DECADE OF CLASSIFIED MSU RESEARCH SOUGHT

Marijuana grows like knapweed in the Chu River Valley of Kazakhstan. This
valley, along what was once the Great Silk Road trade route from Europe to
China, is infested with Central Asia's largest stand of wild Cannabis sativa.

It covers an estimated 120,000 hectares - some 463 square miles - and can
produce 500 metric tons of marijuana a year. This is one of the places
where scientists from Montana State University quietly hunted for diseased
plants during a decade of classified research that aimed to discover
natural herbicides to kill narcotic plants, new weapons for the war on drugs.

MSU plant sciences professor David C. Sands and his colleagues worked in
secret, beginning around 1988, seeking ways to use the fungi that naturally
attack the plants that produce marijuana, opium and cocaine.

The research remained secret until last month, when MSU released a 4-inch
thick pile of documents, a disclosure prompted by an open-records lawsuit
brought by the Montana chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The documents and interviews reveal details about the research and suggest
that, although supporters of marijuana legalization worry that a killer
fungus may devastate marijuana and environmentalists are concerned the
fungus might harm other crops, the biggest backer of the marijuana
research, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, isn't convinced it will work.

The USDA has ended its funding of Sands' marijuana project, said Sandy
Miller Hays, information director for the Agricultural Research Service.

"After a few years, we decided we weren't satisfied with the results," Hays
said. "It just wasn't good enough."

Like Montana's losing war on knapweed, the war on narcotic plants is often
stymied by the wild plants' ability to bounce back from whatever man or
nature throws at them.

However, the USDA is still researching use of a related fungus to combat
cocaine. Hays said, "That's probably the star of our biocontrol program."

Sands' research was supported over 10 years by $2.9 million from the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency and Agricultural Research Service of the USDA,
according to MSU.

And for a decade, the research was supported by MSU.

But in the 1990s, the Clinton administration began declassifying 600
million pages of federal documents, which meant MSU's narcotic plant
research was no longer cloaked in secrecy.

In 1998, MSU President Mike Malone and the former vice president for
research decided to just say no to more narcotic plant research. Malone
wrote a letter Sept. 2, 1998, to Rep. Rick Hill, R-Mont., explaining the
federal government had been talking about expanding the research and
possible production of biocontrol agents.

"After much consideration, we have concluded that a university campus with
thousands of students is not an appropriate place for such research,"
Malone wrote.

He suggested MSU scientists might continue working with the federal
government at a military base or someplace with more protection. "I think,
without being paranoid, there are general risks," Malone said recently.
"It's fascinating research and it could have a major application, but we
need to look at our role and scope," and work on projects closer to
Montana's needs.

Neither Malone nor Tom McCoy, MSU's vice president for research, could cite
any specific threat to MSU or other universities doing similar research,
but they remain concerned. Just because nothing has happened, McCoy said,
doesn't mean it won't.

"There are drug lords in Colombia who, if they thought this stuff would
work, could see us as a legitimate target for retribution," McCoy said.

If Sands is disappointed, he's not saying.

Sands, 58, likes tennis, teaching, travel, art, music and poetry, according
to an MSU Web page, but he doesn't like talking to the press. He has
declined requests for interviews. Annette Trinity-Stevens, MSU research
office writer, said he's frustrated over inaccurate reporting in the press
and concerned about his well-being.

Though MSU no longer wants any part in the narcotic plant research, it says
that Sands is free to continue on his own off-campus as a private
consultant, apart from his $60,629-a-year job as a professor.

And he apparently hopes to do so, as president of Ag/Bio Con Inc., a
company based at the family's Bozeman home, whose officers are all Sands
family members.

Last spring, Florida's new drug chief, Jim McDonough, invited the professor
to make a presentation to state officials about testing the fungal
herbicide he has been developing to combat marijuana. McDonough had heard
about the fungus research while working for White House drug czar Barry
McCaffrey, according to Tim Bottcher, spokesman for the Florida office of
drug control.

Ag/Bio Con gave Florida officials literature saying that the fungus,
Fusarium oxysporum, a soil-borne fungus that causes wilt in marijuana,
"does not affect animals, humans or any other crops."

Ag/Bio Con literature dated March 25, 1999, and posted on the Internet by
NORML showed the company proposing a $10 million project extending more
than three years, and argued wiping out the source of narcotics was the
drug war's best strategy. It also cited a natural outbreak of wilt that hit
Peru's illegal crops in 1984.

Supporters of the research argue a natural herbicide would be more
environmentally friendly than spraying chemicals year after year. The
fungus targets one specific plant, does not harm other plants, stays in the
soil for years and can spread naturally. Yet the Florida Department of
Environmental Protection reacted with concern.

"It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium
species," wrote state Environmental Director David Struhs. "The inability
to guarantee that the organism will not mutate and attack other plant
species is of most concern."

Scientists expressed concerns Fusarium could harm the state's citrus or
other agricultural crops, or turn out to be the next kudzu vine, melaleuca
tree or water hyacinth - plants imported to Florida for benign reasons that
thrived in Florida's warm climate and spread aggressively, choking out
native plants and waters. Botanical bullies, the St. Petersburg Times
called them. The Florida Fusarium controversy even captured the attention
of The New York Times.

When the office of drug control made it clear that it wanted to test the
fungus at a quarantined University of Florida facility near Gainesville -
not spray it over the countryside - the state environmental and
agricultural directors gave their approval. Testing might take five to 10
years, said Bryan Baker, coordinator for pesticide issues with the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection.

The office of drug control still hasn't decided whether to recommend to
Gov. Jeb Bush that the fungus be formally tested, Bottcher said. One
outside scientist has told them the chances of the fungus mutating are as
remote as the chances of "a 747 crashing in the Super Bowl stadium on Super
Bowl Sunday."

"Some people would have us not even test it," Bottcher said. "We'd be
derelict if we just ignored it."

Some Florida newspaper columnists and marijuana activists have labeled the
fungus "genetically engineered," which MSU insists is incorrect. In the big
stack of documents MSU released, there is discussion in one doctoral
student's dissertation of seeking mutant variations of the fungus that
might be more potent. MSU plant sciences professor Don Mathre, who's
familiar with the dissertation, said such mutations can be speeded up in
the lab chemically or with ultraviolet light.

But there is no discussion in the documents of genetic engineering -
splicing in genetic material from another species.

There are many different forms of Fusarium oxysporum, and each targets a
particular host plant. One form attacked the Gallatin Valley's pea crop
after World War I and that, along with the popularity of frozen peas, wiped
out Bozeman's canned pea industry, Mathre said. It is the reason local
gardeners shouldn't grow their sweet peas in the same spot year after year,
he said.

A 1984 Berkeley study found the Fusarium that keys in on marijuana would
wipe out 50 percent of Cannabis plants, but did not affect dozens of other
crops tested, from tomatoes to potatoes, barley and wheat.

"It's a possibility" that the form of Fusarium that attacks marijuana could
mutate and attack beneficial crops, but "it's probably remote," said MSU
professor Gary Strobel, an expert on fungi. "These Fusarium are probably
found in every gram of soil on the planet."

As far as testing Fusarium in Florida, Strobel said, "I don't see it's that
great an environmental threat, given that it's so prevalent on the planet."

His concern is that it may not work, because of the resiliency shown by
genetically diverse populations of wild weeds. If you try to mow down all
the dandelions in your lawn, he pointed out, you end up selecting for
dandelions that can flower below the level of your mower.

Though Strobel may have doubts about Fusarium's effectiveness, he said,
"It's worth a try. . . . Enough families are broken as a result of drug use."

Congress agrees it's worth a try. Last year it appropriated $23 million for
research into using fungi as herbicides against the plants that produce
cocaine, marijuana and heroin. Congress is hoping nations like Peru,
Bolivia and Colombia will allow the "mycoherbicides" to be used in their
countries.

Such proposals outrage the Montana NORML chapter. Director John Masterson
of Missoula, whose regular job is with an Internet company, called it scary.

Masterson said he's concerned MSU's mycoherbicides could threaten Canada's
legal hemp crops just across the border. He added he plans to send the
information NORML has uncovered to Montana farm groups that supported the
1999 Montana House resolution urging federal legalization of industrial
hemp as an alternative crop.

"It's inappropriate and potentially dangerous," Masterson said of MSU's
research, "spawned by the hysteria of the war on drugs. ... The sentiment
that created this study is the demonization of marijuana. Most drug use is
casual marijuana use."