POLICE HARVEST SET FOR AREA POT CROP

Police across Southwestern Ontario are gearing up for their annual blitz to
root out illegal marijuana from farmers' fields. But most renegade pot
cultivators will likely just count their losses and remain anonymous.

That's because while the joint effort between the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, the Ontario Provincial Police and civic police forces is expected
to net about 24,000 plants this summer, police don't expect to nab anywhere
near that number of growers.

Last year, police pulled more than 25,000 plants from cornfields, creek
beds and rural bush throughout the region but arrested only 14 people for
cultivating pot on others' property.

Police seized more than 5,000 plants in Middlesex, Elgin and Oxford
counties alone -- but made no arrests.

"In an ideal world, we would catch more people," said Staff Sgt. Marty Van
Doren, head of the London RCMP detachment's drug section.

"But if we find a patch of 30 or 40 plants, we can't afford the manpower to
have two or three (officers) sit there for a day, two days or two weeks
waiting for somebody to come and get them," he said.

Still, just seizing the plants helps to foil some potentially large
trafficking operations, police said.

Police estimate the street value of each marijuana plant -- some will yield
as little as about 28 grams of usable pot, while others will produce up to
454 grams -- averages out to about $100.

Drug cops are on the beat throughout the growing season, from the May long
weekend until early October, but they step up their enforcement efforts for
a week-long "major onslaught" in the late stages of summer, Van Doren said.

The last two years, in addition to helicopter and ground unit searches,
police have appealed more than ever for public help to find hidden pot plants.

"Every year we seem to get a little more help because we're educating
people and we get more and more farmers calling us or Crime Stoppers
(1-800-222-TIPS) and saying they've spotted plants," said London OPP Det.
Const. Bob Martin, local co-ordinator for the Southwestern Ontario
marijuana eradication effort.

Police haven't arrested any outdoor growers so far this season in the three
counties surrounding London, but they have seized an average number of
plants, Van Doren and Martin said.

Police destroy the seized plants unless they make an arrest and need
samples as evidence, Van Doren said.

Pete Young, owner of The Organic Traveller store at 343 Richmond St. in
London, said growers are finding more effective ways to hide their plants
from police, such as scattering them rather than planting them in patches.

Although marijuana is similar in appearance to industrial hemp, which was
legalized earlier this year, marijuana is comparatively easy to identify in
farmers' fields because anyone growing hemp for fibre or grain has to grow
at least four hectares.

Copyright (c) 1998 The London Free Press

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski