U.S. Launches 50-State Drive on Marijuana

More than 2,000 law enforcement officers, striking in all 50 states, began a series of raids Monday on marijuana fields in remote areas in what officials said was the nation’s largest effort yet to eradicate domestic cultivation of the crop.

Federal, state and local authorities--using helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and all-terrain ground vehicles--planned in a 72-hour period to uproot more than 250,000 marijuana plants in search-and-destroy missions at hundreds of sites on both private and public lands, including at least 20 in national forests.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, who had planned to join personally in one of the raids, flew to Harrison, Ark., but heavy rain prevented his participation in the planned destruction of a marijuana plot in the Ozark National Forest. Later, he surveyed the scene from a helicopter.

‘Strong Message’

In a statement, Meese said the raids would “send a strong message, both to the domestic producers of marijuana and to major source countries outside our borders, that the U.S. government takes very seriously the need to attack production of this drug.”

Early reports indicated that 60,000 plants were destroyed, a spokesman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration said. Twenty arrests were made, and several weapons and booby traps were confiscated. No injuries or other violence were reported. More figures were expected later in the three-day campaign.

Officials, describing the plan to reporters earlier, said officers would manually cut and, where feasible, burn the plants. The herbicide paraquat will not be used--although that method is being studied for possible use in the future.

The raids, called Operation Delta-9, were aimed at what authorities said is a growing problem of domestically produced marijuana. They noted that five years ago, commercial cultivation of cannabis was largely restricted to two states--California and Hawaii--but that now it has spread to every state in the nation. Individual eradication efforts will continue throughout the year.

In 1980, about 5% of the marijuana smoked in the United States was grown in this country. Now the figure has jumped to 12%, authorities said, in the wake of some success in slowing the illegal importing of the crop.

At a briefing before the raids began, DEA Administrator John C. Lawn said the operation would demonstrate to other nations the “serious intent” of the United States to curb domestic marijuana growing. Lawn noted that the United States, after urging other countries to crack down on illegal drug crops, frequently is asked at international meetings: “What are you doing about your own domestic cultivation of marijuana?”

Lawn also pointed to increasing incidents of violence as marijuana growers seek to protect their crops from detection. In recent months, authorities have reported encountering gunfire and attacks from guard dogs, as well as a wide assortment of booby traps--including tripwires connected to shotguns; “punji sticks,” which are sharp objects concealed along the ground, and fishhooks hung across trails at eye level.

Numerous incidents also have been reported in which federal employees, hunters, fishermen, backpackers, river rafters and others have been threatened and ordered off national forest or other public lands by marijuana growers.

In all of 1984, the federal eradication effort directed by the DEA resulted in the destruction of nearly 13 million wild and cultivated plants in 20,000 plots nationwide. Nearly 5,000 persons were arrested and about 1,500 weapons seized.