Governor Joins Sweep Of Marijuana Crop

Glendening Goes on an Air Raid To Highlight Eradication Efforts

By Karl Vick Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 15, 1997; Page B03
The Washington Post

The helicopter carrying the governor and the television cameras came in so
low that the wash of the rotor bent the marijuana plants almost to the
ground, not to mention the police officers scrambling to confiscate them.
When chunks of siding started blowing off a nearby farmhouse, a sergeant
radioed the pilot to take it up a little higher, please.

And when he did, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) looked out on the
big picture.

"You could see the site where the raid was going on, and you could also see
two schools: an elementary school and a middle school," Glendening said
afterward. "It is almost as if the drug dealers were growing their product
right in the middle of what their market is."

Glendening took to the air yesterday to highlight marijuana eradication
efforts by Maryland State Police spotters riding in National Guard
helicopters on missions financed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, which this year have led to the confiscation of 2,000
plants. But the media event yesterday gained a certain extra currency
because it came one day after release of a survey showing increased drug
use among American preteenagers.

The percentage of 12yearolds who reported knowing someone who used heroin
or cocaine had more than doubled since last year, to 23 percent, according
to the Commission on Substance Abuse Among America's Adolescents, a panel
created two years ago by the National Center on Addiction and Substance
Abuse at Columbia University.

The same survey, which involved telephone interviews with 1,115 teenagers
between ages 12 and 17 during June and July, supported the assumption that
the route to such hard drugs is through "gateway" substances such as
alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana.

Yesterday's early morning raid yielded 113 marijuana plants found on two
plots behind a farmhouse near Lothian, in southern Anne Arundel County not
far from the Prince George's line. More than two dozen state troopers, DEA
agents and National Guard troops twice the number normally used for a
raid swarmed onto the farm as the thwack of helicopter rotors
approached. An Army Blackhawk helicopter carried Glendening, Lt. Gov.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D) and a crew from CNN. A smaller Huey ferried a
load of photographers.

Trooper Jim Bonneville, who spied the plants from the air last week, said
that, with the harvest season fast approaching, "Operation Weedout" has
spotters in the air six days a week. Indoor cultivation is becoming more
popular, because it can go on yearround, he said. But airborne spotters
also routinely identify outdoor plots, especially on the fringes of
metropolitan areas.

"I've seen it growing in window boxes," Bonneville said.

At the farmhouse on Barksdale Farm Road, police arrested Wayne J. Antosh,
45, on charges of manufacturing marijuana, possession with intent to
distribute and possession. A pound of dried marijuana was found in the
house, state police said, adding that the investigation is continuing.

"There's more money to be made in marijuana than almost any other drug,"
said Tony Cammarato, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA district
office in Baltimore.

The 113 plants stood six to eight feet tall and were not yet budding,
meaning they were not ready for harvest. The plants were growing in two
plots a few hundred yards behind the house. Col. David B. Mitchell, state
police superintendent, said that each plant would produce about a pound of
marijuana and that together they were enough to produce about 75,000
cigarettes. He estimated the total value at more than $200,000.

"Their fear is not us," Bonneville said of the marijuana growers. "They're
worried about some hiker or someone coming through the woods and taking it
after they've cultivated this marijuana all year."

(c)Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company