Mexican drug traffickers are using prime new territory for their
expanding marijuana growing operations: America's national forests.
"It's
a growing problem - literally," says Wisconsin Attorney General J.B.
Van Hollen. "They're finding that it's easier and easier ... to grow
within this country."
Though drug trafficking was first detected
on federal lands in the mid-1990s, the activity has since spread to 20
states and 67 national forests. Traffickers are planting illicit crops
on public land, destroying and defiling pristine wilderness while
creating risks for hunters and other parkgoers.
A
raid in August in Wisconsin's Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest
resulted in the seizure of more than 8,000 marijuana plants and seven
arrests, at least six tied to drug-plagued Mexico.
Benjamin
Wagner, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, which
has been dealing with the problem for years, says it makes sense to drug
traffickers "to move marijuana cultivation ... closer to your point of
sale."
In August, Operation Mountain Sweep targeted marijuana
crops on public lands in seven Western states, including California.
About 578,000 plants worth more than $1 billion were eradicated, Wagner
says. "The vast majority" of those arrested were "illegal aliens from
Mexico or people here of Mexican extraction."
The activity comes
as a survey last week shows a robust market for marijuana in the USA
among young people: More teens smoke marijuana monthly than cigarettes.
The relaxation of marijuana laws - some states allow medical
use, and Washington and Colorado voters legalized possession of small
amounts last month - "certainly doesn't help the situation," Wagner
says. "It creates an environment in which law enforcement gets mixed
signals."
Federal agencies declined to comment on the influx of growers in U.S. parks. A U.S. Senate panel took up the issue last year.
"Violent
transnational criminal organizations are exploiting some of our most
pristine public and tribal lands as grow sites for marijuana," R. Gil
Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy,
told the panel in December 2011.
Drug traffickers were first
detected on Forest Service land in California in 1995, David Ferrell,
the Forest Service's law enforcement and investigations director, told
the panel. From 2005-2010, he said, undocumented immigrants tended
1,607 cultivation sites in national forests.
Nationwide, 6.2
million marijuana plants found in outdoor plots were destroyed in 2011,
more than double those eradicated in 2004, Drug Enforcement
Administration data show.
The problem isn't confined to Western
states. A site in a Michigan forest, where 3,000 plants were seized in
2011, was linked to Mexican drug groups. Eleven Mexican nationals were
indicted in connection with the seizure in 2010 of more than 2,500
plants in rural Ohio.
Warren Eth, a Miami lawyer and expert on the
trend, calls it "a huge problem," as growers cut down trees and pollute
streams with chemicals.
USA Today