FUNGUS MIGHT FIGHT DRUGS

TALLAHASSEE -- Just the thought of it troubles environmentalists: Combatting
marijuana with a plant-killing fungus.

But that's all it is at this juncture -- a thought -- says James McDonough,
director of Florida's Office of Drug Control. And all he is even thinking
about, he says, is a laboratory test, in quarantine.

Two key state agencies -- the Departments of Agriculture and Environmental
Protection -- have given approval for the start of tests in a quarantine lab
that Agriculture operates in Gainesville.

At the same time, they have warned the governor's office in a letter that
they "want to make clear that this does not imply future approval of any
outdoor testing" of the fungus. They also are asking that federal agencies
are involved in the development of any research in quarantine.

The governor's office has not decided to proceed with testing.

"The status is, we are nowhere on it other than to ask questions as to
whether it is both safe and useful -- safe for research testing and useful
in terms that it could do some good," says McDonough.

"The proposal is to test it, to see how it can be utilized -- if it can be
utilized -- to control marijuana," says Albert Wollerman, general counsel
for the drug control office. "There has been no decision to go ahead and
begin such proceeding s."

For 18 years, Florida has fought marijuana in plant-by-plant combat. Last
year, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the state
eradicated 55,311 plants. Their street value: $55.3 million. That is about
half the plants killed the year before, however -- and almost one-fifth the
toll taken at a high- point for marijuana eradication in 1992: 243,452 plants.

"The cultivation of marijuana in 1998 was down along with all of the legal
crops in Florida due to the effects of El Nino and other atmospheric
conditions that created flood, droughts and wildfires," an FDLE report says.

The substance in debate now is known as Fusarium oxysporum -- a herbicide.

In Florida, talk of unleashing any biological agent leads to inevitable
comparisons with kudzu, the weed that went wild, or Australian pine and
melaleuca, trees that are the scourge of wetlands.

"We tend to manipulate the environment sometimes with these biological
introductions," says David Gluckman, lobbyist for the Florida Wildlife
Federation. "We're paying the price for that now."

But any discussion of letting a pot-killer loose in Florida is more than
premature, the governor's office says.

"It's almost in the, `Let's ask the question and see the answers phase,' "
says McDonough, recruited by Gov. Jeb Bush to serve as "drug czar" in a
Capitol that went without one for several years. "This must be one of 500
things I have asked about since I arrived in Florida -- including money
laundering and what are the drug trafficking practices."