Pubdate: Tues, 27 July 1999
Source: Tampa Tribune (FL)
Copyright: 1999, The Tribune Co.
Contact:  http://www.tampatrib.com/
Forum: http://tampabayonline.net/interact/welcome.htm
Author: Rick Bragg of The New York Times

FUNGUS HAS PROMISE AGAINST MARIJUANA

Miami - For decades, the hard part for drug agents stalking Florida's
marijuana growers was finding their crop. Growers weave their plants
among corn stalks and tomato vines to foil aerial searches. In swamps,
growers make berms out of muck and chicken wire and plant their crop,
leaving water moccasins to stand guard.

Hidden in Florida's lush landscape, the camouflaged marijuana plants
often foiled the small army of law officers, helicopters and
drug-sniffing dogs.

Now, the state's new Office of Drug Control chief hopes to kill
Florida's marijuana business by someday dusting suspected areas with a
pot-eating, soil-borne fungus called Fusarium oxysporum.

It is a plan that has some politicians and Florida drug enforcement
officials excited, and some environmentalists worried.

The fungus, a bioherbicide attacks plants like marijuana and is
otherwise harmless, said its developer, Ag/Bio Con., of Montana. "Is
it safe, and does it work?" asked Jim McDonough, who was hired by Gov.
Jeb Bush to head Florida's Office of Drug Control. "I've heard some of
the top scientists in the country say, 'Yes."'  McDonough, director of
strat-egy for Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's top antidrug
official, said the fungus will not be used until it is tested under
rigid controls at a Florida test site. He has not pre-sented the plan
to Bush.

"When you deal with science, you deal with the cost of advancing and
what is the cost of not advanc-ing," said McDonough, adding that 47
percent of all marijuana seized in the United States is taken in
Florida - much of it home-grown.

Most years, drug agents destroy more than 100,000 plants. In 1992,
they destroyed more than 240,000 plants.

Florida has seen its environment ravaged by supposedly harm less
plants that thrived in a damp, hot climate and overwhelmed indigenous
plants. Some environmentalists say the fungus is risky, that it could
mutate and cause disease in wild plants and in crops.

Scientists are cautious of introducing any foreign, living thing into
Florida's environment. While pythons as long as pickup trucks have
been found under South Florida houses, most problems have been with
vegetable matter.

Kudzu, a Chinese vine that has grown rampant in the South since its
introduction in the 1920s to thwart soil erosion, has swallowed houses
and acres of roadside in Florida, growing a foot a day. Melaleuca
trees, planted, decades ago to help drain the Everglades because they
suck upwater, has infested thousands of acres.

94 I personally do not like the idea of messing with Mother Nature,"
said Bill Graves, senior biologist at the University of Florida
Research Center in Homestead. "I believe that if this fungus is
unleashed for this kind of problem, it's going to create its own
problems. If it isn't executed effectively, it's going to target and
kill rare and endangered plants and I feel that this can lead to a
much bigger problem." David Struhs, secretary of the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection, wrote of the dangers to McDonough.

93Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly," he wrote.
'Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to
use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide. It is difficult, if not
impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species." The fungi can
cause disease in crops, such as tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn and
vine crops, he wrote.
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