CARTELS EXPAND INTO STATE'S POT GARDENS

Mexican Organizations Muscle Into Cultivation

MORGAN HILL - As the helicopter clattered down a narrow canyon, Special
Agent Sonya Barna gestured toward a break in the forest canopy where the
ground cover shimmered with hues of blue and green.

Barna would soon be on the ground, leading the 144th raid so far this year
by the state Campaign Against Marijuana Planting or CAMP.

Agents have been in the field only since Aug. 2, but had confiscated nearly
100,000 plants as of last week. The Attorney General's Office estimated the
street value of those crops at $391 million.

CAMP seems to be on pace to eradicate more than the 136,000 plants taken out
last year.

How much more is out there?

"I couldn't guess," said Gil Van Attenhoven, CAMP's operations commander.
"California is one of the leading sources of high-grade marijuana in the world."

What he does know is that his agents are finding bigger gardens on neatly
terraced hillsides with sophisticated, drip irrigation systems.

"With the exception of Humboldt County where we're still dealing with small
growers, in much of the state it's not just a couple of guys out there
growing marijuana any more," Van Attenhoven said. "It's Mexican National
drug organizations. These are commercial operations.

In recent years, said Attorney General Bill Lockyer, drug cartels have
seized control of much of California's illicit methamphetamine production.
Now they're moving into marijuana cultivation with the same brutal
efficiency, he said.

Typically, cartels recruit poor Mexicans and install them in forested areas
of California with the equipment they need, investigators have found. If
growers can bring in a crop, they'll get a big cash bonus. The previous week
CAMP confiscated more than 10,000 plants in another Santa Clara County raid.
The growers got away, but the groceries they left behind included the beans,
tortillas and homemade chorizo that are staples for Mexico's poor.