DISCOVERY OF MARIJUANA FIELDS HINTS AT RETURN TO LARGE-SCALE OPERATIONS

LEBANON, Va. -- The recent discovery of large marijuana fields in Russell
and Wise counties has state officials trying to determine whether illegal
growers are returning to large-scale operations.

It's definitely got us wondering,'' said state police 1st Sgt. J.C. Lewis,
director of Virginia's marijuana eradication program. "It's really too
early to tell if we have a trend going. But in recent years, we've been
used to seeing more plots and fewer plants."

In the past half-decade, growers have scatted their crop among several
small fields to avoid detection from police helicopters.

But on Friday, Russell deputies found a field of 5,404 pot plants in the
western part of the county. The find is the biggest in Russell since 1985,
when authorities discovered 17,000 plants growing near Kent's Ridge,
Sheriff Trigg Fields said Wednesday.

On July 31, Wise deputies found a field of 3,865 pot plants outside the
community of Derby, near the Kentucky line. Days later, they found smaller
fields with 676 plants.

The wholesale value of the pot found in the two fields is between $9.4
million and $18.8 million, according to official estimates.

The pot raids in Wise and Russell counties are part of the state's
eradication effort that begins each spring. Local deputies used state
police and National Guard helicopters to spot the fields.

The size of the two fields runs counter to the way growers have operated in
the past five years, Lewis said. Typical plots once contained between 2,000
and 6,000 plants, visible from airplanes because of marijuana's distinctive
bluish tint. Growers in the mid-1990s began to scale back, putting an
average of 80 plants in each of four or five separate fields.

The result was a decline in the amount of marijuana police seized each
year. In 1994, police destroyed 39,338 plants in Virginia. But that number
began to drop as growers distributed crops over several locations. From
July 1, 1998, to June 30, 1999, the last year for which statistics are
available, Virginia authorities seized 15,051 plants.

The state kicked off its eradication effort this year in southwest
Virginia. Other than the two big fields in Wise and Russell, the size of
the discovered pot fields is typical, Lewis said.

In Lee County, deputies have destroyed 837 plants; in Scott County, 24; in
Buchanan County, 280; in Washington County, 59; in Tazewell County, 49.

Authorities will likely make many more raids as harvest time approaches and
the plants get bigger, Lewis said. After the season is over, police will
look at the numbers to see whether there is a trend toward bigger fields,
or whether the large fields were an aberration. The fields were on private
property, and no one has been arrested.

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, saying its
calculations are based on federal data, estimated that Virginia produces
about $197 million worth of pot annually.

Far southwest Virginia, where much of the state's marijuana grows, is
ringed on three sides by a 65-county area of West Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee that the federal Drug Enforcement Agency has labeled a
"high-intensity drug trafficking area."

Wise County Sheriff Ronnie Oakes said Kentucky growers might be pushing
eastward into Wise and could be responsible for planting the large field
outside Derby.