MORE POT GROWN IN STATE PARKS

Authorities Blame Mexican Drug Traffickers

SAN FRANCISCO -- Mexican drug traffickers have expanded their
marijuana-growing operations in California parks as state and local
governments have tightened spending and slashed jobs and services.

Law enforcement officials say the traffickers, taking advantage of
the fact that there are fewer sheriff's deputies and rangers
monitoring parks, are cultivating more pot than ever before. This
year's multibillion-dollar crop is on pace to be the largest in
history, said California officials.

"It's a huge problem," said Gordon Taylor, the assistant special
agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
"California is ground zero for domestic marijuana cultivation in the country."

The illicit crops are believed to be hidden in California's 31
million acres of forest, with most grown in state and national parks.

So far this year, California's Campaign Against Marijuana Planting,
or CAMP, has seized more than a million plants, said Michelle
Gregory, spokeswoman for the California Bureau of Narcotic
Enforcement. The pot-growing season is not even half over.

Much of the cannabis grown in California is exported around the
country into Mexico and overseas.

In early July, 24 agents from a California Bureau of Narcotic
Enforcement task force swooped in on a large plantation in the
Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The five plots of marijuana -- 15,474
plants in all -- were bright green and easily visible from a
helicopter. The caretakers had fled by the time agents arrived.

Even if the growers had been captured, drug enforcement officers
said, it might not have made a difference. Cartels can afford to
sacrifice workers and crops, especially when the penalty usually
amounts to nothing more than deportation of a few low-level laborers
- -- typically undocumented immigrants.

The growers often make less than $100 a day, usually working off
debts to "coyotes" who have guided them across the border. They know
little or nothing about the overall operation, drug enforcement officials said.

"We've had cases where some of the workers are kidnapped and told
that if they don't work, something will happen to their families,"
Gregory said. "A lot of them aren't going to talk because they've
been threatened."

Michael Johnson, CAMP's statewide commander, said often the only way
to get to the illegal activity's source is to follow the crop from
its harvest to its delivery point.

"They are making money on this," said Johnson, gesturing toward the
giant mound of high-grade sinsemilla his agents had just seized. The
big, purple buds can fetch as much as $3,500 a plant, he said. "The
money is being used for other illegal operations, like smuggling guns
and methamphetamines."

Just finding marijuana is often a problem, given that helicopters
cost a lot of money to fly and are seldom available to sheriff's officers.

The CAMP team seized 92,971 plants in Trinity County last year, a
fraction of what they would have gotten with more sheriff's officers,
Craig said. "We just don't have the manpower to go out and chase them
all down, and they know that."

The growers are so brazen that they often return to replant crops in
the same plots that were recently raided, authorities said, and they
don't care about the extensive environmental damage they cause by
clear-cutting forests, damming up creeks and polluting public land
with pesticides and trash.

Legalization is not the solution, Johnson said, given that most of
the pot is being grown illegally on public parkland by foreign
citizens who cannot be taxed.

"I've been doing this for five years, and there just seems to be ...
more of it everywhere," Johnson said. "We don't even bother with
medicinal grows. What we're concerned about is the destruction of the habitat."