U.S.-BACKED ANTI-DRUG PLAN PRUNING THE ROSE INDUSTRY

RICHMOND, Calif. -- Glenn Sugihara is closing the greenhouse doors on his
family's 87-year-old cut-rose business.

His is the latest East Bay nursery to fall victim to the influx of cheap
South American roses, an industry nurtured by the U.S. government to help
Colombia grow flowers instead of producing cocaine and heroin.

Sugihara's rose bushes will be torn out and the greenhouses -- some built
by Sugihara's grandfather in 1913 -- will be leased to Color Spot, the
nation's largest bedding plant grower.

"Emotionally, it has been a hard decision," said Sugihara, a
third-generation grower whose neighbors, the Fujis and Ninomiyas, leased to
Color Spot last year.

"But we have a substantial investment in our greenhouses and with the
current trend of more imported roses coming into the U.S., we feel we can
do a lot better by leasing our property."

America's war on drugs is not denting traffickers' profits, but rose
growers say it is killing their industry.

In the 1970s and '80s, Contra Costa growers sold 22 million cut blooms a
year. In the past decade, volume has dropped by half and the number of
nurseries has dwindled from eight to two.

"Rose growers are an endangered species," said Contra Costa Agricultural
Commissioner Edward Meyer. "It's sad because this comes at a time when as a
county and as a nation, we are trying to preserve agriculture and our
heritage."

It is the same story across California, which produces two-thirds of all
domestic roses. The number of growers has plummeted to 50 from 500 just 20
years ago.

California produces two-thirds of all domestic roses. Most are grown in
four coastal counties -- Monterey, Santa Clara, Contra Costa and Santa Cruz
- -- where roses thrive under warm skies and ocean-cooled nights.

"The rose industry is getting squashed by offshore competition and a strict
regulatory environment," said Lee Murphy, president of the California Cut
Flower commission. "It's tough to be a rose grower these days."

It has never been easy.

It was 1912 when Jujiro and Teru Sugihara -- Glenn Sugihara's grandparents
- -- bought land in Richmond, Calif., built a greenhouse and began growing
carnations and roses.

Teru sorted and wrapped the flowers each day, and Jujiro took the long
journey by ferry to the San Francisco flower market to sell them. They,
their three sons and the family nursery weathered the Depression and World
War I.

The nursery even survived World War II, when the Sugiharas and their
neighboring Japanese-American rose growers were imprisoned in internment
camps. Neighboring growers of Swiss ancestry, Francis and Carrie Aebi,
looked after the Sugiharas' and another Japanese grower's roses and
greenhouses until the families could return.

But the global economy is a different hardship. South American growers pay
workers a fraction of what U.S. laborers earn and are subject to far fewer
- -- if any -- environmental laws on chemical and pesticide use.

The biggest blow, say rose growers, was the 1991 Andean Trade Preference
Act, which gives Colombian cut-flower producers duty-free access to U.S.
markets and saves growers from 5 percent to 7 percent on sales. The act is
designed to give growers an economic incentive to help offset the lucrative
illegal drug trade.

It has helped Colombia's cut-flower industry. According to industry
reports, six out of every 10 cut flowers sold in the United States are
grown there. It generates $580 million a year in sales and provides 150,000
jobs.

But Colombia's drug trade is flourishing, too.

According to Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to former
President George Bush, annual Colombian cocaine production doubled between
1995 and last year. And more than 90 percent of cocaine and 70 percent of
the heroin consumed in the United States originated in Colombia.

Back home, it is the domestic rose growers who are losing money. Not only
are overseas roses cheaper, but the public demands foreign-grown blooms
because the climate and higher altitudes yield roses with longer stems and
bigger heads.

Aebi, 92 and retired, was among the first to predict serious trouble for
the rose industry. He went to Colombia in the mid-1980s and saw acres and
acres of roses.

"I saw a freight train coming right at us at high speed," he told his
family upon his return.

Aebi's daughter, Lina Hale, tried to fight. She wrote letters and lobbied
lawmakers. She testified before Congress in 1996 on behalf of 42 California
growers.

"Nothing we've done has worked," Hale said. "The U.S. government has used
us as the sacrificial lamb in its failed mission to curtail illegal drugs."