SIBERIA STRUGGLES TO WEED OUT CANNABIS

[photo captions: Siberian horseback police track drug growers Police are
fighting a losing battle against the rapidly growing plant]

Police in the Republic of Tyva, Siberia, are fighting a losing battle
against the cultivation of cannabis across wide swathes of derelict former
collective farms. Russian TV says deliberate cultivation on old state
farmland and natural self-seeding has spread the drug cash crop far beyond
police control.

The growing season is now in full swing on plantations across the area and
it is growing everywhere, even on wasteland.

The TV says the republic, adjoining the Mongolian border, is often referred
to as Russia's Colombia.

When the authorities launch another crackdown the locals scoff. They say
that trying to stamp out the crop is "as pointless as trying to melt all
the ice in Antarctica".

It grows wild on land abandoned by collective farms - on about 70% of all
previously arable land. Local farmers say that some hemp fields do have
owners but are not being actively cultivated.

Arrests

Because police do not have enough funds to catch drug-traffickers, they
spread weedkillers or use conscripts to pull the plants out of the ground.

Locals say they grow hemp to earn enough to buy basic foodstuffs to last
the hard Siberian winter. Young people gather hemp to pay for their
university education.

The police, often on horseback, arrest at least five or six people every
day, but the punishment is only a suspended prison sentence of three-years
- - no one takes it seriously, the TV said.

Police have tried to plough the crop back into fields but they do not have
enough resources or funds to sow a replacement crop. Hemp seeds are blown
back onto fallow fields on the wind.

And so the short growing cycle starts all over again.