WAR CHEST EXPANDS FOR SHASTA COUNTY DRUG FIGHT

Calling Shasta County "ground zero" for illicit marijuana cultivation
on federal lands, the state's senior senator announced Thursday that
more federal, state and local law enforcement resources will be
coming the county's way.

"The people growing marijuana in Shasta County, particularly on
national lands, are not just local pot farmers," said Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, a Democrat who represents the state in Congress. "These
are sophisticated, dangerous drug cartels that can easily overwhelm
local law enforcement efforts."

Granting requests by Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko and Feinstein,
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy added the
county to the Central Valley High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

Feinstein said the designation will give the county the tools to
fight the pot problem, but she didn't go into specifics.

"This is good news for Shasta County and the people of California,"
Feinstein said. "Shasta County is ground zero for marijuana
cultivation on federal lands, and I am pleased to announce that help
is on the way."

Bosenko said he'd applied for the designation for the past three
years because of a methamphetamine epidemic and an explosion in
marijuana growing.

"We have a drug problem here," he said Thursday.

The designation came from John Walters, director of Drug Control
Policy office, who made a visit to the north state, during the
much-publicized Operation Alesia -- a three-week blitz in July on
marijuana gardens in the county. The campaign was named after a Roman
battle in 52 B.C.

During the visit, Walters said the gardens are a terrorist threat to
the public's health and safety, saying the growers are "violent
criminal terrorists."

"These people are armed," he said in a July 12 press conference.
"They're dangerous."

During 60 raids, officers, agents and deputies found 10 weapons,
including a bow, a .38-caliber pistol and a .30-30 rifle as well as
several .22-caliber rifles and pellet guns. No assault rifles were found.

The raids, carried out by 17 local, state and federal agencies,
netted 283,397 marijuana plants and 16 arrests.

With the designation, Shasta County will be getting $100,000 from the
federal government that Bosenko said will be used on meth and
marijuana enforcement. He said his office is just in the planning
stages for this year's anti-drug operations, but there probably won't
be a series of raids as big as Operation Alesia, which was funded in
part by $180,000 from the federal government.

He said the operation helped the county get the designation.

"That brought the attention to the illegal marijuana growing problem
we do have in Shasta County," he said.

Hearing news of the designation, Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the
Marijuana Policy Project -- a nonprofit group that has been
campaigning for marijuana legalization since 1995 -- said he didn't
think it would do much to stop marijuana cultivation.

"They can crank up all the funding and bring in all the equipment
they want, but it's not going to change things," he said. "The only
thing that is going to change things is to treat marijuana like we do wine."

Legalizing marijuana would kill the black market and put a stop to
the criminal groups growing it, said Mirken, who works for policy
project out of San Francisco. He contends that even operations as big
as last summer's in Shasta County don't make a dent in the crop.

"I've heard no one complaining about marijuana shortages or a change
in price," he said.