Pubdate: Thu, 01 Aug 2002
Source: Oregonian, The (OR)
Webpage: 
www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard. 
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Copyright: 2002 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Bryan Denson

MARIJUANA: FIRES' TIMING COULD DEVASTATE CROPS, LOCALS SAY

CAVE JUNCTION -- Flames are consuming a bit more than towering trees and 
the occasional cabin as two wildfires roar through the Siskiyou National 
Forest. At least some of the vegetation that has made Southwest Oregon 
famous -- and long ago took a generation of hippie kids off welfare -- also 
is going up in smoke.

Some of the world's highest-grade marijuana, its pedigree sometimes 
compared to Cuba's cigars, is grown in the Siskiyou National Forest and the 
Kalmiopsis Wilderness, where the Florence and Sour Biscuit fires have 
consumed about 183,000 acres of steep forest and rock- studded canyons.

"We're getting reports from some of the firefighters out there of 
(marijuana) grows," said Lt. Lee Harman of the Josephine County sheriff's 
office. "But," he added with a grin, "we're not gonna put our Marijuana 
Eradication Team (ahead) of the firefighters."

It's unclear how much marijuana is burning -- or in danger of burning -- as 
the two fires move through the mountains.

But Linda Templin, a crime analyst for the Josephine Interagency Narcotics 
Team, or JOINT, said she's 100 percent certain that marijuana -- grown 
indoors or inconspicuously in the woods -- is burning.

"We're positive there are plants in that area, and they're being consumed," 
she said. "How many we don't know."

The sheriff's Marijuana Eradication Team, funded by three federal agencies 
to seek and destroy marijuana and catch growers on public lands, is 
expected to kick into gear this month with surveillance flyovers of 
cannabis crops, most of which probably took root last spring. But Lt. Brian 
Anderson, who once headed the team, said the fires might have lessened the 
team's load.

"The work," he said with a chuckle Wednesday, "has gone up in smoke."

As a rule, federal officials do not allow the eradication team to fly over 
the Kalmiopsis Wilderness low enough to spot any marijuana crops. "Of 
course, the dopers know that," Anderson said, "so that's where they go to 
grow."

Wildfires have pierced the Kalmiopsis, as well as vast acreage in the 
Siskiyou National Forest. So with helicopter crews dumping water on the 
blazes, it's unlikely the eradication team will be flying there anytime 
soon, officials said.

"We'll have to see what restrictions are in place because of this fire," 
Anderson said. "There are other places in Josephine County we can go play."

Late in growing season Anderson said he couldn't begin to guess how the 
burning of marijuana plants on federal lands might affect the local 
economy. But a few locals familiar with growing cannabis said wildfires 
this late in the summer could have a devastating impact on serious growers' 
gardens. It's too late in the season, they said, to be ensured of producing 
full-size, commercial grade plants from replanted stock.

Marijuana has been a cash crop in the southwestern Oregon county since at 
least the mid-1960s. But by 1976, new methods of growing the plants caught 
hold in and around the verdant Illinois Valley, once hailed as the Italy of 
Oregon for its abundant agriculture.

"It went from a couple hundred dollars a pound to $1,600 a pound," said 
Michael Garnier, a Takilma entrepreneur who put down roots in the community 
in the late 1960s. A lot of hippie kids suddenly went off welfare, many 
eventually investing their fortunes in legal businesses, said Garnier, who 
once beat a marijuana rap by pleading his own case dressed as Thomas 
Jefferson, complete with a three-cornered hat.

Nowadays, locals say, some of the marijuana grown in the region sells for 
as much as $4,000 a pound.

Connoisseur-grade "Some of the best growers in the world are in Oregon," 
said Steven Hager, editor in chief of High Times magazine in New York. "And 
many of the seed strains developed in Oregon are now available in 
international seed banks in Europe and Canada."

Hager said a wide range of marijuana is grown in southwestern Oregon, where 
many growers were forced to migrate after run-ins with police in Northern 
California. The high-end crops are connoisseur-grade, he said, and among 
the best in the world.

The reason marijuana grows so well in the region might be expressed, in 
part, by the slogan on a sign that arches over the main drag in nearby 
Grants Pass: "It's the climate."

Marijuana grows well in the area because the days are long and dry, the 
dense soil is full of volcanic nutrients and the light patterns are almost 
perfect, according to a few locals familiar with growing cannabis. Those 
elements make for plants high in tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the drug's 
active ingredient. Some growers have taken to planting marijuana on 
platforms in the trees, said Anderson, which prevents the plants from 
becoming snacks for deer and camouflages them from aircraft.

"That's novel," he said.
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