NATIONAL FORESTS FALL PREY TO MAJOR MARIJUANA OPERATIONS

ASHEVILLE - As spring approaches, so does marijuana growing season in
the Pisgah and Nantahala national forests of Western North Carolina.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy estimates that
more than half of the marijuana consumed in the United States is
produced domestically. Much of that - no one knows how much for sure -
is grown on public lands, primarily the country's 155 national forests.

The reasons are obvious: the land is fertile, remote and free. There's
no risk of forfeiture, plantations are difficult to trace, and growers
have land agents outmanned, outspent and outgunned.

"It's a large unorganized coalition of people that live very close to
national forest lands who are generally very close to the poverty
level and looking for any way to try to make a dollar," said Jack
Gregory, special agent in charge of the U.S. Forest Service's Southern
region.

Public lands have long been targeted by marijuana producers, but
investigators trace a rise in production to the 1980s, when the
government enacted more stringent asset forfeiture laws. With more
than a million acres of public land here in the mountains, there's
plenty of opportunity for growers.

In 1999, 452,330 marijuana plants were removed from national forest
land, with North Carolina ranked fourth. With each plant estimated to
produce at least 2.2 pounds of pot, that's 995,126 pounds of
marijuana, with an estimated street value of about $700 million.

There are just 588 Forest Service agents and officers assigned to 192
million acres of national forests, a decline from 625 officers in
1996. That's nearly 330,000 acres per officer, and only one of them is
dedicated full time to drug enforcement.

"We spend a lot of time and energy stopping stuff from coming into
this country, but we don't really pay much attention to our own
backyard," said Dan Bauer, the Forest Service's drug program
coordinator.

"We don't know how much is growing out there," Bauer said. "There are
places where we're probably getting less than 10 percent. I doubt
we're getting much over 50 percent in most of our areas."

Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug in the United States, with
about 11 million users, including 8.3 percent of teens, according to
government statistics.