Suetaz

Tax dollars up in smoke?

Some criticize cost, effectiveness of state's marijuana eradication program

By Laura Lane | August 8, 2004 | The Reporter-Times

Of the more than 219 million cannabis sativa plants uprooted by Indiana police last year, just 31,192 were cultivated marijuana, the kind sold for more than $100 an ounce and smoked.

The rest were feral plants — wild marijuana, ditch weed — containing less than one-half percent of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that causes the intoxicating effects that result from smoking marijuana.

"Essentially what we are doing is spending hundreds of thousands of our tax dollars and a lot of law enforcement hours to eradicate wild marijuana that was planted in the 1940s to help our government in the war effort," Steve Dillon said. He is chairman of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws board of directors and an Indianapolis attorney who founded Indiana NORML in 1974.

Dillon is outraged by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's marijuana eradication investment — $13.5 billion in 2002 alone — that results in the seizure of nearly 300 million pot plants, 98 percent of which grow wild and have almost no intoxicating power.

"They are eradicating more and more plants, indicating their success," he said. "But it is ditch weed. The only people who will harvest it are students who don't know any better, who soon find out that this will not get you high."

In 1985, Indiana embarked on its marijuana eradication project, sending helicopters into the skies to spot marijuana, often growing in the midst of cornfields, unbeknownst to farmers. From the police perspective in the air, the lacy-leafed pot plants stand out amid all of the summer shades of green below.

Almost 20 years ago, one of the first marijuana crops spotted from the sky was growing tall and healthy in a 20-acre tract smack in the middle of a cornfield behind a farmhouse on Mount Tabor Road in northwestern Monroe County. Machete-wielding police officers chopped down the plants, two men charged with growing the pot went to jail for two years and the state received $95,000 from the sale of the farm.

That first year, a $10,000 DEA grant funded Indiana's marijuana eradication efforts. Over the years, the amount has grown — to $677,000 for this summer's program.

Cpl. Mike Crabtree of the Indiana State Police, who oversees the state's DEA-funded domestic cannabis eradication and suppression program, is in the midst of seeking a $50,000 enhancement for 2004.

He stands behind his program, which so far this year has harvested more than 19 million wild marijuana plants — a 234 percent increase from this time last year — and 12,841 higher-THC cultivated marijuana plants, up almost 200 percent from last summer.

Troopers have arrested 389 people in connection with the marijuana eradication program in 2004, compared to 205 at the same time last year. Crabtree said that this past week, officers in the sky spotted several cultivated marijuana plots in southern Indiana, "some small, some large," but he would not say where, if the pot was harvested or if any arrests are expected.

July 20, police cut down 30 cultivated marijuana plants growing behind a cornfield near Salem that they estimated would have a $60,000 street value. When the growers return to harvest their crop, they will discover instead a sheriff's department detective's business card tied to a tree limb.

Crabtree said that his pilots and the 30 state troopers who spend the summer and fall months, from mid-June through October, working with the program keep drugs off the streets. He defends the massive cutting of wild marijuana plants, which he insists people smoke to get high.

While NORML spouts the value of the hemp made from marijuana plant stalks, Crabtree scoffs.

"I contest their stance completely," Crabtree said. "As a trooper starting out in the marijuana program and enforcing the drug laws, I have seen the free-for-all at these wild marijuana locations," he said. "Twelve-year-old boys and 50-year-old men going to find free marijuana. They aren't making rope. Or jewelry. Or shampoo. They are out there in the middle of the night, taking the leaves and buds and leaving the stalks behind. I could put you down in a field of wild dope and pull off a green marijuana leaf and it looks, smells and behaves just like cultivated marijuana."

Dillon described two former clients who came to Indiana seeking pot. Drinking at a St. Louis bar, they paid a man $5 for a map of northern Indiana wild marijuana plots, then drove through the night to harvest some. Police arrested them as they drove out of a cornfield, a marijuana stalk caught on the car's bumper.

"Their hands were green from picking 200 pounds of wet ditch weed they had stuffed into duffle bag. They thought they had really scored," Dillon said. "They paid a $50 fine, the cops told them to never come back and they had a 200-pound seizure of harmless wild marijuana for the books."

Dillon also represented a Greene County man who was growing one marijuana plant amid 40 tomato plants in his vegetable garden. The lone pot plant was spotted from an ISP helicopter. It landed, and police confiscated the plant. The factory worker was convicted of a misdemeanor, fined and spent a few days in jail.

"I am a taxpayer, and what a waste of my resources that was," Dillon said. "I want to support police in their efforts to reduce violent crime, but how is that being served by their emphasis on cutting down feral plants or pot plants growing in a guy's tomato patch."

He suggested that police would be better off using their time and efforts to help eradicate methamphetamine labs, which have become a dangerous and sometimes lethal problem, especially in southwestern Indiana.

"We have a methamphetamine epidemic, going from seven cases a few years ago to 1,200 last year. Judges are denying bail because once these people get out of jail, they are back at the drug," he said. "But if you are a police officer, what do you want to do — raid a meth lab where the people are dangerous, psychotic and violent, or go bust a guy with a marijuana plant in the backyard? The emphasis seems wrong."

Crabtree said all marijuana is bad, and he aims to eradicate as much as he can. He called it a gateway drug that leads to more addictive and dangerous substances, such as the methamphetamine Dillon is concerned about.

"All of the people I have arrested for drugs, none of them just decided to go out and start using crack cocaine or methamphetamine," he said. "They always start with marijuana. So we can do something, or nothing. You don't stop eradicating it."



This variety of marijuana was among several plants confiscated during a 2002 drug raid in Owen County. Staff photo by David Snodgress

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