MARIJUANA SEIZURES WAY UP IN 05, LOCALLY AND STATEWIDE

State and local marijuana eradication teams seized record amounts of
pot this season.

The Campaign Against Marijuana Planting program confiscated 1,134,692
plants throughout California during the 2005 eradication season --
which generally runs from mid-July to the first week in October.

"The 2005 total surpasses the previous record, set last year, by
513,377 plants. The marijuana eradicated in 2005 had an estimated
street value of more than $4.5 billion," states information from
Attorney General Bill Lockyer's Office.

Some 76,490 of those plants were taken from sites located in Mendocino
County; 133,441 were seized from various locations in Lake County; and
214,319 plants were seized from Shasta County, according to statistics
from Lockyer. Only 150 marijuana plants were pulled from San Mateo
County, which was on the bottom of Lockyer's list of the 31 counties
involved in the eradication efforts.

While in Mendocino County, the multi-agency CAMP program assists the
County of Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Team.

"At the beginning of the season we will start flying and spotting and
identifying gardens, then all that information goes into a data bank
that we keep," COMMET Commander Rusty Noe said. "We take these gardens
as they come and either investigate or cut them down. Then, the ones
that we identify that we can't get to, or need helicopter support for,
we save in a data bank for when the CAMP season starts," he said.

COMMET, from January 2005 to date, has seized a total of 144,159
marijuana plants from throughout the county, Noe said, noting that
some of those plants came from indoor gardens and the rest from
outdoor plots.

In 2004, COMMET seized about 94,000 plants from 320 sites, he
said.

This year in Mendocino County, some 397 sites were eradicated, Noe
said. Not only were there more gardens this year, but they were also
larger. "We are also up quite a bit on the arrests," he said, noting
that in 2004, officers made about 25 arrests, and this year so far
there have been 49 related arrests in the county.

This season, CAMP conducted 237 raids in 31 counties during the
traditional growing season. In addition to the plant eradication,
officers made 42 arrests and seized 76 weapons.

Asked why marijuana activity is up this year, Noe said: "I don't know.
. It's up because of the relaxed atmosphere in Mendocino County, but
there are a million variables. We had quite a bit of activity in the
national forest and outlying timberlands with the Mexican nationals,
which brought our numbers up, so that is partially what the increase
is about. The other part is we had a lot larger cases this year,
meaning more plants per site," he said, referring to some Mendocino
County gardens containing as many as 10,000 plants each.

Yet that's just a drop in the bucket compared to some of the gardens
in Shasta County, where CAMP agents confiscated 214,319 marijuana plants.

"The situation with Shasta County is they are just being hammered by
Mexican nationals growing marijuana in the field," Noe said. "They
will go in ... they are not interested in quality; they are interested
in quantity. So they will go into a very remote area and grow
thousands of plants, with an average garden (containing) 30,000
plants. Whereas if you look at Mendocino County, our largest garden
was probably 12,000 plants. We don't have that corridor," he said.

Medical marijuana laws are also responsible for creating an increase
in plant growth, Noe said.

"The Legislature has to take a good look at medical marijuana and
figure out how they are going to set limits, because there are none,"
Noe said. "They need to start prosecuting these people who are
cultivating for profit."