SEARCH FOR POT GROWERS INTENSIFIES

With another year on the books of destroying more than $1 billion worth of
marijuana, Kentucky State Police say they are making inroads into
controlling the state's largest illegal cash crop.

The Governor's Marijuana Task Force will start gearing up in May for its
annual outdoor marijuana eradication effort.

State police report seizing 516,890 outdoor plants in 1999, worth an
estimated $1.3 billion, from Kentucky farms, hillsides, forests and yards.
The new figures place the 1999 tally slightly ahead of the 1998 tally of
439,080 plants, worth an estimated $1.1 billion.

Despite the success in destroying plants, however, the growers still elude
police by planting on public lands or by trespassing on private property to
plant. Police helicopters find the fields - but investigators often can't
determine whose marijuana they've found.

"Eradication isn't enough. We want to make arrests, too," said State Police
Lt. Shelby Lawson, who is the coordinator of the Governor's Marijuana Task
Force.

The task force includes members of state and local police and sheriffs; the
Kentucky National Guard; the Civil Air Patrol and the U.S. Forest Service.
The task force uses informants, drug-sniffing dogs and helicopters to
determine where large and small marijuana fields are.

Lawson said authorities don't have any new equipment or strategies this year
but have begun concentrating on tying the marijuana fields to whomever is
actually growing the plant. Although state police charged 460 people with
marijuana cultivation last year, Lawson said many more aren't caught.

For example, in July 1999, the Owen County Sheriff's office found more than
a 1,000 marijuana plants - estimated to be worth about $1.5 million - near
Brush Creek Road. However, authorities have never been able to find out who
cultivated the plants.

"Believe me, we'd like to find out who put it there," Owen Deputy Sheriff
Larry Osborne.

Also, in July 1999, more than 1,300 outdoor marijuana plants were found in
Grant County. That haul was estimated at $1.3 million, but again, the
property owners were never charged and no arrests were made.

"We never got anywhere with it," Grant Commonwealth Attorney Jim Crawford
said.

"If you are a smart marijuana grower, you grow it on someone else's
property."

Lawson said probably every county in Kentucky has at least one spot or patch
where marijuana is grown. However, the bulk of state police efforts are
concentrated in south central and south eastern Kentucky.

"It has a lot to do with the terrain. There are just a lot of places to
conceal marijuana plants there," Lawson said.

Northern Kentucky - particularly Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties - has
fewer outdoor marijuana patches "because it's a sprawling suburban area,"
Lawson said.

Police in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties say they run across a field of
outdoor marijuana plants from time to time, but the problem doesn't seem to
be escalating.

Boone County Sheriff Mike Helmig, whose agency routinely burned thousands of
marijuana plants a year during the 1980s, said he has found more people are
growing the weed indoors to avoid detection.

"This month, we have made six arrests for two indoor grows," Helmig said.

"We have found that people like to grow from one to a dozen plants in their
apartments.

"We have found some for personal use, but we have also found some for
trafficking."

Campbell County Police Chief David Sandfoss said outdoor marijuana plants
would usually be found in dense areas along the Ohio or Licking Rivers or in
rural areas in his county.

But he said his officers haven't reported seeing an unusual number of
marijuana plants this year or last.

"We did have a good amount that was seized about four years ago in the Camp
Springs area," Sandfoss said.

Kenton County Police Detective Chris Haddle said his officers see an
occasional marijuana patch.

But most of the weed that his officers find are in conjunction with an
arrest on another matter, such as drunken driving, Haddle said.

"Kentucky State Police will do a big sweep and we will find a patch in the
southern end of the county, but nothing that turns into 200 plants," Haddle
said.

"The most experience we have is for people's personal use."

(SIDEBAR)

Battling Marijuana

Kentucky State Police Lt. Shelby Lawson, who heads the Governor's Marijuana
Task Force, takes a three-pronged approach to eradicating the
$1-billion-a-year illegal weed:

Burn as much as possible the outdoor crop that is cultivated on state,
federal and private property;

Arrest those who are growing the marijuana, whether for themselves or for
distribution;

Confiscate property or money that is used in the drug trade and convert the
proceeds to buy more police equipment and weapons to use against illegal
marijuana growers.