Pubdate: Wed 07/28 1999 Source: International Herald-Tribune Copyright: International Herald Tribune 1999 Contact: http://www.iht.com/ Author: Rick Bragg MARIJUANA-EATING FUNGUS: REALITY OR PIPE DREAM? (Miami) -- For decades, the hard part for drug agents stalking Florida's marijuana growers was finding their crop. The growers weave their plants among corn stalks and even tomato vines to foil aerial searches. In swamps, growers make berms out of muck and chicken wire and plant their crop, leaving fat, black 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 new head of the state's Office of Drug Control hopes to kill Florida's lucrative marijuana business in the very ground in which it thrives, by someday dusting suspected areas with a marijuana-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 engineered specifically to attack plants like marijuana, is otherwise harmless, said the Montana company, Ag/Bio Con., that developed it. "Is it safe, and does it work?" asked Jim McDonough, who was hired by Gov. Jeb Bush earlier this year to head Florida's Office of Drug Control. "I've heard some of the top scientists in the country say 'yes."' But McDonough, who served as director of strategy for Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, said the fungus will not be used here until it is tested in rigidly controlled conditions at a Florida test site. "When you deal with science, you deal with the cost of advancing and what is the cost of not advancing," said McDonough, who pointed out that 47 percent of all marijuana seized in the United States is taken here -- much of it home-grown. Most years, drug agents destroy more than 100,000 plants, and one year -- in 1992 -- they destroyed more than 240,000 plants. "With prudence and with care, make your choices," he said. "We'd be no place if we put our head in the sand." McDonough said he has not yet presented the plan to the governor. But Florida has seen its environment ravaged again and again by supposedly harmless plants that thrived so well in a damp, hot climate that they overwhelmed indigenous plants. So some environmentalists say introducing the fungus is risky, that it could mutate and cause disease, not only in wild plants but in crops as well. David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, spelled out the dangers in a letter to McDonough in April. "Fusarium species," he wrote, "are capable of evolving rapidly. Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide. He added, "Fusarium species are more active in warm soils and can stay resident in the soil for years. Their longevity and enhanced activity under Florida conditions are of concern, as this could lead to an increased risk of mutagenicity." What that means, say environmentalists, is that living things behave differently in Florida than almost anywhere else in this country. Here in Florida, history has taught scientists to be cautious of introducing any foreign, living thing into the environment. While pythons as long as pickup trucks have occasionally been found under houses in South Florida, most of the 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 up so much water, has infested hundreds of thousands of acres. - --- MAP posted-by: manemez j lovitto