N.J. Steps Up Efforts During Marijuana Harvest

Ah, the fall harvest.

Sweet Jersey corn. Plump pumpkins.

Northern Lights No. 2?

Yep, there's another crop whose harvest is finishing up this month,
but it won't likely - or legally - be found at any of the state's
roadside produce stands. Y

It's pot.

And while Garden State stoners might be celebrating the marijuana high
season, authorities are salivating to seize their sativa.

At this time every year, police and prosecutors fire up their efforts
to both thwart growers and stop the flow of weed across a nation with
a $20 billion appetite for bong hits.

"In New Jersey, this is the busiest time of the year," said Detective
Sgt. Dennis Donovan, who heads the marijuana unit of the New Jersey
State Police. "The last couple of weeks have been very busy."

It's already been a banner year for the Drug Enforcement Agency in New
Jersey when it comes to grass seizures.

For fiscal 2005, which ended Sept. 30, agents seized 17,076 pounds of
marijuana in the state, a 548 percent increase over 2004, said Michael
Pasterchick, who heads the New Jersey DEA.

That's more than the agency seized in 2002, 2003 and 2004
combined.

The battleground will begin to shift soon, as the grow season ends and
the first frost nears. From now until next summer, buds cultivated in
the Northeast will require sophisticated indoor grow rooms to survive.

The use of indoor marijuana rooms is a growing trend, especially in
New Jersey - and one that authorities say has become a chronic problem.

"This is the most densely populated state in the country, and we're
running out of outdoor areas to grow," Donovan said. "We're seeing
more indoor grows this year than all of last year."

Through the end of September, state police had busted 23 indoor grow
rooms, the same as in all of 2004, he said.

From the grow rooms - where pot can be cultivated under ideal
conditions throughout the year - the state is seeing much stronger
strains of marijuana, Donovan said, bearing names such as Northern
Lights.

He calls it "the Starbucks effect," in which people shy away from
commercial grades of coffee for much more expensive specialty varieties.

"Nobody wants Maxwell House anymore," Donovan said. "The trend is
going to high-quality, high-potency, high-THC. ... Everybody wants
hydro weed."

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the chemical in marijuana that causes
its effect. "Hydro" is short for hydroponic, a way to grow marijuana
indoors without the need for soil.

New Jersey is clearly more of a buyer than a seller in the pot game.
It ranks 46th in terms of pot as a cash crop, growing marijuana with a
retail value of around $25 million annually. It's the seventh most
valuable crop in the state, ahead of apples, wheat and potatoes,
according to data from the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML).

"We start early in the season identifying plots," said Pasterchick of
the DEA. "We'll then do surveillance on them, see people coming and
going, watering and fertilizing. When the plants start to mature, we
take them down."

Marijuana reportedly remains the fourth largest cash crop in America.
In states such as California, Kentucky and Tennessee, it dwarfs other
crops in terms of value. California alone, with its famed Emerald
Triangle in Humboldt County, produces more than 1 million pounds of
pot every year with a street value in the billions.

In just one raid in August, California authorities seized 742,684
plants with an estimated street value of $2.6 billion from a farm in
the northern part of the state.

"There is not a week that goes by that we don't seize hundreds of
pounds of marijuana coming into New Jersey," Pasterchick said. "We are
an import state. ... We don't go after marijuana smokers, we go after
marijuana traffickers."

To Pasterchick and other drug fighters, there is a silver lining in
the pot smoke cloud. The use of marijuana is down 18 percent
nationally since 2001, he said.

In assessing the pot problem in New Jersey and elsewhere, Pasterchick
is blunt.

"Marijuana is a drug that can end you up in the hospital," he said.
"This is not just some recreational drug."

Groups such as NORML, of course, have their own views. To them, pot is
less dangerous than alcohol and statistics about increased potency are
myths fabricated by the DEA to continue an expensive and failed drug
war.

The group sponsors marijuana events throughout the country, including
one celebrating the crop the first week of October in Madison, Wis.,
called the Great Midwest Marijuana Harvest Festival, now in its 35th
year.

Calls to the New Jersey chapter of NORML were not returned this
week.

[sidebar]

LOCAL HAULS

Significant North Jersey pot busts in 2005:

* Police seized 20 pounds and 61 plants from a Saddle Brook house
with indoor grow rooms in early August.

* Also in August, a Fort Lee traffic stop of a car headed to Paterson
netted 58 pounds.

* In July, police seized 128 pounds from a self-storage locker in
Vernon.

* Ridgefield Park police made two large busts in one week in May: They
found 100 pounds in a car stopped on Route 46 and 60 pounds in the
basement of a Teaneck Road house.

* In February, customs agents at Port Elizabeth uncovered 6 tons of
pot hidden in a shipment of yams sent from Jamaica. The pot was worth
at least $6 million.

* Also in February, a UPS driver was charged with using his truck to
transport the drug. The man and his son were arrested after picking up
packages containing 66 pounds of marijuana shipped via UPS to
Hackensack from California.

[sidebar]

STATE CUTS DOWN ON GRASS GROWTH

New Jersey DEA pot seizure amounts, by year:

2005 - 17,076 pounds

2004 - 2,631 pounds

2003 - 7,546 pounds

2002 - 4,419 pounds

2001 - 7,464 pounds

Pot plants destroyed under the Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression
Program in New Jersey, 2003:

Total cultivated plants: 1,260

Outdoor plots: 43

Outdoor plants: 726

Indoor plots: 19

Indoor plants: 534

Arrests: 39