cannabisnews.com: Alaska's Top Crop Alaska's Top Crop Posted by FoM on October 15, 2000 at 07:17:54 PT By S.J. Komarnitsky, Daily News Mat-Su Bureau Source: Anchorage Daily News The police knew they were close. They could smell it. The resinous reek in the workshop off Knik-Goose Bay Road could mean only one thing: marijuana. But where was the crop? There were no plants, no grow lights in sight. But there was a man, who after some persuading picked up a drill and walked to the back wall. With a few quick moves he removed two screws and slid back a panel to reveal a secret room. From there, it was a 10-foot drop by ladder to a concrete bunker. Inside a space the size of a small cabin, 400 green leafy plants sported enough bud, about 12 pounds, to keep dozens of tokers happily glazed for months. The estimated street value: between $36,000 and $48,000. Pot Farms Grow Like Weeds: The Matanuska Valley is home to carrots, potatoes and giant vegetables, all displayed as the public face of northern agriculture. But the undisputed king of Alaska farming, the most profitable crop, is marijuana. A good batch sells, ounce for ounce, for as much as gold. State government touts "Alaska Grown," but over the past two decades it has done its best to put this homegrown crop out of business. Police and drug agents have arrested growers by the hundreds, ripped up plants by the thousands and burned them in smoky pyres. Nowhere in Alaska have pot growing and efforts to stop it been as concentrated as here in Valley. But despite the nonstop multimillion-dollar effort that draws from state and local police, the National Guard and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, marijuana farming remains rampant here. Last year, 211 people in the Mat-Su area were arrested on suspicion of or charged with growing or selling marijuana. They were men and women, young and old, married and single, employed and unemployed. Some were first-timers. Some had been busted before. So far this year, another 60 have been busted. Statewide, as many as 113 people are in jail on state marijuana offenses. Another 600 are on probation. A quarter of them are in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, where the cases make up nearly a third of the local probation office's caseload. Because no agency tracks marijuana cases, those numbers are estimates based on the most common marijuana charge: misconduct involving a controlled substance in the fourth degree. In Mat-Su, more than 90 percent of the cases for that charge were for marijuana cases, according to prosecutors and the local public defender. Some people question whether this expense of time and money is worth the trouble. "It's absurd," said Ken Goldman, who headed the Palmer district attorney's office for 10 years before starting a private practice last year. "We're penalizing people that are average citizens whose only crime for the most part is they enjoy smoking." Law enforcement officials defend the effort as necessary to keep marijuana use in check. But even they estimate at best they intercept 10 percent of the crop. New pot farms pop up to replace old ones as tenaciously as the nickname "weed" implies. Sometimes even in the same place. Six months after they first visited the home off Knik-Goosebay Road, the cops came back. This time they didn't need help finding the secret entrance, much to the dismay of the five men inside. 'It's Everywhere'Alaska and marijuana have had a long and curious relationship. It was illegal for years, and then in 1975, for all practical purposes, its use in small amounts became legal. In 1990, residents voted to make it illegal. Two years ago, voters made it legal again for people with certain medical conditions to use with a doctor's recommendation. Now pot is on the ballot once more, to again legalize its use. Meanwhile, enforcement of marijuana laws, especially aimed at growers, has escalated. Since the early 1980s, when a drug unit was first set up in Mat-Su, the number of marijuana-grow busts has climbed from a few a year to nearly 100 last year. The five-person unit spends nearly all of its time investigating and busting growers, said Lt. Don Bowman, who headed the Alaska State Troopers statewide drug unit until this summer. The troopers operate similar teams in Fairbanks and Juneau and have two Anchorage-based teams, which focus on the city's international airport and Western Alaska. They draw their members from the ranks of troopers as well as from local police with assistance from the National Guard. The Mat-Su office is in a nondescript gray building near Wasilla. An adjoining garage holds stacks of evidence collected over the years: fans and other electrical equipment, scales, police scanners and enough bongs to equip a Grateful Dead concert. Many of the pipes have a personal touch, from the modified cigarette lighter with a hole punched in the base to a gas mask that straps over the smoker's face. Business is brisk here. Thirty to 40 tips a week pour in, so many that the officers rarely travel to the farther-flung areas of the Valley unless there are at least two or three locations to check during the trip. It's not worth their time otherwise. They joke about how easy it is to find pot farms. But they know they face an uphill battle. While no one knows exactly how widespread marijuana growing is in Alaska and Mat-Su, one amazing statistic turned up during the 1996 Big Lake wildfire. Of the 400 buildings and homes burnt, 20 of them, 5 percent, contained remnants of marijuana grows, according to trooper Sgt. Tim Bleicher, who headed the Valley drug team. If that figure is representative, it would make Mat-Su home to more than 1,200 pot farms. If anything, that estimate is probably conservative, said trooper Steve Adams, who spent the past two years on the Mat-Su drug team. "It's everywhere," he said. Entire cul-de-sacs are populated with people growing marijuana, said Rick Manrique, a Wasilla police officer and former member of the Mat-Su drug team. "Talk about your neighborhood watch program," he said. A Ready Market:Marijuana is by far the most popular illicit drug in the nation. By official estimates, 72 million people, about a third of the population, have tried it and nearly 19 million use it regularly. People in this country spend something like $7 billion a year on pot, according to one government estimate, as much as shoppers spent online last year. Pot use among high school students has risen over the past decade, national surveys show. In Alaska, nearly a third of high school students surveyed last year reported they had smoked marijuana in the previous month, according to study by the state Division of Public Health. In other words, there's a market. Growers say the attraction is simple: easy money. A good crop of Alaska weed, costing relatively little to produce, sells for $3,000 to $4,000 a pound locally and can fetch much more in the Bush. Growers can easily produce two to three pounds every three months, and some are set up to harvest each month. While costs vary, growers say the profits are good. An ounce, about enough to fit in a small sandwich bag, can sell for up to $360, said Keith Berggren, who was fined $5,000 and is serving five years' probation for his 60-plant growing operation. That kind of money makes for a better living than Wal-Mart wages. Berggren, 45, a cook who lives near Palmer, describes himself as an old hippie who grew up smoking pot. He said he grew for himself and for his adult friends, to whom he sold at a discount. "It's a lot of money," he said. But the appeal went beyond that. Berggren said his crop was like a fine wine. "Two hits and you were on your tail," he said. His boast is backed by government-funded testing that found Berggren's marijuana among the elite, containing almost three times the national average of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient that makes users feel high. His growing days ended three years ago when troopers came to his door to serve a warrant on an old DWI case. "I had just got done blowing a bowl, and I guess I got them high on the landing there," he said, laughing in retrospect. "That's how it all went down the tubes." Steve Baker's growing operation came to a similarly unexpected end when, in 1996, police officers responded to a domestic violence call at his house. The officers said they smelled pot. Baker thinks otherwise. "I think somebody told them," he said. A heavy-equipment operator, Baker said he grew solely for profit. He was making a tax-free $30,000 every three months with an 80-plant grow he kept in a garage next to his house north of Wasilla. He held power costs down by tapping directly into an underground electric line, something he says that is done "very carefully" and never when it's raining. Electric bills for heat and the high-wattage lights are among the biggest expenses for growers. In addition to being sentenced to three years' probation, Baker was ordered to pay back $20,000 to Matanuska Electric Association for power he stole. Baker and Berggren said they think marijuana should be legalized, though neither knew the details of the proposed ballot initiative. "We should be able to manufacture our own stuff," Berggren said. "We're not hurting anybody. We're not in the black market." At the same time, he says he worries about people who will abuse pot. "Mankind in general, there's some who just want to go out and get blotto," he said. "It comes down to the individual. It's a hard call." Berggren said enforcement has made it harder to buy marijuana. "If you go to the street right now, my information is that 'there's nothing out there,' " he said. But Baker said the busts put only a small dent in the industry and the potential profit keeps people growing. "People are always going to smoke it, and it's surprising how high the price of it is," he said. "You can grow some of this and make a lot of money on it." 'A Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free-Card'People trying to put growers out of business say the laws are too lenient and should be toughened. Most first-time offenders get probation, community work service and a fine, usually $2,000 a pound. That's not enough to deter people from a growing a crop that can bring in several thousand dollars in a few months, Adams said. Or as Wasilla police officer Doug Sonerholm, another member of the Mat-Su drug team, puts it: "I don't want to tell you anything because everything I say will encourage people to grow pot." Federal sentences are much stiffer -- up to five years for a small first-time offense and potential loss of homes and property. But federal authorities take on few marijuana cases in Alaska, typically fewer than a dozen a year. In the nine months ending Oct. 1, Palmer assistant district attorney Jack Smith, who handled only drug cases, never took a marijuana case to trial. People don't fight the charges because they know they'll get little or no jail time, he said. "It's like a get-out-of-jail-free card," he said. Some couples work the system to get two free passes. The first time, the man will claim it's his grow. The second time the woman takes responsibility. The court rolls are filled with these kinds of cases. "In essence, they get two bites of the apple," Smith said. Critics like Goldman said most marijuana growers get probation because they don't have serious criminal records. In his decade as prosecutor, Goldman said he did his best to minimize the time spent on marijuana cases. Few growers had any criminal history and convictions did little to slow marijuana growing, sales or use, he said. "Look at what's happening in the Valley," he said. "On every block, there's a grow. Who doesn't have a friend who knows a grow? Everybody knows somebody. What are we trying to do?" Lt. Al Storey, who heads the troopers' statewide drug enforcement unit, said his work and that of other officers holds a line on marijuana use in Alaska. "It's not a war on drugs," he said. "It's a drug enforcement effort. We're not going to win this. What we're trying to do is make society better overall through the enforcement effort." Victory, he says, is measured in what doesn't happen: people who aren't killed in car accidents, teenagers who never start smoking pot. He worries about people driving, flying aircraft or operating heavy equipment while high on pot. Legalized pot would bring an increase in all sorts of social ills, including more domestic violence, in a "continued downslide in society," he said. Goldman says there's no evidence to support such claims. "Why would we" have an increase, he asked. As a prosecutor, he remembers only one case of someone driving under the influence of marijuana and never an assault caused by someone high on pot. The crime most often associated with pot, according to the former prosecutor, was people trying to rip off growers, which has resulted in homicides. But those crimes are motivated by the price of marijuana, which is kept high by enforcement, he said. "I don't see (growers) getting into the same degrees of trouble that I see in alcohol," Goldman said. Pricey Enforcement:How much money is being spent in Alaska's war on marijuana? Multiple state and federal agencies are involved. Officials say no one keeps track of the total. But research by the Daily News, based on figures from state agencies, suggests it added up to at least $6 million last year. That includes about $3.5 million to house up to 113 people serving time for marijuana offenses and another $1.3 million to supervise as many as 600 people on probation. The National Guard estimates it spends about $1 million a year helping dismantle pot farms, flying officers around and taking and investigating tips. In addition, Alaska State Troopers spend $4.7 million a year for drug enforcement, but officials couldn't say how much of that is spent on marijuana eradication or on its Mat-Su office. The total does not include the salaries of court clerks and judges who handle the cases, public defenders who represent many of the people accused of drug charges, prosecutors, any work done by the Anchorage Police Department or federal agencies. That money could be put to better use combating the use of harder, addictive drugs, argues Verne Rupright, a Wasilla-based defense attorney and former jail guard. Rupright does a steady trade defending people charged with marijuana offenses at about $5,000 a case. But he said he would gladly forgo the income. "I look at the national cost, and then I look at the cost to the state of Alaska in dollars spent in enforcement and court time, and I think that could be better spent targeting crack and methamphetamine and the rise again in heroin use," he said. Unlike other drugs, including alcohol, marijuana isn't linked with violent behavior just from its use, he said. "I mean, when's the last time you heard about a shoot'em-up at a marijuana bust," he said. Others argue the crackdown fuels the pot industry by keeping the price artificially high. Like any business, the higher the potential profit, the more people who want to get into it. "It's the prohibition of anything that has a popular demand," said Palmer City Councilman Tony Pippel. "You can't stop it. All you do is empower bad people to make a lot of money." He recently voted, unsuccessfully, against loaning a Palmer police officer to the drug unit even though doing so benefits the city financially. The federal government pays most of the officer's salary, and the city gets the money from confiscated assets, which last year brought Palmer $81,000. Valley Attractive To Growers: Though marijuana is grown all over the state, Mat-Su is the center of the pot battle. The Valley's farming history, relatively cheap land, isolated but road-accessible houses and proximity to the main population base in Anchorage make it attractive to growers, Storey said. And, growers say, they can get ordinary jobs like snowplowing or landscaping, which makes it easier to blend in and explain that new pickup or snowmachine to the neighbors. And, of course, Valley pot has marketing cachet, a brand name of sorts, being widely known as Matanuska Thunder -- -- (rhymes with thunderstruck). The name originally described a particular strain but now has become a generic label for Alaska weed. Other strains include Northern Lights #7. Of the 144 grow busts in Alaska last year, 97 were in the Valley. Mat-Su pot farms raised 13,611 of the more than 18,000 plants confiscated. Most busts involved a couple hundred plants or fewer. But some were much larger. One at a Wasilla home turned up more than 1,300. Trooper Adams said he knows of entire streets lined with homes growing pot. He calls one of them Dope Street. Residents of nearly every house have been busted, he said. People trying to report growing operations sometimes struggle to give a location. "They say, 'I think someone in the neighborhood is growing, but it smells like pot everywhere,' " Storey said. "Some places are just constructed ideally for growing marijuana," Adams said. Grows are often tucked on back roads in sparsely populated areas and in homes that have built-in crawl spaces and other nooks good for hiding plants, he said. Some people even advertise to growers with a real estate code, he said, selling property described as "secluded," with a "large unfinished basement" or a "generator shed." Mum's The Word: In this unending game of pursuit and deception, growers and drug agents hold their secrets close. Members of the drug unit would not be photographed for this story, citing safety concerns and the need to work undercover. They also asked that the location of their office and its security measures not be revealed. Trooper officials would not allow a photographer or reporter to go along on a bust or sit in on a briefing, citing the need to keep the details of their work secret. Some details could be gleaned from interviews and court case files. Tips are the main source of information. They come in from suspicious landlords, disgruntled spouses and watchful neighbors and sometimes, officers suspect, from other growers who want to knock out some competition. Authorities are occasionally alerted by a sudden jump in electric power consumption. Sometimes acting on tips, drug investigators just walk up to residents' doors to chat in what is known in the bust business as a "knock and talk." If they smell marijuana, they ask to come in. If the answer is no, they get a warrant. More often than not, people let them in. Why not, Sonerholm explains. They know they're caught, so they might as well cooperate. There are the other tricks of the trade. Adams will admit to one: dog treats. Biscuits, granola bars and jerky have gotten him past many a pit bull and Rottweiler guard dog, he said. He smiled as he recalled cleaning out entire grows, then putting "Rover" back in for the owner to come home and find. The growers have also developed strategies. They use dehumidifiers to soak up moisture and air filters to mask the musky telltale smell. At least one vented the smell from his grow room into the septic system. They tamper with meters to disguise power use or use generators and propane for power. One man arranged deliveries from five propane companies to disguise his fuel consumption. Some set up elaborate security systems to protect their crops from cops and thieves. The most sophisticated growers hire people, often teenagers, to watch their crop. They pay them thousands to sit around and play Nintendo and basically baby-sit the plants, Storey said. But most know the best security measure is keeping their mouths shut. "I tried not to let too many people know," said Don Feucht, a construction worker busted in 1998 after officers came to his home to take a report about kids who broke in. Drug officers say they almost never catch the smart growers and rarely catch someone a second time. Officers joke about the abundance of growers. They acknowledge they are catching only a fraction of them. But there's no question which side they are on in the drug war. They view marijuana as a gateway drug that leads to harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. It makes people lazy and neglectful of their kids. It causes brain damage. "Why do you think they call it dope?" says trooper Sgt. Tim Bleicher, a gray-haired 42-year-old who heads the unit. He talks of homes without furniture with moldy walls and overflowing toilets, where all the rooms are being used to grow pot and the kids are walking around in dirty diapers. If people saw those places, they would know the proposed initiative to legalize marijuana is a bad idea, he said. If pot were legalized, Alaska would become a magnet for drug dealers, he added. And so the fight goes on. Adams said he doesn't judge his success by whether he's catching all or even most of the growers. "If you start worrying about that, how are you going to get up and go to work?" He compares his work to catching speeders or drunken drivers. "You don't have police on every corner looking for drunk drivers," he said. "But that little bit of deterrent value makes people that are skirting the line stay on the right side." As for growers, they don't seem likely to stop soon, at least not while the money is good. One convicted grower, who asked that his name not be used for fear of losing his North Slope job, said he was done with growing pot. But when he was asked if he could have done something different to avoid getting caught, a gleam came into his eye. "Oh, yeah, I know what I'd do next time." Note: Marijuana farms sprout in Valley despite crackdown.Reporter S.J. Komarnitsky can be reached at: skomarnitsky adn.comSource: Anchorage Daily News (AK)Published: October 15, 2000Author: S.J. KomarnitskyCopyright: 2000 The Anchorage Daily News Contact: letters adn.com Website: http://www.adn.com/ Free Hemp in AlaskaAl Anders, Chair2603 Spenard RoadAnchorage, Alaska 99503 (907) 278-HEMP E-mail: freehempinak gci.netVisit their web site: http://www.freehempinak.orgHemp 2000R.L. Marcy, ChairP.O. Box 90055Anchorage, AK 99509907-376-2232 (p)Fax: 907-376-0530 (f)E-mail: marcy hemp2000.orgVisit their web site: http://www.hemp2000.org Imaginative Growers Strive To Be Stealthy http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7343.shtmlHemp Initiative is Foolish and Dangerous http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7317.shtmlHigh Hopes in Alaska for Sweeping Pot Law http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread7173.shtmlAlaska Hemp Initiative 2000http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6045.shtml END SNIP --> Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #2 posted by Mary Ransom on September 04, 2001 at 22:21:07 PT: only growing dope My husband and several of his friends started growing dope in our chugiak home when I was out of state for a year. Im a forensic nurse and I was angry walking into my house finding it totally trashed requiring drywall removal, roof repair, plumbing and wiring repair. Long after the DEA came in and stripped the house of all the plants people were pulling into my remote home looking to buy dope or collect money. I was a single parent with 3 kids (after we divorced) and I struggled with the repairs and eventually lost the house. My husband and his girlfriend went to jail along with their business partners. I was told by my ex I should have kept my mouth shut and they would have repaired the house and contributed to the house payments so I could have kept myself and the kids in our home. His girlfriend told me my ex and his business partners talked about how they could murder me so the group could retain the operation. Growing dope is not the harmless victimless crime deregulation groups portray. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by freedom fighter on October 15, 2000 at 11:36:20 PT Alaska's Top Crop Need we say anymore?Legalize and regulate it! 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