Missouri Is Nation’s Top Pot Destroyer : Drugs: Officials squirm at suggestions that their state is one of the main marijuana producers, but they welcome the federal funds their campaign attracts.

Carrying machetes and dressed in camouflage, Sgt. Bill Bell and a band of Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers hack their way through a field of towering marijuana plants.

Within hours, tens of thousands of the slender 13-foot plants are sliced from a field along Clay County’s Jesse James Road--the latest bounty in a statewide war on the weed.

Troopers hunting for cultivated patches of marijuana also have discovered huge swaths of the wild stuff this summer, a result of near-perfect weather for the weeds. They whack cultivated and wild stalks indiscriminately.

For its efforts, Missouri has become the nation’s top marijuana eradicator.

“We don’t like that distinction, of course,” said Lt. Ernest McCutchen of the patrol, which oversees the eradication program. “We like to think we don’t have marijuana growing here in the state.”

But last year, troopers destroyed more than 1.14 million cultivated marijuana plants, with an estimated street value of nearly $1 billion, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. That is more than any other state and nearly six times the amount eradicated in California, another large marijuana-producing state, DEA figures show.

State officials say marijuana eradication is up 380% this year.

But Dan Viets, a Columbia attorney who handles many marijuana cases and is chairman of the Mid-Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says eradication funds could be better spent.

“There seem to be no money problems when it comes to inflicting new punishments on people who grow marijuana,” Viets said. “But there’s not even lip service being paid to putting money behind treatment for those with drug problems or for education that could make a difference.”

Missouri’s eradication team has 30 people. “Eradication has gone up the last few years due to the amount of work we put into it,” McCutchen said. “We thought it was such a problem that we needed to assign people.”

Arrests this year are few, but rising. More ominous is the number of weapons being confiscated, officials say.

“The scariest thing is the increase in firearms,” McCutchen said. “We’ve even had helicopters fired at.”

Missouri officials squirm at any suggestion that their state is among the nation’s top pot producers, but they welcome the federal funds that flow to the state because of its aggressive eradication efforts. This year, the DEA gave the state about $400,000, based on the number of plants reported destroyed.

Officials say growers, trying to outsmart enforcers, have increased their acreage north of the Missouri River, where marijuana once was grown commercially as hemp to make rope and still grows wild.

On a recent helicopter sweep over Clay County, north of Kansas City, Sgt. Bell said a new pilot was amazed at the number of patches of marijuana visible from the air: “He couldn’t believe it. He kept saying, ‘Look at that, look, more over there.’ I didn’t even want to look down. I knew what was down there.”

And then the seven-year veteran of the anti-marijuana campaign sighed.

“You can’t get rid of it all,” he said.