of the Kentucky pot crop, cutting 453,886 plants
while another 842,931 were harvested. That was the last year NORML
estimated production by state.

The Washington, D.C.-based group argues that when police wage war on
marijuana, it accomplishes little except driving up the price of the
remaining pot.

"They are a price support for the black market," said Allen St. Pierre,
executive director of the NORML Foundation.

Ray, however, said the work to cut down marijuana keeps production from
getting out of hand.

"If we didn't do it, it would be 10 times worse," he said.

The state's effort to destroy marijuana has grown and gotten much more
high-tech since the early 1980s. State police and the National Guard first
teamed up for a one-day sweep in October 1986 -- largely a media event to
publicize eradication efforts.

Now the program, considered one of the top in the country, runs all year.
State police and the National Guard begin flying in April and May to spot
marijuana plots, using global-positioning devices to pinpoint locations.

From June to September, state police dedicate 30 troopers to cutting, then
concentrate on finding indoor growing operations in the off-season. The
National Guard supplies troops -- 170 this year -- and helicopters in the
summer.

State police and the Guard said they spend a total of about $6 million on
the eradication program annually.

In addition to that work, efforts by the U.S. Forest Service to find and
destroy pot have made the 700,000-acre Daniel Boone National Forest the top
federal forest in the country in plants destroyed for 10 years, said Glen
Thomas, a supervisory special agent assigned to the three-state Appalachia
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

"The Daniel Boone probably is the most aggressive national forest with
regard to day-in and day-out eradication efforts," he said.

The attack on pot in Kentucky has forced growers to cut the size of their
plots to hide them and has pushed down the total number of plants grown.
Police often cut more than 500,000 plants a year in the mid-1980s; in 1986,
police found hundreds of thousands of plants growing in corn crops in
Lincoln and Taylor counties, pushing the total that year to a record 1.5
million.

Those days are gone. The average pot patch found outside last year was 55
plants, and the total plants eradicated has been between 300,000 and
500,000 in recent years, according to state police figures.

Gill, however, said the number won't ever go to zero.

"I think there's a certain element out there that's going to grow it, or
try to grow it," he said.