PLOTS THAT WENT TO POT SEND AN ECONOMY UP IN SMOKE

As they tended their plots in the marijuana fields that blanket the
mountainside in full view of this nation's capital, Tornado and Stump-i
lamented their miserable Christmas.

First came the Colombians, dumping huge quantities of cheap marijuana in a
bid to take control of the Caribbean "ganja" (marijuana) market.

Then the US Marines landed.

Three Marine combat helicopters packed with Caribbean troops, US Drug
Enforcement Administration agents and St Vincentian police descended on
marijuana fields in this remote south-eastern corner of the Caribbean before
Christmas.

During a week-long operation, dubbed Weedeater, they slashed and burned more
than five million marijuana plants, seven tonnes of cured pot and 250 drying
huts, arrested 13 farmers and killed one. All this on a small island that
per capita is one of the world's largest producers of the drug.

"This thing is way overbearing, man," said Stump-i, a
fisherman-turned-farmer whose 140-kilogram harvest went up in smoke.

Added Tornado, whose plot survived: "If the Americans destroy all the
marijuana in St Vincent, they'll destroy St Vincent. It's the backbone of
the economy. It's our livelihood. And now that the Americans have killed us
on bananas, we have no other choice."

Welcome to St Vincent and the Grenadines, a nation of 32 islands and about
120,000 people where, according to anthropologists, sociologists and
counter-narcotics agents, ganja quietly rules.

By their estimates, illegal marijuana sales and exports account for close to
a fifth of St Vincent's gross domestic product; as many as a fifth of adults
smoke it regularly; and local politicians and business leaders privately
concede that the drug is the driving force in the island's economy - even
bigger than its traditional banana crop, which has fallen victim to US trade
policy.

Operation Weedeater has inflamed anti-American sentiment and rekindled a
movement to decriminalise the drug here, even as it failed to destroy the
bulk of the crop.

"We didn't touch nearly a 10th of what's up there," said one of the eight
Drug Enforcement Administration agents who took part in the week of hacking
and burning - though the local police commissioner insists that as much as
half the crop was destroyed.

Ganja growers wish the outside world, especially the US, better understood
their trade and its vital role in a small nation where an estimated 40 per
cent of the labor force is unemployed.

"We understand that people out in the world see this as a drug," Tornado
said, twirling a marijuana seedling between blistered fingers. "Here, this
isn't a drug. It's a plant - a plant that brings food to the table. And
anything that brings food is something from God."