MEXICAN MARIJUANA GROWERS EVOLVE WITH NEW METHODS FROM U.S.

AMATA, Mexico -- Farmers growing marijuana in remote Mexican mountains
are adopting techniques pioneered in the United States to produce more
potent pot and boost profits from the cash crop that is fueling a
deadly drug war.

In the fertile mountain valleys of Sinaloa in northwestern Mexico,
soldiers this year found 60 acres of covered greenhouses equipped with
sophisticated irrigation and fertilization systems growing seemingly
endless rows of marijuana plants.

In another part of Sinaloa, the cradle of Mexican drug trafficking,
the army recently busted a marijuana lab that used lamps day and night
to speed the growth of the plants, a change from traditional outdoor
cultivation of the crop and a sign drug cartels are using more savvy
production methods.

" This is new. They now have technology so the plant will grow faster;
we think the techniques are coming from ( the United States)," said an
officer commanding a battalion ripping up five-foot high marijuana
plants growing along a river bank near the dusty town of Amata, Sinaloa.

While estimates vary, law enforcement officials on both sides of the
border say Mexican drug gangs earn the bulk of their cash from
cheap-to-produce marijuana, using revenues to sustain wars against
rivals and the government that have killed more than 33,000 people
across Mexico in the past four years.

Even as hundreds of troops fan out across Sinaloa ripping up marijuana
fields by hand, cartels are one step ahead of the government's
efforts, helping to stifle President Felipe Calderon's army-led battle
against the drug traffickers.

" It's a cycle," said another soldier in Amata as he stood by 20,000
pungent marijuana plants doused with diesel and set on fire in a
billowing cloud of white smoke. " We come and destroy the fields and
move onto another area and they come back and start preparing the land
to plant again."

The new greenhouses are harder for the army to detect with fly-overs
since they resemble tomato plots common in Sinaloa.

If drug gangs in Mexico are successful enhancing the quality of their
product, they can sell the improved marijuana for up to five times the
normal price. The going rate for top quality U. S. marijuana is around
$ 2,500 per pound, while Mexican types sell for under $ 500, U. S. law
enforcement officials say.

New cultivation tactics are a sign Mexico is being forced to compete
with growers north of the border, especially in California where
business is booming, spurred on by marijuana for medical use in 15
states and the District of Colombia.

" I've been in drug law enforcement since 1970 and I never in my
wildest dreams thought I would say California is producing more
marijuana than Mexico," said Bill Ruzzamenti, a police officer
specializing in the marijuana trade in California's Central Valley. "
But there are people willing to spend the money on what they perceive
to be primo bud as opposed to the Mexican crud," he added.

Seizures of marijuana plants in California soared nearly 300 percent
over the past four years. Output increased south of the border as well
between 2006 and 2008, but not by so much.

Clandestine marijuana fields are cropping up with more frequency in
the United States, even in national parks.

Ruzzamenti speculated that Mexican growers in the United States are
taking knowledge learned from experienced marijuana botanists
cultivating strong new strains with names like " train wreck" and "
California dream" back home to Mexico.

Indoor operations are increasing in the United States, in part because
THC content, the drug's active ingredient, shoots up when marijuana is
tended in greenhouses. THC in marijuana seized in the United States
increased nearly 250 per cent in the past two decades, according to
the U. S. State Department.

Some U. S. varieties reach upwards of 30 per cent THC, while Mexican
pot averages between three and four percent, said Tommy Lanier, who
directs the National Marijuana Initiative, funded by the White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Lanier questions the medical value of such strong marijuana and said
legitimate crops can be diverted to the black market.

" They say its used for pain management, but drinking a bottle of Jack
Daniels would have the same effect," he said.