STATE PATROL ON PROWL FOR MARIJUANA HARVESTERS

It's harvest time in Nebraska.

Forget the combine, put away the tractor, bypass the grain elevator
and pull out the biggest garbage bag around.

Because this plant - ill-tended, uncultivated and illegal - is the
other Nebraska crop.

Although some law enforcement officers say fewer people seem to be
harvesting the plant, most people seem to think the drought hasn't
done the weed much harm.

"The marijuana around here grows 12 feet tall," said a Nebraska State
Patrol investigator in charge of eradicating ditchweed. "Along these
creekbeds it will run down the creek for a mile."

The investigator, who asked that his name not be used because he is an
undercover narcotics officer, spent Friday morning driving the rural
roads of Southeast Nebraska, searching out areas where people have
reported problems.

"There's so much of it, we concentrate on areas people call in
(about)."

The investigator plans to enlist the help of other troopers, as time
permits, to pull out the weeds in those areas and burn them. He's
already pulled 10,380 plants this year, he said.

Every year, the hardy marijuana plant attracts attention: Transients
hop the train to pick it, area residents help themselves and people
from other states park by the side of the road and fill up bags of
it.

Often, authorities said, it is used as "cut" or added to higher grade
marijuana to increase the yield. The marijuana itself has a low level
of THC - tetrahydrocannabinol - the chemical that makes users feel
"high."

But in recent years, authorities have seen fewer people dropping in
from other states to help themselves.

For awhile, said Patrol Lt. Russ Stanczyk, people were coming to
Nebraska, renting a place to stay and setting up shop long enough to
register their cars so they'd have local plates and arouse less suspicion.

Then, he said, they'd use the rented farmhouse to dry the marijuana
and leave a mess.

The patrol spent a lot of time trying to educate motel owners and
farmers about the problem so they'd pay attention to whom they rented.
Stanczyk thinks it worked.

"It seems less of an organized effort to harvest and more (of the)
local user," he said. "It hasn't seemed real busy."

In Rock County, authorities think the drought did make a
difference.

"It (the wild marijuana crop) is not near what it usually is,"
Sheriff's Deputy Jim Anderson said. "With our dry weather it's not
near what it has been in years before this."

But authorities are keeping their eyes peeled, not that suspicious
activity always ends up being illegal.

Just Thursday, a trooper noticed someone throwing weeds into the trunk
of a car parked on the side of the road, Stanczyk said. The trooper
stopped and the man emerged from the brush holding a machete. The
trooper was sure he'd found a harvester, but it turned out he'd found
a fisherman clearing a path to the lake.

That's OK, though. Authorities want people to report suspicious
activity, even when it doesn't yield an arrest.

"By the time we get there, they're (trespassing harvesters) gone,"
said Scottsbluff County Deputy Sheriff Troy Brown. "We might get a
vague description of a vehicle to go on, but we hardly ever catch up
to them."

County weed control agents poison all the ditchweed readily accessible
on the roadsides, Brown said, but it still grows plentiful in creek
bottoms.

That's why the patrol concentrates on trying to get rid of as much
ditchweed as it can. Each of the state's three troop areas has a cash
crop coordinator in charge of an eradication program.

Even that often gets put off because of more pressing concerns like
methamphetamine, said Sgt. Brian Jones of the patrol's narcotics unit.

"You have to prioritize things as far as a public safety hazard," he
said.

Although it might not be as dangerous as methamphetamine or crack, the
ditchweed problem is certainly as tenacious.

"The problem you have with marijuana is it seeds out," said Chief
Lancaster County Sheriff's Deputy Bill Jarrett. If you eradicate it in
one area, he said, it pops up in another.

The patrol's cash crop coordinator agreed.

"We could spend all year cutting ditchweed and not make a
dent."