POT GROWERS BOLDLY EXPANDING OPERATIONS

These buds were so sweet and sticky that even marijuana's sworn enemies
gasped with appreciation.

Carefully hidden among a thick canopy of madrone on a steep hill near
Crystal Springs Reservoir was the largest pot farm -- 11,800 ripe plants --
ever found in San Mateo County. The six-foot plants were dripping the
potent resin loved by cannabis connoisseurs.

"This is a thing of beauty -- this garden, these plants -- all great work,"
said Sgt. Steve Switzer, sniffing a pungent bud and shaking his head. "It's
a pot-smoker's dream: ripe stinky plants all over the mountain."

Then, he grabbed his machete, looked at the 15 other camouflage-clad cops,
cracked a broad smile and pronounced: "Cut them all down. Let's make this
grower real angry. We want him to cry."

The crew chopped $45 million worth of pot last Monday, part of a
record-breaking day in a record-setting year for the state's Campaign
Against Marijuana Planting.

CAMP backers have cause to celebrate. CAMP is more efficient and successful
than ever at finding marijuana, destroying twice as much this year as in
1998 and triple the haul in 1996.

"We've got a few weeks of growing season left but we've already broken all
the records for seizures," said California Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

The state estimates the average full-grown sinsemilla plant is worth
$4,000. By Friday, CAMP destroyed more than 300,000 plants since this
year's campaign began in late August, putting a dent in a billion dollar
illegal industry.

CAMP is doing it all on less money. The program, using state agents and
local cops, has a budget of $600,000 -- down from $2 million in 1990. One
big reason is that cops have become more efficient at using helicopters to
pinpoint gardens and drop officers by 150-foot cable into remote ravines.
This saves the time and trouble of hiking in from the nearest trail.

The gardens have also gotten bigger, more elaborate and easier to spot by
trained forest rangers.

But even as Lockyer relishes CAMP's success, the pot war faces challenges
on several fronts.

First, there is the ingenuity of growers who know that for a few thousand
dollars of investment, one good crop can make millions.

Another problem is contradictory attitudes of the public, with an estimated
60 million current or former pot smokers nationally.

California voters, who approved medical cannabis via Proposition 215 four
years ago, will decide in November on Proposition 36, a law proposed to
send most drug users into treatment instead of prison.

Already, several counties, including San Francisco, rarely enforce
marijuana laws when it involves small quantities. Voters in Mendocino
County will consider an advisory measure in November to legalize personal
use of pot.

In 1996 about two thirds of the voters there backed Proposition 215.
Measure G backers say the county is ready to send Congress a message that
pot should be treated more like tobacco and alcohol than heroin and cocaine.

"The existing drug laws are the best price support system that I have ever
seen for a farm product," said John Pinches, a Republican rancher who was
on the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors from 1995 to 1999. "They've
driven the price of marijuana up higher than the price of gold."

Even some cops have lost faith in the marijuana war.

"I've spent 30 years fighting drugs and I don't know that the war is
winnable," said Gary Holder, police chief of Ferndale and retired Mendocino
County sheriff's deputy. "Personally I would rather all the money used to
fight marijuana used on an all-out fight against methamphetamine. There's
no comparison about which drug causes more harm."

Lockyer concedes "there are contradictory pressures" in society when it
comes to marijuana.

"I don't use drugs. I don't condone the use of drugs and I am going to use
our authority to stamp out the use of drugs," he said. "But this is totally
separate from my support for the medical use of marijuana."

The battle is in the marketplace as well as the ballot box.

Marijuana growing used to be dominated by hippies who lovingly cultivated
remote gardens in state's North Coast. It was rare to see fields bigger
than 2,000 plants.

Now most pot fields are larger "corporate grows" bankrolled by Mexican
cartels and farmed by undocumented workers whose bosses move them from farm
to farm.

These are the same gangs that dominate drug smuggling from Mexico and
methamphetamine production in California, according to Lockyer and a DEA
report to Congress.

"They decided it was more cost-effective to grow it here than smuggle it
in," said Sonya Arriaga Barna, head of CAMP. "If you plant 20 big gardens,
you can afford to lose 18 or 19 of them."

From the early 1970s onward, marijuana growing occurred primarily in the
so-called Emerald Triangle: Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties.

But in the past five years it has spread from the volcanic soil of Modoc
County to the coastal hills northeast of San Diego.

California's biggest known pot farm was the 58,000 plants in Kern County on
Aug. 31, breaking a record 53,000 plants in San Benito County in 1999. Each
crop was worth more than $200 million.

Marijuana is booming in the range land on the edges of the Central Valley.
Growers have learned to hide pot in scrub brush along steep gullies.

"They are getting more creative," Barna said. "The growers realize that
with water you can grow anything in Central Valley."

On Sept. 15, Barna led a team that found 2,800 plants hidden among several
acres of thorn bushes in a ravine on the edge of a farm in Merced County.

"They burrowed tunnels through hundreds of feet of thorn bushes," Barna
said. "It looked like a maze though the thorn bushes. Just half a mile away
there were walnut trees but you could stand on the outside and not see a
thing."

The bust would have been nearly impossible if not for the ability to fly
overhead and drop officers from helicopters using 150-foot steel cables.

"The guys who tried to crawl in were bloody from all the thorns," Barna said.

Since its 1983 inception, CAMP has evolved to a narrow focus on crop
eradication and puts little emphasis on trying to catch the grower. It is
difficult and dangerous to catch field workers. Most of the time, farm
workers hear the helicopters and melt into the underbrush. Even elaborate
stakeouts with local police to catch growers are usually unsuccessful.

Minutes before sunrise last Wednesday, a team of Fresno County sheriff's
deputies hiked into a 1,600-plant farm in the Jose Basin area of the Sierra
National Forest hoping to catch the growers.

They arranged for the helicopter to stay back and only take to the air once
deputies entered the farm.

But the suspects -- who were having tortillas and beans for breakfast --
were too quick. They disappeared into the buckbrush and manzanita but left
behind 50 pounds of dried, manicured pot as well as 1,500 plants.

"We were so close we could hear them running," said Sgt. Rick Pursell. "We
wanted these guys. But they know the country. They've been here all summer
and they know exactly where to run."

Nearly all the suspects arrested in CAMP raids this summer were recently
brought in from Mexico. A worker is paid about $1,000 a month from April
planting to September harvest, Barna said.

Often another member of the gang picks the site. The workers are often
taken blindfolded from Los Angeles and dropped off on a road near the
garden so to avoid the temptation to rip off the boss.

"We've had guys who had no idea what county they were in," Barna said.

The farm workers are usually armed -- often with AK-47s. The firepower is
not intended for cops but to defend the crop from dope thieves.

But they rarely resist arrest. One exception was Aug. 24, when Jesus
Figueroa-Valencia was fatally shot after pulling a handgun on sheriff's
deputies raiding a 7,000-plant farm in Madera County, deputies said. "These
guys are taught to run from law enforcement but they are ready to take on
anyone else," said Gabe Escovedo, a CAMP supervisor. "They could shoot
anyone from hunters and hikers to kids trying to steal some dope."