KENTUCKY SWAPS MOONSHINE FOR MARIJUANA

In the rugged hills of eastern Kentucky, known more for poverty than for
beauty, more than 40 percent of the U.S. marijuana crop is grown: a crop
worth $3.9 billion annually in a region where the average household income
has yet to surpass $8,000 a year.

The region is the perfect drug-growing economic model, according to
Clayton, a professor at the University of Kentucky who wrote a report for
the United Nations on marijuana in "Third World" Appalachia.

"You've got that large level of unemployment,"he said, "you've got
insularity and you've got a need for cash."

While the rest of the country has prospered, the Kentucky region's endemic
poverty and ideal growing climate have fed the illegal industry. Rugged
terrain provides natural camouflage for plants worth $2,000 each on the
street. "It's tremendously profitable," said Joseph Famularo, an U.S.
attorney for the eastern district of Kentucky.

Some say the problem is partly a social one, that the offspring of the
backwoods Kentuckians, who distilled illegal moonshine, have shifted to a
more profitable product. The cat-and-mouse games between the authorities
and the growers, however, are much the same sometimes comic, sometimes
deadly serious.

Growers often carry firearms, plant animal traps and steal each other's
bounty. A hiker who stumbles onto someone's crop risks getting shot. "It's
a nasty, rotten business," Mr. Famularo said.