AUTHORITIES STILL FIGHT 'WHITE DOPE'

Local officials say they haven't forgotten about the "white dope"
coming into Shasta County, even though "green" drugs have been in the
news lately thanks to ever-increasing numbers of illegal marijuana
growers planting pot on public lands and the issues surrounding the
influx of legal medical marijuana dispensaries.

Sheriff Tom Bosenko said that recent media attention has focused on
the county's marijuana issues, yet local drug agents remains as active
as ever seizing "white" drugs like methamphetamine, heroin and other
narcotics while combating the drug traffickers that bring them to the
area.

So far this year, the California Multi-jurisdictional Methamphetamine
Enforcement Team (Cal-MMET) has seized more than 50 pounds of meth and
50 pounds of opium, Bosenko said.

The sheriff's office is the lead agency in the five-county law
enforcement Cal-MMET task force.

Similarly, the Shasta Interagency Narcotic Task Force has seized more
meth and cash and OxyContin in the first six months of this year than
all of 2009, said John Thulin, the task force's commander.

One bust this spring led to 20 arrests and the seizure of 3 1/2 pounds
of meth, Thulin said.

Many of the busts haven't been disclosed by law enforcement officials
because they're part of ongoing federal cases, Bosenko said.

In other cases, the drug runners, colloquially called "mules" by law
enforcement, become confidential informants. Bosenko used the example
of a drug runner coming down from Canada caught by Cal-MMET agents on
Interstate 5 two years ago with close to 100,000 ecstasy pills. The
drug runner cooperated with federal drug agents and continued on with
his delivery so that the drug agents could track who he was supplying.

Bosenko said the bust that ensued was never publicly disclosed locally
because of the risk to the informant and the ongoing nature of the
case.

Bosenko said "it certainly doesn't hurt" to have news stories on big
drug busts, especially when going for federal drug enforcement grants.

"But we're not making the bust just for the publicity and notoriety of
it," Bosenko said.

Meanwhile, sheriff's office marijuana busts have grown in size -- and
notoriety. This summer, Bosenko was featured in a Wall Street Journal
article about his department's dependence on grant funds to fight
marijuana growing on public lands.

Local officials say those illegal plantations on federal land have
grown to epidemic proportions.

Last week, sheriff's deputies reported that 398,783 marijuana plants
have been eradicated from private and public lands and that about 39
arrests have been made or are pending.

Some 630,000 plants were pulled in Shasta County last year, a record
haul almost six times greater than what agents destroyed in 2005.