POLICE SAY MARIJUANA CROP IS HEAVY

BURLINGTON - The harvest has begun for one of Vermont's more lucrative but
illegal cash crops - marijuana.

Vermont's marijuana crop looks bountiful this year, law enforcement
officials say. By weight, the yield never comes close to that of other
agricultural products. But the value of the marijuana crop rivals Vermont's
legal agricultural products.

"We are just coming into the harvest time, and so we're on guard right
now," said Lt. Jim Colgan with the state police's Marijuana Eradication
Resource Team, which conducts surveys by air and foot to track down the plants.

The season is still early but police have begun patrols, finding isolated
plots.

Burlington and state police confiscated 29 six-foot plants from a cornfield
in Colchester on Friday. The officers pulled 100 from wetlands in
Burlington's Intervale on Aug. 20. The week before, Essex police yanked 95
plants from a river's edge.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration said Vermont police pulled
about 3,700 pot plants last year. That harvest was valued at between $6
million and $10 million with each plant producing up to a pound of
marijuana, which sells for between $2,000 and $3,500.

By comparison, Vermont's apple crop was valued at $12 million in 2000.

The state police team had pulled 560 plants by the end of July, about 20
more than this time last year, Colgan said.

"If you are going to put it up against heroin, obviously heroin takes a
higher priority," said Burlington Police Lt. Emmet Helrich said, "but we
are always working these cases, too, and we are all over it if we find
something."

Colgan said finding the crops was fairly easy, but finding the growers was
more difficult.

Colgan estimated that only about 25 percent of the growers were caught.
Last year state police made 50 arrests for outdoor marijuana.

"We take it as far as we can on limited resources," said Cpl. Aaron Noble
of Shelburne Police, who have found fewer than 20 plants in fields this
year. "We have a lot of rural areas where people can grow and hide their
operations."

Penalties for convicted growers are stiff, ranging from three years in jail
for more than three plants, to a maximum of 15 years and a $500,000 fine
for more than 25 plants.

Colgan worried that with the crackdown on harder drugs, such as heroin,
people will grow complacent about marijuana, which some say should be
legalized.

"We've still got kids telling us they start smoking at age 10, are into
marijuana in middle school and by the time they hit high school, they don't
care what they use," Colgan said, "so we still consider marijuana serious
business."