TIME RUNS SHORT FOR POLICE TO FIND OUTDOOR MARIJUANA

Harvest Occurs Before Frost, Eradication Down By Late August

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kentucky State Police are running out of time to
eradicate outdoor marijuana operations this year.

Pot growers harvest their crops before the killing frosts of October,
giving authorities about one more month to find small patches hidden on
hillsides around the state.

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

Pot-related arrests are up in the state from last year, but the number of
plants destroyed is down. Lt. Donald J. Gill, head of the state police
Marijuana Suppression Unit, said that's because authorities are focusing
more on arrests and less on destroying plants.

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

police had arrested 179 people in Kentucky 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.

The number of plants destroyed is 328,977 this year, down from 350,399
about this time last year.

Spotters in helicopters will spend as much time as they can this month
searching for pot. Ground teams will spend day after day hiking the woods
to cut marijuana and haul it out to burn.

Kentucky has long been one of the top pot-producing states. It 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 to 70 percent of the outdoor crop
each year. In all of last year, police eradicated 466,841 plants and
estimated they would have had a value of $937 million.

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
annually on the eradication program.

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 threestate Appalachia
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area.

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 cut 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.