DROUGHT AIDS POLICE HUNTING FOR MARIJUANA

The drought that's aggravating home gardeners, pool owners and golf course
caretakers has been a boon to at least one group: police officers who hunt
out marijuana plants.

With the shrubs and underbrush that generally conceal marijuana turning
brown in the sweltering heat, carefully tended - and religiously watered -
pot plants are sticking out like very sore, very green thumbs, law
enforcement officials say.

Police in Maryland and Virginia regularly embark on airplane flights over
private property and public parks in search of illicitly grown marijuana.
Sgt. Kirk Holub, head of the Montgomery County Md., Police Department's
narcotics division, said that from above, the "emerald green" of marijuana
stands out in a field turned barren from lack of rain.

"It's made it easier to identify the crops. It's just a lot harder to find
cover," Holub said. This week alone, officials in Maryland have seized more
than 100 marijuana plants. Arrests have nearly doubled, from 54 last year to
about 100 so far this year.

So far this year, about 2,500 marijuana plants have been found in Maryland,
up from 2,200 - or $4 million worth - at this time last year.

In Virginia, which hasn't suffered the same rainfall deficits this summer as
Maryland, officials have seized more than 7,500 plants, compared to roughly
10,000 seized in the same period last year, said First Sgt. J.C. Lewis, head
of the Virginia State Police Marijuana Eradication Program.

The problem for marijuana farmers has to do with the stubby root structure
of their chosen crop. The University of Mississippi's Mamhoud Elsohly, who
researches marijuana for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the nation's
only legal provider of marijuana for research, said cannabis roots extend a
scant six inches into the ground, unlike the roots of, say, cotton plants,
which grow far deeper and require less water.

"In order to survive, (marijuana plants) need to be attended to. And if
they're attended to, they'll be more visible," Elsohly said.

The Catch-22 has attracted the attention of the National Organization for
the Reform of Marijuana Laws Foundation, a Washington-based pot-advocacy group.