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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 2000)
SCIEN CEXTECHN OLOG Y rightp nd gaii :ognitid iursd;iy. February 24,2000 THE BATTALION National forests fall prey to najor marijuana growers ANTA (AP) — Ablati used induction into the 1960s because the ard wouldn’t address vas returning to the 11 7 '^'tWr ‘"bvimfl SAN BERNARDINO NATIONAL FOREST, Calif, day alter receiving as in , „ , - . . sardon — hey were spotted Irom the air, as conspicuous ' sharks in a school of mippies: Three plots ofkind, seem- :on King, 63, fled hist , ^ j x-. u . • i j •. .i . ah. A ■ i An t idy stopped of the towering oaks and man/anitas tliat Albany, Ga„ in 196lafe ^^^ ofSo uthem California forest. „nce 10 mon S1 "!* Thesewerenotnaturalfonnations.Theywereentire- e years, he made aim Iman . made as a professor in tup A week after the August sighting, a helicopter returned iis daughter is a memhi ith two dozen Forest Service agents and sheriff’s de- - nt - , stives.They cleared a landing pad and cut a trail into the Monday, President Clii ^coming first to a makeshift reservoir. Six hoses, lil- King a pardon sohea ring water from a creek, ran in one end; several more o Albany tor the fe iaked hack out the other. y of his oldest brother,G Moving on, the agents reached the first clearing, king Jr. hey’d been right. ’s family — inclufa Inplace ofthe trees this forest is meant to protect stood ■ Oona, a member ofBria grove of emerald stalks, six to 15 feet tall. They were in f Commons —planned; I bloom. the Atlanta airport Wah On tw o acres of prime forest land, about a half-hour noon, when King wasscli rom the city of San Bernardino and 1 1/2 hours from Los rrive from London, t Ingeles, these agents had discovered the latest battle- Et express to you how ell jound in the war on drugs: a 23.000-plant marijuana y is,"’ nephew CheveneS dantation. >re his family left Alto As money and manpower continue to flow to the Atlanta. “I’m suretoali iouthwest border to stop illegal drugs coming into this won’t actually sink ini traffickers are producing vast quantities of mar- im home.” ^ juana right here in the United States, on land owned by interview withCNNMc ^federal government. indon King said hewafa Thereasons arc obv ious: the land is fertile, remote and great expectations ” ^ e ' ^ iere ’ s 110 r ' s * < °* forfeiture, plantations are difficult a little bit numb butFnta Iotrace ' ^ = roucrs have land agents outmanned, out- ''said King.apoliticalffl ^ cnta,u ' ou ^ ul ) nc( ^' at Lancaster Uoivm*. " Wcs P a,d t a lot 01 tl " ,c l iU ’ d cna P' ? t0 PP'"8 »tuft from ud that he expected to I ™«»g »«»this countty. but we don t really pay much , c . , u , ,, , attention to our own back v ard, said Dan Bauer, the bor ed States radically Ira „ . , , ... , , • , estServices drug program coordinator, from when he was last W ^ ..... . , ^ , .. . , The White House Office of National Drug Control the memorv of leaving i n r . , . .1 ■ r.i ... . - Policy estimates that more than hal I ol the manjuanaeon- ’ n B ain 11 • sumed in the United States is produced domestically, e are very e ementa hij ^ j $ g r0U1l on p U h|jc lands, primarily the coun- e you a human being, ^ sl55nationalforests _ I that was strippeflaway. pesticides used by the illegal growers poison wildlife 08. King, will had heei ^ waterways, although the crop’s danger is not just en- .une by his draft board ,(, v i ronm ental.Park visitors run the risk of tripping booby master s degretwuffl 'traps or encountering armed gangs. After stumbling upon iol of Economics amm- a marijuana farm, some visitors have been run offal gun- nee. was told to repoitl l/v ; nL Bauer said, adding that Forest Service agents have sometimes exchanged gunfire with growers. The public’s perception ofthe drug war is a border Homegrown An estimated half of the marijuana consumed in the United States is grown domestically. Marijuana growers often exploit the abundance of remote national forest lands to develop large plantations. Top offenders Here is a look at the top five states for seizures of marijuana cultivated on national forest lands ’ 1 California 197,567 3 Utah plant 5 8,758 Marijuana seized plants National *• forest lands V 5 Michigan 5,698 plants jiflii 2 Kentucky 192,685 plants 4 North Carolina 6,650 plants Despite a decline in the number of Forest Service agents, the amounts of marijuana seized on national forest lands has increased. Marijuana eradicated from national forest lands 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0 I I Plants Pounds 1995 1996 ‘Numbers are estimated totals 1997 1998 1999* icted that the draft board mn as ’ Mr. PrestonKii Igent pulling bundles of narcotics from the bed of a truck, arning he was black kier said. “They very rarely think of the poor forest after that. He refusedW igent crawling through the bush...” in Army physical until Inl999,452,330marijuanaplantswereremovedfrom ressed himas“Mr..’'asi lational forest land, mostly in California and Kentucky, draftees. He was evens iVith each plant estimated to produce at least 2.2 pounds ed of draft evasion, i ifpot, that’s 995,126 pounds of marijuana, with an esti- his three-day trip to natedstreetvalueofabout $700 million, ates, King planned tot Tie U.S. Customs Service seized 989,369 pounds of ent and to thank retired ft nanjuana along the Southwest border in fiscal year 1999, udge William A. Bool nhilethe Border Patrol confiscated just under 1.2 million Impounds. The difference: Customs has 2,900 inspectors and dge, now 97, said Kintfents manning Southwest ports of entry; the Border Pa- nough, having missed trolhas7,761 agents patrolling between those ports. There are just 588 Forest Service agents and officers 192 million acres of national forests, a decline iom625 officers in 1996. That’s nearly 330,000 acres per officer, and only one of them is dedicated full time to drug ded over his trial in med Clinton topardonl® f both his parents audit® He said that the sent priate but that King had* limself as a good citiz® know Rosa Parks? Sn 1 ®f°rcement ootle told WMAZ-TV ixcept she wouldn’t givt 1 and he wouldn’t got« lm g |essthan lOpercent. I doubt we’re getting much over tecause of racial disi might wind up a hero)® , c[ jj )0 percent in most of our areas. “We don’t know how much is growing out there,’ . “There are places where we’re probably get- Source: U.S. Forest Service Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug in the Unit ed States, with about 11 million users, including 8.3 per cent of teens, according to government statistics. One nationwide program is dedicated to the problem of U.S.-produced marijuana — the Drug Enforcement Administration's Domestic Cannabis Eradication and Suppression Program. It receives 1 percent ofthe agency’s $ 1.4 billion budget. In 1998 the DEAreported seizing 2.5 million U.S.-produced marijuana plants, including 232,000 indoor plants. Those seizures were done in co ordination with state and local agencies; the DEA does n’t track seizures done by public land agencies. “Issues dealing with cocaine and heroin and drugs that people are dying from tend to have a higher priority as far as enforcement goes,” DEA spokesman Terry Parham said. Public lands have long been targeted by marijuana producers, but investigators trace a rise in production to the 1980s, when the government enacted more stringent asset forfeiture laws. Before that, “if you were caught growing pot on your own property, you wouldn’t lose your property,” Bauer said. “People could grow com rows of marijuana literal ly in com fields.” In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the profile of a typical grower was a “white, hippie-type” running 100- to 1,000- plant farms, agents said. These days the mom-and-pop AP operations are far outnumbered by major pot plantations, ranging in size from 1,000 to 10,000 plants or more. In the Southeast, old moonshining families now run marijuana farms. But that’s only part of the problem in places like Kentucky’s Daniel Boone National Forest, which consistently ranks first among national forests in marijuana seizures. “It’s a large unorganized coalition of people that live very close to national forest lands who are generally very close to the poverty level and looking for any way to try to make a dollar,” said Jack Gregory, special agent in charge of the Forest Service’s Southern region. In the Southwest, Bauer said, most pot operations are am by Mexican drug organizations that either ship crews across the border or hire illegal immigrants to do the work. “Just the cost of doing business up here makes it great,” said Mike Wirz, a narcotics detective with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who works with the Forest Service to investigate marijuana groves on fed eral property. “They don’t pay for the land, they don’t pay for the water and they pay very little for their overhead because they’re using illegal workers.” Wirz also noted that by growing their product in the United States, Mexican cartels eliminate the ex tra cost and risk of paying a courier to bring drugs into the country. Page 9 Science in Brief Marrow cells may help find cancer Looking for malignant cells lurk ing in the bone marrow of women getting breast cancer surgery may help doctors better predict pa tients’ chances of survival, re searchers say. Currently, doctors assess a pa tient’s odds by two means: gaug ing the size of the tumor, and re moving and examining some of the lymph nodes in the armpit for signs the cancer has spread. A new study conducted in Ger many raises the possibility that the bone marrow is an even bet ter predictor of the chances of a relapse or a cure. Used together, the three meth ods could help doctors decide with more precision which pa tients should get aggressive chemotherapy after surgery, re searchers say. “This is the second large study to suggest that bone marrow is an important predictor,” said Dr. Michael P Osborne, director of the Strang-Cornell Breast Center in New York and the first researcher credited with the discovery. “It may have significant potential to improve breast cancer treatment.” The study was reported in Thursday’s issue of the New Eng land Journal of Medicine. Estrogen does not help Alzheimer's CHICAGO (AP) — A year of tak ing estrogen did nothing to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s or improve mental function in 120 older women with mild to moder ate forms of the disease, re searchers reported today. Research has suggested that women who take estrogen are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. But the study published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association found that once the mind-robbing disease sets in, the female hormone offers no benefit. “Overall, the results of this study do not support the role of estrogen in the treatment” of Alzheimer’s, wrote researchers led by neuroscientist Ruth Mul- nard ofthe University of California at Irvine. Alzheimer’s affects more than 4 million Americans, stealing their memories and ability to care for themselves. About twice as many women as men have the incurable disease, in part because they tend to live longer. Its causes are unknown, but suggestions that the decline in es trogen levels in women at menopause might somehow make them more vulnerable to the dis ease have prompted interest in the hormone as a possible treatment. Malaria mutations cause resistance A mutation-prone gene in the malaria parasite apparently plays a key role in the deadly organism’s growing resistance to drugs, sci entists say. The findings could help re searchers design new drugs to combat the mosquito-borne para site, which kills more than a mil lion people a year. Scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Re search in Melbourne and Australian National University in Canberra re ported their findings in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. The researchers studied Plas modium falciparum, malaria’s deadliest strain, and found that the mutated gene prevents anti- malarial drugs from accumulating within the parasite. Somehow, the mutations allow the parasite to either block drugs from entering or quickly pump them out, said Alan F. Cowman, chief of the division of infection and immunity at the Hall Institute. Scientists find life exists on small land Scientists who inventoried Earth’s shrinking wilds havje reached an astonishing conclu sion: More than a third of the plan et’s plant and animal species ex ist exclusively on a scant 1.4 percent of its land surface. The researchers said the find ings show that saving a large share of the world’s species from extinction isn’t an over whelming task. They believe conservationists just need to focus on safeguard ing 25 species-rich “hotspots" — mostly tropical rain forests. “The whole point of this is that for a few hundred million dollars a year, focused on these hotspots, we can go a long way toward guar anteeing maintenance of the full range of diversity of life on Earth,” said Russell Mittermeier, presi dent of Conservation Internation al, and one ofthe study’s authors. The British-American team led by Norman Myers of Oxford Uni versity relied on previous research to tally the numbers of land species that inhabit Earth’s re maining pristine forests, grass lands and other habitats. Fish and insects were excluded. Because some ofthe tropical areas remain unexplored, the researchers had to rely on experts’ best estimates. The findings appear in Thurs day’s issue of the journal Nature. Mittermeier said some of the researchers were surprised by the riot of life they found occupying such a small portion of land. The team identified 25 “hotspots” covering a total of 810,000 square miles. L!!!! mnd Iterm ie Bonfire Site ner’s office (all day) TIFF!” ng will go lotto ed for Bonfire ovies? ife ilm! French officer but must hide his inter Galleries t 7:00p.m. iseussion :ie viewing. Delation and the ial Awareness call 845-8770 ( |^S The Battalion Online offers access to news from The Associated Press Ilie WIRE provides continuously updated news coverage from one s oldest, largest news via The Battalion's web • Ipifate, up-to-the-minute news report combining tie lalesl AP stories with photos, graphics, sonnh and video. ■ ted lines and bulletins delivered as soon as news breaks. http://battalion.tamu.edu Only $50 for one semester of unlimited aerobics at the Rec Center. We offer 92 classes each week. Early morning, daytime, evenings and weekends, we have a time for you. Come by the Rec Center to purchase your pass.