'BIENVENUE A STONER CITY'

Marijuana growers secretly plant crops on Quebec farmers' fields

PIERREVILLE, Que. - The taint of an exploding marijuana trade is growing
faster than the corn fields in this small farming community, leaving
frustrated residents with an ominous new town nickname.

"Bienvenue a Stoner City," said Jean-Francois Cote, a farmer who recently
found 220 marijuana plants grown secretly by drug gangs in his field.

"That's how sad it has become. This is how we're starting to think of
ourselves. That is the worst part."

Mr. Cote's black humour, welcoming a visitor with this rough translation of
his Pierreville home town's name, tries to make light of the dark side of
this pretty farming region along the St. Lawrence River.

Along the fertile valley about halfway between Montreal and Quebec City,
marijuana growers have infiltrated farmers' fields and recruited high school
students to harvest the crop.

The region has quickly become a drug-growing leader in Canada. Statistics
show police seized more marijuana plants in Quebec in 2003 than they found
in British Columbia, a province much better known for growing marijuana.

Pierreville has become the epicentre of Quebec's marijuana cultivation.
Surete du Quebec officers at the town's detachment have run out of pins for
their maps to mark the scores of marijuana fields they have found hidden in
the tall corn.

The weed is so plentiful, a visitor with a few directions from an area
resident needs only an hour to find marijuana plants scattered among the
corn.

A few kilometres further down the secluded road, police officers pull up
plants and haul them out with all-terrain vehicles. The police harvest
started a month ago and will continue through the end of October. Provincial
police are on pace to pluck out about 400,000 plants in rural Quebec this
year.

"This is what we do, five days a week," said Lieut. Donat Massicotte as he
loads the plants into a rented cube van.

An area high school principal says a handful of students are skipping school
and ditching legitimate work to harvest marijuana. They eventually show up
to school with fancy new clothes, sports cars and big wads of cash.

"Many of them are not at all subtle," said Claude Bernier, a principal in
nearby Nicolet.

Mr. Bernier worries that some of his students are learning the allure of
easy money. Many harvesters earn $25 an hour and can often pocket a big
stash of marijuana. It's much easier and more rewarding than the usual
part-time work available to teenagers.

"It's a bad lesson that all the kids are learning, even the ones who don't
go out there, that there are easy ways to make money with no constraints and
no responsibilities," Mr. Bernier said.

Like hundreds of farmers in central Quebec, Mr. Cote has found himself
questioned by police and the subject of gossip by his neighbours, even
though he reported his find to police.

His friends in the trendy Plateau district of Montreal asked him if he can
hook them up with weed.

"The wretched stench of this is starting to stick to all of us," said Mr.
Cote, a 29-year-old father of three who says he's never touched marijuana.

Farmers who go to the police, like Mr. Cote did when he found the plants on
his land, are often intimidated and offered bribes to keep quiet.

"When a burly guy with tattoos shows up at your door and threatens to throw
a match in your barn and then leaves a few hundred dollars in the mailbox,
it's pretty tempting to keep quiet," Mr. Cote said.

Mysterious barn fires have broken out and shots have been fired at buildings
and equipment. Farmers have found booby traps, including hidden pits,
explosives and animal traps in their fields. Police have arrested armed
guards staking out crops.