DEPUTIES AND SBI SEARCH FOR ILLICIT CROP

1,075 Marijuana Plants Are Destroyed In Wilkes

Harvest season has arrived for one of Northwest North Carolina's major
annual crops.

But because the crop is marijuana, law-enforcement officers are trying
to find the plants and destroy them before growers can bring the
marijuana to market.

On Tuesday, sheriff's deputies from Wilkes and Ashe counties, along
with SBI agents, destroyed 1,075 plants that were found during a
flyover by the N.C. Army National Guard.

Marijuana has long been grown in Wilkes County and the rest of
Northwest North Carolina, in part, because of the long growing season
and abundance of sparsely populated areas where the crop can be easily
hidden.

Sheriff Dane Mastin of Wilkes County said that the number of plants
found yesterday was not unusual.

'It's pretty standard for this time of year,' Mastin
said.

Most of the find - 1,034 plants - was growing on several different
tracts of private land in the Sheets Gap Road area of northwestern
Wilkes County near the Ashe County line and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The plants were between 3 feet and 7 feet tall. They had a potential
street value estimated at $2.5million dollars.

Mastin said he doesn't expect any arrests to come out of the
seizure.

'When you find marijuana on open land like that, unless you catch
someone tending the plants or get a confession, you're going to be
hard-pressed to prove whose it was,' Mastin said.

Even without an arrest, the sheriff said that the eradication effort
served as an important deterrent because it makes growers think about
whether to spend all that time and then lose the investment.

'It means that all their hard work went for naught,' Mastin said.
'They didn't get anything out of it except for a little exercise.'

During the flyover, 41 more plants were spotted in the western end of
the county behind a house at 11391 Boone Trail Road

That led to the arrest of the home's occupant, Clifton Eugene
Johnston, 49, on charges of manufacturing marijuana, possession of
marijuana and drug paraphernalia and maintaining a dwelling to keep a
controlled substance.

Johnston has been released from the Wilkes County Jail. His bond was
set at $7,500 bond.

Wilkes County deputies have found and destroyed 3,277 marijuana plant
this year.

Last year they destroyed about 6,000 plants found in about 24
different incidents.

There are more flyovers planned before the harvest season ends in
October, Mastin said.

Wilkes isn't the only northwestern county where deputies have been
seizing marijuana plants.

Sheriff's deputies in Watauga County followed up on a tip Friday and
found about 120 large marijuana plants in the woods on Laurel Creek
Roadin the Sugar Grove community of western Watauga County.

Investigation of the incident is continuing and charges are expected
said Mark Shook, Watauga County's sheriff.

Shook said that his deputies have destroyed about 300 plants from four
different seizures.

Watauga deputies typically make about 12 seizures a
year.

But it is early in the season, and Shook said that he expects to hit
that mark again.

As with everything else this summer, the weather has been a
factor.

'We've only had one flyover so far,' Shook said. 'Because of all the
rainstorms we've had, the search planes haven't been able to get in
here.

'But once we get a little good weather, we're going to start looking
hard.'