POT FARMERS GROWING MARIJUANA IN PUBLIC PARKS

As Border Security Intensifies, Dope Farmers Cultivate Public Lands

With the U.S.-Mexico border being tightened, law enforcement is
seeing more locally grown marijuana -- often with dope farmers using
public lands such as parks and forest preserves.

Last month, Forest Preserve police burned about 3,000 plants at
Pioneer Woods near Palos Hills, gathered from half a dozen spots in
the south suburbs.

And earlier this year, two men were sentenced to two years in prison
in connection with tens of thousands of marijuana plants grown "in
straight rows like corn" in a forest preserve near Barrington.

Mexican nationals Jose Verra and Bernardo Rangel, both 23, told
investigators they were farmers paid to grow the crop. A college-age
conservation intern found the "plantation" and told authorities.

Verra and Rangel tended about 20,000 marijuana plants -- some up to 8
feet tall -- valued at a total of $4 million, inside the Crabtree
Nature Preserve. During the bust, a tent was found along with food
supplies, fertilizer bags and a cooking and showering area. About 30
yards away, the farmers had built a reinforced underground bunker,
lined with four-inch logs and covered with dirt.

Waszak said he suspects marijuana growers are using public land to
avoid having their private property seized if their crop is spotted
by investigators.

In August, police destroyed about 1,800 marijuana plants being
cultivated on land owned by the McHenry County Conservation District
- -- one of the largest drug operations authorities there can recall
finding on public land.

"It doesn't belong to anybody, like a farmer's field does," said
McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren. "A lot of it has to do with the
land being set aside and remote. We still have a lot of rural land in
our county, and it's ideal for growers."

Large-scale marijuana farming, with a late September to mid-October
harvest, isn't for your average Cheech and Chong.

"It's very labor-intensive. You have to clear the land, build berms
to keep the deer out and fertilize," said one law enforcement
official. "You have to know what you're doing."

Many times, the crops are watched by armed guards to protect against
"patch pilots" -- other dope dealers who steal crops.

And if "you've got a family hiking along and stumbling into this,
that's not good," the official said.

John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
says 75 percent to 80 percent of marijuana grown outdoors in the
United States is on state or federal land. The Drug Enforcement
Administration says more than 4.8 million marijuana plants were
seized at outdoor sites in 2006.

Tighter border controls make it harder to smuggle marijuana into the
United States, so more Mexican drug networks are growing crops here,
Walters says.

Drug organizations use the Chicago area as a base for distributing
marijuana across the Midwest, says DEA special agent Joanna Zoltay.
But the problem is being seen across the country.

For example, the number of marijuana plants confiscated on public
land in California grew from 40 percent of total seizures in 2001 to
75 percent in 2007.

A site operated by a Mexican organization with 16,742 marijuana
plants was raided last month in North Cascades National Park in
Washington state, says park Supt. Chip Jenkins. People living at the
site cut trees, dammed creeks and left 1,000 pounds of trash, he says.

Thousands of marijuana plants were seized last month in Utah's Dixie
National Forest, with a man named Ignacio Rodriguez charged with drug
and immigration offenses, says Michael Root, a DEA special agent. And
in July and August, officials seized more than 340,000 plants, some
from Sequoia National Forest and Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks.

Officers sometimes have to crawl through thickly wooded areas to get
to the groves.

"They don't make it so anyone can see it," Waszak said.

Marijuana sometimes grows naturally -- so-called "ditch weed."
Visitors to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore were warned this
summer that thousands of plants have sprouted there.

But Waszak said the weed in the Cook County preserves isn't growing wild.

"I'll tell you this, fertilizer bags and milk jugs don't grow in the
Forest Preserve," Waszak said. "We concentrate on finding cartels or
people growing excess plants that certainly are not for personal consumption."

Forest Preserve police team with the DEA to investigate major growing
operations. Their probes typically start during the spring planting
season, keeping watch on the crop and making busts before the plants
are harvested.

When a crop is found, police take samples that are tested to measure
its potency.

"Some of it is strong hybrids of marijuana," Waszak says.

With marijuana the most common illicit drug in America, marijuana
growers feed a hungry market.

According to the recently released 2007 National Survey of Drug Use
and Health, published by the federal Department of Health and Human
Services, 40 percent of Americans, or about 100 million people age 12
or over, say they have smoked pot sometime in their lives. About 25
million say they have used marijuana in the last year. In the survey,
an estimated 14.4 million Americans smoked pot in the last month.

For teens 12 to 17, about 6.7 percent smoked pot in the last 30 days
- -- down from 8.2 percent in 2002. For young adults ages 18 to 25,
about 16 percent used marijuana in the last month. Of adults over the
age of 26, about 4 percent smoked pot in the last 30 days.

In 2007, about 2.1 million people used marijuana for the first time
- -- about 6,000 a day. The mean age for first trying pot is about 17.