From when@speakeasy.org Sun Jan 18 15:26:13 1998
POT GROWERS, COPS IN BATTLE OF WITS IN NORTH MICHIGAN
Date: September 14, 1997 Section: NEWS
Page: A10 Edition: WEEKEND
Dateline: GARDEN, MICH. Word Count: 1082
Author: JOHN FLESHER AP
Text:
GARDEN, Mich. - They show up in late summer - National Guard helicopters
roaring above the pastoral serenity of the Garden Peninsula in
Michigan's far north.
Their target, hidden among the isolated fields and deep woods of this
hunting and fishing haven, is what police say is one of the best-quality
marijuana crops this side of the Rio Grande.
Pot smokers across the country fondly call it "Garden Green." They
like its high levels of THC, the ingredient that gives the drug its
potency.
"I guess if you're going to smoke marijuana, this would be the stuff
to smoke," says Brian Muladore, member of an anti-drug police squad that
for several years has matched wits with the peninsula's crafty growers.
"It's some of the best in the country, produces a very good high, I'm
told," says Lloyd Meyer, an assistant U.S. attorney who has prosecuted a
number of Garden Green producers.
While no figures are available on the amount grown here, officials
acknowledge it's small in comparison with the quantities that flow
across the border from Latin America. But the Garden Peninsula has been
among the top sources in the upper Great Lakes.
"It's not the marijuana capital of the world, but for this region
it's definitely a leading growing area," Muladore says.
Ideal conditions
In many ways, marijuana cultivation seems out of place here in
the Upper Peninsula. Buried in snow much of the year, the region is
better known for hunting, fishing and snowmobiling. The growing season
is short, the crop variety limited.
But as its name suggests, the Garden Peninsula has geographical
features ideal for marijuana farming. And, thanks to some of the area's
1,000 residents, it has a reputation for bucking authority and
distrusting outsiders.
Some in law enforcement see the marijuana battle as an extension of a
decades-old war of wills between authorities and a handful of renegades
on the Garden Peninsula. In the old days they clashed - sometimes
violently - over illegal fishing in Lake Michigan.
But many residents bristle at the suggestion that their peninsula,
with its marshy woodlands, verdant pastures and peaceful villages of
Garden and Fayette, is a drug-producer's paradise.
"I don't think it's any worse here than anywhere else in the country,
says Gary Plante, 46, supervisor of Garden Township. "It's just that
they caught a few guys and they made a big deal out of it.
There's more good people than bad here, I'll tell you that."
But police say the code of silence has cracked in the marijuana
battle. Disgusted citizens lead searchers to hidden groves and implicate
people involved in the trade.
"They're the ones buying the new $6,000 snowmobiles and new
four-wheel drive pickups and new homes and they never work," says one
whistle-blower, a longtime resident who insists on anonymity.
He says he often stumbles across marijuana plants while hunting, and
predicts most growers won't give up despite the high-profile raids and
arrests.
"It's as bad as ever," the man says. "They brag about it. And if you
mess with them, they'll burn you out."
Jutting 25 miles into Lake Michigan from the south-central Upper
Peninsula, the Garden Peninsula enjoys a "lake effect" temperature
moderation that lengthens the growing season by perhaps 10 days a year,
says Warren Schauer, a Michigan State University agricultural extension
agent.
The soil is loamy and fertile, the terrain ranging from flat to
gently undulating. It yields vegetables, grains and the only red kidney
beans grown in the Upper Peninsula, plus one of its few commercial apple
orchards.
This environment also produces a hardy type of marijuana that
resembles bushy, king-size tomato plants - some as tall as a basketball
hoop. "More like a tree than a plant," says Meyer, the federal
prosecutor.
Only the best cloned
In recent years, growers have clipped limbs from the best of their
crop, dipped them in root-starter solution and planted them to form
clones.
"If you get one good plant, you're going to have 50 or 100 plants
exactly like that one," Muladore says.
Growers often set up miniature greenhouses in their attics or
basements. They nurture young plants until they're a couple of feet
tall, then slip them outside in midsummer.
The marijuana fight is being waged primarily by the Upper Peninsula
Substance Enforcement Team, an interagency task force devoted entirely
to drug crime.
Earlier this decade UPSET helped slam the door on methcathinone, a
highly addictive homemade stimulant that was marching across the region.
That battle won, the group set its sights on Garden Green.
"We thought if we made a very massive, aggressive effort in the
Garden Peninsula we could maybe have the same kind of effect we had with
methcathinone," Meyer says.
One of the most celebrated busts came in August 1995, when a
helicopter crew detected marijuana plants concealed between rows of corn
belonging to prominent dairy farmers Scott and Rodney Lucas.
Agents found 172 plants from 4 to 8 feet high, plus containers of
processed pot stashed in the farmhouse, in a pickup truck and even
beneath straw in a watering trough. Estimated street value: more than
$300,000.
The brothers pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute.
Rodney Lucas was sentenced in March to a year and a half in prison;
Scott Lucas, found to have had a minor role in the operation, got six
months of home detention.
They also forfeited $100,000 in cash, which they raised by selling
cattle and land.
Their case may have turned the tide, Meyer says. After 2,682 plants
with a street value of $5.2 million were seized on the peninsula in
1995, only 154 were found last year.
This year, none had been found by late August, despite a half-dozen
helicopter flyovers. "The only Garden Green they saw were the jack pines
and spruce trees," Meyer said.
Muladore, on the anti-drug police squad, says some growers may have
been scared straight. But informants tell him others are pushing ahead,
emboldened that the Lucas bust didn't lead to mass arrests.
"There's too much money in it," he says. "Think about how much you
can get by putting out just 50 plants that are worth $1,000 apiece. It's
easy. They're going to keep on doing it."
Copyright 1997 The Seattle Times
Record Number: 2560390
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