AGENTS FIGHT ROUGH TERRAIN TO SPOT, DESTROY MARIJUANA FIELDS

PALA ---- As a helicopter whipped dirt and debris around a clearing
bordered by manzanita and small trees, narcotics agents, some muffled
against the dust, wrestled 200 pounds of leafy marijuana plants into a net
for the pilot to lift out.

The haul was the second heavy load of the morning for the San Diego County
Integrated Narcotics Task Force, and part of about 4,500 plants found
Tuesday on a scenic, rugged mountain in the northeastern part of the county.

On the street, the plants would have been worth between $4 million and $10
million if they had been allowed to mature, agents said.

In a state that leads the country in the number of marijuana plants found,
more plants are seized in San Diego County than any other county in
California, said Steve Reed, a marijuana spotter with the task force. And
North County is the most active area in the county, he said.

"It's prime growing area," Reed said.

Though Tuesday's find was twice as big as expected, the number of plants
seized by agents this year is only about half of what it was last year.

Since April, when the growing season typically starts, agents have
destroyed about 75,000 plants. The haul last year ---- the season runs
through October ---- was 275,923 plants, Reed said.

The number of plants seized each year usually fluctuates a bit, but is
normally between 200,000 and 300,000, Reed said. In 2003, 270,263 plants
were found, he said, 401,453 were taken in 2002 and 318,017 in 2001.

"It's a crapshoot every year," said Reed, who flies a helicopter in areas
of suspected growth to look for marijuana. Reed, also known as "The Mule"
because of his ability to crawl through rough terrain, said he has been
flying more this year than in the past, but simply isn't seeing as much
marijuana.

He said he hopes the work of his team has dissuaded people from planting in
the county. "I hope that we're doing a good enough job that we're pushing
them out of the area."

Growers invest a lot of money and effort, and confiscation can be a
financial disaster for them. Some have been cultivating the plants since
March, Reed said.

"You build a sand castle, spend eight hours on it; then all of a sudden the
high tide comes in and washes it away," he said. "All of your hard work is
gone."

The weather can also affect the amount of marijuana grown and found.

For example, this year's wet winter has spurred more lush foliage in the
county, which can make it more difficult to spot the illegal fields, Reed said.

Prime Growing Area

After struggling up hills and fighting through high brush, an undercover
agent looked over one of the first plants the agents came across Tuesday.
He pointed out the large buds, which are the most potent and expensive part
of the plant.

"This isn't the weed we smoked in the '60s," he said with a laugh. The
plants the agents typically find are four or five times stronger than
plants grown 40 year ago, he explained before joining the rest of the crew
in tearing out the 4-foot plants that surrounded them.

Reed, who moved ahead of the group, had already found plants farther up the
mountain that were more than twice the size of the initial find.

Terrain and the amount of agriculture in the area contribute to the
prevalence of marijuana growth in North County, Reed said.

Outdoor marijuana growers are drawn to areas with farms and ranches because
of the water needed to grow the plants. Often, the people caring for the
plants are agricultural workers who siphon water from farms with stolen
tubes and hoses.

Agents found about a mile of tubing illegally drawing water from a nearby
orchard in a field Tuesday.

Some of the irrigation systems are rudimentary, but some are extremely
elaborate, said Misha Piastro, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement
Administration.

These systems can make it easier to find plants, Piastro said.

"That's their Achilles' heel," he said of the miles of tubing used by
marijuana growers.

They can be very organized and often hire migrant workers to cultivate the
product, Piastro said. Some drug cartels plant, cultivate and distribute
marijuana along with other drugs, he said.

"It's like any conglomerate," he said of marijuana growers. "It's just one
division of their company."

Arrests are rare, Reed said, because people are seldom tending to the
plants when they are seized. When the agents do find people involved in
cultivation, they are usually just hired help and don't know much about the
operation, he said. Most of the growth is on public lands, making locating
those responsible for the plants even more difficult to ascertain.

The drug-growing organizations are hard to identify and break up because
most of the people who maintain the plants will not talk if they are caught
out of fear of retaliation by cartel bosses, Reed said.

Some drug traffickers smuggle people into the country to cultivate drugs
here in order to avoid crossing the border with the bulky loads, Reed said.
In the last couple of years, more and more of the marijuana seizures appear
to be related to Mexican gangs or cartels, he said.

Cooperation Is Key

After a half-mile hike early Tuesday morning though rough, dry brush to
reach the marijuana plants that Reed had spotted a week earlier from his
helicopter, some of the agents shared stories about difficult raids.

It was a few moments of rest before the agents, using machetes, forced
their way through more brush into another field with plants so tall they
towered overhead.

One of the agents reminisced about a particularly grueling hike into a
marijuana plot, during which the team ran out of water and had to be picked
up by a helicopter.

"That guy's got more stories than Ann Landers," one of the agents quipped
as they bundled their find and waited for the San Diego County Sheriff's
Department helicopter that was on its way to haul off the plants. The crop
will be stored and documented as evidence, then taken by armed guards to a
secret location where it will be burned, Piastro said.

More than a dozen Narcotics Task Force agents from different local, state
and federal agencies were on the mountain tearing out the plants, which
Piastro said was a typical number for such operations. Personnel with the
DEA, the Sheriff's Department, district attorney's office and local police
agencies are involved.

"Law enforcement has come to realize that cooperation is the way to go,"
Piastro said of the task force, which became the first in the nation when
it was formed more than 30 years ago.

The number of agents on the force has remained fairly steady since it
started, Reed said.

Through the years, the DEA has steadily added more agents and is currently
in a hiring phase, Piastro said.

Marijuana eradication efforts are only a part of the drug agency's struggle
with drug traffickers in North County and nationwide. As one of the most
widely abused drugs, marijuana is treated with the same priority as harder
drugs, Piastro said, adding that any large-scale production of illegal
drugs is a priority.

"There's a lot of money at stake here," he said. "These guys are playing
for keeps."