WEED-WHACKING TIME

IT'S LATE SUMMER, and the hills are alive with the sound of helicopters.

Pulling up illegal marijuana patches is going full bore in
California's wrinkled landscape of steep hills and hidden valleys.
The next few weeks are harvest time for the multibillion-dollar cannabis crop.

On one side is stepped up law enforcement, which last year yanked a
record 1.1 million plants, twice the number of the prior year. Teams
hike up mountain trails and shinny down dangling ropes from hovering
choppers to haul off marijuana plants.

On the other side, the game is changing, too. Weed patches are bigger
than ever, such as a 20,000 plant garden recently discovered near
Bolinas. Prime-growing areas have fanned out from the storied Emerald
Triangle zone along the state's North Coast to prime seizure spots in
Shasta, Tulare and Fresno counties in the state's interior.

A more significant factor is changing the cannabis trade. Growing is
no longer done by back-country small-timers who gave the trade a
Willie Nelson-outlaw luster.

Now, it's dominated by organized crime rings based in Mexico, who
smuggle in farmworkers to tend the crops and post armed sentries. The
weed trade doesn't just produce a recreational drug or medical
marijuana, law enforcement notes. Profits pay into a second business:
The manufacturing of addictive and lethal methamphetamine, or speed.
These are genuine dangers.

The hide-and-seek game between dope growers and the law won't end
soon. State Attorney General Bill Lockyer, whose office oversees the
annual marijuana sweeps, says seizures last year were worth $4.5
billion. With this much at stake, it's a business unlikely to disappear.

But the public may also question whether an unwinnable eradication
effort is worth it. Isn't there a way, for example, to grow
voter-endorsed medical marijuana without promoting outlaw operations?

The country may not be ready to legalize marijuana on a wide scale,
but there should be a way to undercut a troubling trade that mocks
the law and thrives beyond the reach of helicopters.