Pubdate: Wed, 17 May 2000
Source: International Herald-Tribune (France)
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2000
Contact:  181, Avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92521 Neuilly Cedex, France
Fax: (33) 1 41 43 93 38
Website: http://www.iht.com/

KENTUCKY SWAPS MOONSHINE FOR MARIJUANA

In the rugged hills of eastern Kentucky, known more for poverty than for 
beauty, more than 40 percent of the U.S. marijuana crop is grown: a crop 
worth $3.9 billion annually in a region where the average household income 
has yet to surpass $8,000 a year.

The region is the perfect drug-growing economic model, according to 
Clayton, a professor at the University of Kentucky who wrote a report for 
the United Nations on marijuana in "Third World" Appalachia.

"You've got that large level of unemployment,"he said, "you've got 
insularity and you've got a need for cash."

While the rest of the country has prospered, the Kentucky region's endemic 
poverty and ideal growing climate have fed the illegal industry. Rugged 
terrain provides natural camouflage for plants worth $2,000 each on the 
street. "It's tremendously profitable," said Joseph Famularo, an U.S. 
attorney for the eastern district of Kentucky.

Some say the problem is partly a social one, that the offspring of the 
backwoods Kentuckians, who distilled illegal moonshine, have shifted to a 
more profitable product. The cat-and-mouse games between the authorities 
and the growers, however, are much the same sometimes comic, sometimes 
deadly serious.

Growers often carry firearms, plant animal traps and steal each other's 
bounty. A hiker who stumbles onto someone's crop risks getting shot. "It's 
a nasty, rotten business," Mr. Famularo said. 
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