MARIJUANA HARVEST BRINGS OUT THE AUTHORITIES

Helicopters are a sure sign of a fall harvest in Ohio, which ranks
among the top 10 states in marijuana growth.

Law enforcement officers take to the air to search cornfields for the
tall, green plants that stand out and above the yellow ears of corn
and tassels.

"Everyone talks about the war on drugs and the Colombian drug cartel,
but if we can't do anything about the drugs in our own back yard, how
are we going to do anything about drugs in Colombia?" said Ted Almay,
head of Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Identification and
Investigation.

Last year, state and local authorities confiscated 74,000 plants --
about 35 tons of marijuana.

Growers are most prevalent in southeast Ohio. The plants often are
found in cornfields but also have been cultivated in state parks and
soybean fields.

Tomas Salazar of the Sandusky Valley National Organization for the
Reform of Marijuana Laws in Port Clinton says taxpayer money could be
better spent elsewhere.

"They make a big noise about a small field to assure us that they are
working, but for what they get, it's a large amount of money wasted,"
he said.

The Drug Enforcement Agency sets an average street value per plant of
$1,000. That means Ohio officers stopped millions of dollars in
marijuana from making it to the streets last year alone, Almay said.

An average of 100 criminal cases are prosecuted each year, but most
growers don't go to jail.

The number of arrests is probably the fewest of all drug enforcement
cases, said Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick, coordinator of the
Multi-Area Narcotics Task Force.

"It requires staking out the area and catching people in the act of
cultivating. It's very labor-intensive, and the person might not come
back for a week," he said.

Although authorities search by air from mid-May to late October, the
plants are easiest to see during the harvest season.

"The plants are at their tallest now, and if you put them in the
middle of a cornfield, they are very, very easy to spot by air,"
Westrick said.

However, growers generally plant the marijuana in several fields
instead of one site, making it more difficult to zero in on the
plants, Almay said.

The owner of the field often doesn't know the plants are
there.

"What will happen in cornfields is that these guys will go 15 or 20
rows in and rip out the corn," Almay said. "When the farmer goes to
harvest, he'll just find these big holes."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry