South Carolina on Track for Record Year in Marijuana Busts - MassCops - Massachusetts Law Enforcement Network

South Carolina on Track for Record Year in Marijuana Busts By MEG KINNARD
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBIA, S.C. --
From the ground, the pine forests near the North Carolina line appear unremarkable - rows of trees that eventually will be chopped down to make way for a housing development.
But hidden among the trees, easily visible only from the air, is a bumper crop of what some experts consider South Carolina's most lucrative harvest: marijuana.
More than 30,000 marijuana plants were seized in two July busts just south of Charlotte, N.C., bringing the total amount of pot seized this year to 38,000 plants. That's nearly three times the number confiscated across South Carolina in all of 2005, and nearly as many as were seized statewide last year.
State and federal authorities, and experts in marijuana policies, say that what appears to be a bumper crop of the illicit plants this year is due to two factors: bolder and more sophisticated marijuana growers producing more of the drug, and law enforcement getting better at finding the grow operations.
"The traffickers are doing just larger amounts of grows, and larger crops, in places where law enforcement is doing a better job in finding them," said John Ozaluk, the federal Drug Enforcement Agency's top agent in South Carolina. "It's a very bold thing to do, to plant that many marijuana plants."
Much of the marijuana that ends up in South Carolina is grown in Mexico, according to federal officials. But transporting drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border means high costs and security risks, something Ozaluk said has led to more homegrown marijuana.
And growers have plenty of financial incentive to get into the booming domestic marijuana industry. A 2006 study by Virginia-based researcher Jon Gettman said marijuana was the nation's largest cash crop, at $35.8 billion over a three-year period, and was the single largest cash crop in 12 states, including South Carolina. From 2003-2005, marijuana production and sales amounted to a $142 million industry in the state, ahead of tobacco ($97 million) and cotton ($92 million).
The rural South Carolina counties just south of Charlotte are notorious hotbeds for marijuana growers. Interstate 77 cuts through the area, winding its way north to Cleveland, making the area an easy starting point for transporting South Carolina drugs to areas farther north.
Chester County Sheriff Robby Benson said about 40,000 plants have been confiscated in the past two years - more than half of the total number of plants seized statewide during that time. And, Benson said, growers are getting smarter, and more elaborate, in their operations.
As is typical for pot busts in the area, Benson said the 19,000 plants discovered in one raid there in early July were nestled among pine trees in an area about as large as a football field. The tree growth helps conceal the plants from detection by air, but growers will typically prune some of the branches to allow sunlight to filter down to the plants, some of which had grown to 6 feet or more, he said.
"There's no way of seeing it from the road," Benson said. "We have to spot it from the air. It's real thick, most of the time."
Near the field, deputies found an irrigation system consisting of plastic-lined water pits rigged to a generator and pump. And a nearby shelter, complete with tents, makeshift furniture and food, showed that the growers wanted to stay close to their investments, he said.
No arrests have been made in either of the big busts, Benson said.
To assist local authorities who may not have access to helicopters, state police make regular aerial searches over Chester County and other areas, looking for the telltale leafy plants.
"We go out everyday to some part of the state, and we fly over," said Maj. Stacey Drakeford, who oversees the State Law Enforcement Division's marijuana eradication programs. "Sometimes you find them as little as one or two plants, or you find a plot."
To access the hard-to-reach, off-road areas, Benson said his deputies have recently acquired additional all-terrain vehicles and get help on occasion from the National Guard. But even with the extra efforts, some analysts wonder if progress is being made fighting marijuana, in South Carolina and nationwide.
"The big picture issue is whether there's any evidence that the raids and seizures accomplish anything," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Washington-based Marijuana Policy Project. "We've been doing this since Nixon was president ... and at the end of all that, marijuana is the number one cash crop in this country."
Regardless, law enforcement will continue its campaigns, on the ground and in the air, to stop marijuana production in South Carolina, Drakeford said.
"Whether it's one plant or 17,000 plants," he said, "as long as we are being productive and trying to detect and apprehend those who are trying to grow marijuana, it's a successful operation."

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