TWO MEN AND THEIR HUNT FOR MARIJUANA

Californian, Mexican Search and Destroy

ORLEANS, CALIF. -- What does a tough Mexican army major barking
orders in the outlaw hills of the Sierra Madre have in common with
the laconic sheriff detective from the north woods of California who
puts a marijuana sticker on his truck as a joke?

They are both professional weed-whackers committed to the cause --
the hard, dirty, difficult destruction of marijuana out in the
fields, plant by plant. Mexico has the largest marijuana eradication
operation in the world, followed by the United States. It is a
downright Sisyphean task.

October is harvest time. Marijuana bushes as burly as Christmas trees
are hidden between the corn stalks above the beaches of Acapulco, and
the buds are swelling on the steep hills of California's Six Rivers
National Forest. There is also a thriving indoor business, almost
impossible to find. The United Nations says 145 million pounds of
marijuana was grown last year, with Morocco, Paraguay, Mexico and the
United States the top-producing countries.

Here are two men trying to whittle that number down.

Maj. Hugo de la Rosa is a commander in Military Zone 35, a wild
mountainous region where they once produced the legendary strain
known as Acapulco Gold, back when Pink Floyd ruled arena rock.

There are five full army battalions stationed here, and though troops
render assistance during natural disasters, what they do most is
search for opium poppies and marijuana bushes. It is an army whose
enemy is a plant -- grown by ghosts. The farmers are almost never
caught, and rarely arrested.

De la Rosa and his troops leave their fortified base in a convoy of
five trucks -- like an occupying army moving through hostile
territory. Earlier this month, a dozen mutilated bodies were dumped
here, the killers leaving taunting notes warning soldiers to back
off. The commander snaps at his turret gunner to look sharp.

Ten minutes outside of town, a man on a horse waves soldiers over and
points to a new Volkswagen abandoned in the trees, always a bad sign.

"There's somebody inside," the cowboy says.

The soldiers pop the trunk, and discover a man, blindfolded, his
hands and feet bound. Not moving. The soldiers jump when he begins to moan.

De la Rosa betrays little sympathy. He says the guy is likely a
trafficker who crossed a rival. That's how he ended up in a trunk.
"This is a dangerous place," the major says.

Four hours later, driving 5 mph on jarring, rutted roads, the convoy
arrives at a gorge above a roaring stream. It begins to rain as
soldiers slide through the brush and come upon an acre of marijuana
planted among rows of corn, a common strategy to conceal the illicit
crops from army helicopters and Mexican navy satellites overhead.

Drenched, the soldiers rip plants out of the ground by hand and stoke
a huge bonfire. They are careful not to destroy the corn. That's the
unknown farmer's only income now. De la Rosa guesses the field would
have produced 600 pounds of marijuana, worth about $15,000 for the
farmer. That is a rich man in rural Mexico. The same field of corn
would barely keep him alive.

Who is growing the marijuana? "The people in the village, the guy on
the donkey," the major said. "The mother? She is on the radio and
warns them when we come. The sons work the field. The daughter cooks
their lunch. The uncle organizes the harvest. The father takes the
money. It is a family business."

Sgt. Wayne Hanson is head of the marijuana unit for the Humboldt
County Sheriff's Office. It is not the kind of job you take to win a
popularity contest here.

As dawn lifts in northern California, Hanson is one of 16 agents from
four state agencies rumbling through the Six Rivers National Forest
in 14 vehicles. Hanson brings a bemused irony to his task. He drives
a gray Expedition with a Humboldt County sticker on the rear window,
a marijuana leaf superimposed over the name of the nation's
unofficial capital of weed.

Hanson said he favors legalizing pot, for no other reason than he
thinks it would put the traffickers who are ruining the forests out
of business and force all the people growing it "to go out and get a job."

Hanson was mowing his lawn recently when he smelled marijuana. He
peeked over the neighbor's fence.

"If a guy's growing dope and he knows I'm the detective sergeant
running the marijuana program, it's pretty cotton-pickin' rampant, I
think," he deadpans.

The air begins to thump, and a Hughes 500 helicopter lands on the
road. The helicopter uses a rope to airlift agents, two by two, into
a nearby marijuana grove on a steep hillside. Some agents yell
wooo-hooo as they swing above the trees.

Hanson stays behind. The helicopter reappears, this time carrying
400-pound bales of marijuana. The smell is overpowering as the
marijuana descends toward a long trailer attached to a pickup. Loose
marijuana is falling to the earth. The helicopter returns with
another load. Then another. "Uh, I think we may be exceeding the
capacity of this trailer," the National Guardsman says.

"We'll just tie that puppy down," says Hanson.

The guardsman jumps on the marijuana, packing it down. Hanson
produces straps, but huge buds are already scattering on the ground,
each one worth hundreds of dollars.

There's so much pot that it's impossible to burn it all, so the
sheriff buries it at an undisclosed location.

This job takes four hours and 30 trips for the helicopter. They add
up the haul: 2,279 plants destroyed. The sweaty agents are sticky
with pot resin that won't scrub off in the shower.

"Sometimes pieces fall off the truck, and people run out into the
traffic to pick it up," says the guardsman, a veteran who fought in
Iraq speaking on the condition that he not be identified. "Yeah,"
says Hanson. "It's like a Brink's truck with dollar bills falling off of it."