Pubdate: Mon, 25 Sep 2000
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
Copyright: 2000 Richmond Newspapers Inc.
Contact:  P.O. Box 85333, Richmond, VA 23293
Fax: (804) 775-8072
Feedback: http://www.gatewayva.com/feedback/totheeditor.shtml
Website: http://www.timesdispatch.com/
Author: Rex Bowman

KY. POT GROWERS LACING VA. LANDS

Crackdown Scoots Drug Over State Line

Kentucky marijuana growers, whose billion-dollar business is under intense 
assault by the U.S. government, are pushing east into Virginia to avoid 
federal detection, sowing abandoned strip mines and national forest land 
with pot, according to drug authorities in Southwest Virginia.

Since 1998, the state line between Kentucky and Virginia has become a 
crisscross of trails created by all-terrain vehicles used by growers to get 
to their marijuana plots and back to Kentucky, said Kevin Yates, a 
Dickenson County deputy. Dickenson borders Pike County, Ky.

"We've seen a lot of four-wheeler trails going across Pine Mountain, which 
separates Dickenson from Pike, and informants have even seen transactions 
on the trails," said Yates. "Right now, there's not much we can do. For the 
time being, the issue is manpower."

Kentucky growers began planting more marijuana in Virginia two years ago 
after the federal government declared eastern Kentucky the center of the 
Appalachian "marijuana belt," said Richard Stallard, coordinator of a drug 
task force that operates in Dickenson, Wise, Scott and Lee - Virginia's 
four westernmost counties. The increased federal attention led to a 
crackdown on the Bluegrass State's illegal marijuana industry.

"I understand what the growers are thinking," Stallard said. "If I'm 
putting a lot of pressure on somebody here, they're going to go somewhere 
else where they think they can do it."

The ATV trails running across Black Mountain between Virginia and Kentucky 
are now too many to count, Stallard said. A field of almost 4,000 marijuana 
plants found in Wise last month - the biggest find there in years - was 
probably a joint operation of Kentucky and Virginia growers, he said. The 
field was near the Kentucky state line.

Virginia's marijuana industry, concentrated in the southwest corner of the 
state, has been a long-standing problem for authorities, and pot is 
believed to be the state's largest cash crop, surpassing even tobacco. The 
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, using federal 
statistics, estimates that the annual wholesale value of Virginia marijuana 
is nearly $200 million. Virginia agriculture officials reported that 
wholesale tobacco sales in 1999 topped $160 million.

But Virginia's marijuana crop pales in comparison with what's grown in 
eastern Kentucky, where high unemployment and mountainous isolation make 
growing pot attractive. Officials estimate Kentucky growers make about 
$1.37 billion a year. Some put the crop value at $3.9 billion. (The wild 
divergence in estimates is partly due to the differing yield of a single 
plant. Some plants yield $1,000 worth of pot, some yield $2,000 or more.)

The amount of marijuana grown in Appalachia has caught the attention of the 
federal government, which in April 1998 designated 65 counties in West 
Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. 
The designation allowed the government to pump $6 million a year into 
eradication efforts. The result: nearly 2,000 arrests and the destruction 
of more than 486,000 pot plants in 5,703 plots in 1998 and 1999, according 
to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"They work the eradication efforts really, really hard in Kentucky," 
Stallard said. "They use advance tactics and Blackhawk helicopters. They 
rappel into an area, cut down the plants, then haul them up on a hoist line."

Those kinds of tactics make Kentucky growers' eastern migration 
understandable, said Stan Kennedy, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent 
based in Roanoke. "They're looking for different areas where they don't 
think the Virginia authorities are looking."

Stallard and Yates said it's difficult to catch growers in the mountains of 
Virginia. When authorities find a marijuana patch, they like to stake it 
out for a few days to see if the growers show up. But limited manpower 
makes lengthy stakeouts impractical.

Stallard said he hopes to involve local game commissions in future 
eradication programs in Virginia. Yates, meanwhile, said Dickenson soon 
will have four more deputies available to help stop the influx of Kentucky 
growers.

"Next year," Yates said, "we'll be swinging a bigger bat."
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart