POT WARRIOR

Sonya Barna heads California's marijuana eradication task force. Her
squadron of helicopters dives into remote corners of the state, from the
steep gorges of the Santa Ynez Mountains to the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada, carrying crews of eradicators with machetes.

The pot farmer's worst nightmare is the diminutive, 37-year-old daughter of
a migrant farm worker whose troops call her Supreme Commander.

Sonya Barna hardly looks the part of the Patton of Pot. She is short, wears
her fingernails and her brown hair long and cuts a striking enough figure
in her fatigues that a visiting Ukrainian general recently asked if all
American women were so beautiful.

But as head of California's marijuana eradication task force, called CAMP
for Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, she is on pace to break all
records for the number of pot plants chopped out of California's renegade
marijuana farms. This summer, her squadron of helicopters has dived into
remote corners of the state, from the steep gorges of the Santa Ynez
Mountains to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, carrying crews of
eradicators with machetes.

Barna's commitment to the war on pot is matched only by the increasing
sophistication of the growers who have been converting California's wild
lands into corporate-style pot farms. In recent years, California's
marijuana industry has undergone a radical change from the time when North
Coast hippies tended their backyard gardens in Frye boots and drove their
VW vans down to San Francisco to unload their stash. Today, the pot gardens
have moved south and tend to be larger than ever.

Last year, a farm in San Benito County yielded 53,000 plants. At $4,000 a
plant, the formula the state uses to measure the stuff, that was worth $212
million.

Another major change is that many of the biggest farms are being operated
by Mexican drug gangs who set up camp deep in remote corners of national
forest land. These huge operations, complete with 12-foot-tall watchtowers,
are tended by farm workers paid around $500 a month to guard the plants.

The increasingly high stakes involved were demonstrated with deadly results
on Aug. 24, when a Mexican citizen was shot and killed while defending a
pot farm in Madera County. Jesus Erasmo Figueroa-Valencia was shot when he
allegedly pulled a .45-caliber handgun on sheriff's deputies raiding a
7,000-plant farm, deputies said.

Some people debate the usefulness of the drug war. Barna is not one of those.

"I don't think we should ever give up," she said on a recent Sunday.
Outside, her crew was making ready for the next morning's assault in the
Santa Ynez range. "The more you hit the supply, the harder it is to get."

They call themselves the " 'Shroom Platoon."

Partly, it's because the men and women of CAMP have nicknames for
everything. One man is called "Red Line" because he is so heavy, according
to the joke, that the helicopter engine redlines when it tries to carry
him. "Broker" is always out of money. Barna is "Supreme Commander," for
obvious reasons.

As for the 'Shroom Platoon, that's a sardonic reference to the way
mushrooms are grown: kept in the dark and fed manure until the light goes
on. Then they come alive.

Barna is a mother of three whose gift of chat conceals a fierce drive,
which she comes by naturally. Her mother worked her way out of the
agricultural fields to teach social welfare at Fresno State University, in
the meantime communicating to her daughter an intense work ethic.

After a stint with the San Jose Police Department, she joined the state's
Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, which runs the CAMP program. Since 1983,
CAMP has teamed up with a variety of federal and state agencies, including
the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and sheriff's
departments from 56 counties, to eradicate pot gardens in rural areas.

Originally, there were six teams operating on a budget of $2.5 million. But
over time, the budget was cut to its current level of $600,000. That
supports three teams of 13 people.

Last year, Barna commanded the third mobile team, and her success led
directly to her appointment as commander of the entire CAMP effort, Michael
Van Winkle, press officer for the Justice Department, said.

"She's very gung-ho," said Van Winkle. "That's the kind of person you need
as CAMP commander."

With this year's season only half over, Barna's teams already had plucked
139,000 plants.

All this raises some questions: Just how much pot is out there? And how
much of it is even a pot warrior like Barna taking off the market? Was the
shooting in Madera County evidence that the growers are feeling the pinch
and deciding to stand and fight rather than cut and run when the state
helicopters fly in? Or are the efforts of CAMP barely scratching the surface?

On the one hand, it's a big state. When you fly over, you see vast
landscapes of greenery. Picking a marijuana garden out of this patchwork
would seem impossible. But the M-spotters, as marijuana spotters are known,
have at least one thing on their side: Pot needs direct sunlight for a few
hours a day. That means the pot garden, no matter how remote, is visible
from the air.

CAMP's efforts have drawn the attention of outsiders. Ukraine, facing its
own marijuana problem, sent a team to consult Barna. CAMP also sends pot
samples to the University of Mississippi, where they are analyzed for THC
content. Some samples in recent years have come back at 27 percent,
compared with 2 percent in the 1960s and '70s, a fact that only reinforces
Barna's attitude about the drug.

"Pot is not a gateway drug," she scoffed. "It is a drug."