On a few damp, green acres in Sleepy Hollow speckled with wild grass, cornstalks and patches of soybeans, the drug war continued.
But there were no gunshots or drug lords to contend with at this Kane County battlefront. Only a swirl of mosquitoes, brush and thick mud.
High-tech weed cutters wailed as law enforcement officers de-cimated a plot of mature marijuana plants worth about $12 million. Well into the afternoon, police hurled bundles of the moist plants onto a red dump truck, then carted them away to be doused with diesel fuel and set ablaze.
This slash-and-burn effort last week was the work of local police and
”Operation Cash Crop,” the state`s marijuana eradication program. It marked Cash Crop`s second catch in the area this month and reflected the year`s record trend of marijuana seizures across the Chicago area by police agencies.
Their mission to uproot Illinois` hidden crop before drug dealers can harvest it has intensified with increased federal funding and manpower, officials say. And once plucked from the soil, the task is even simpler.
”Get the flame hot enough. Torch it up. Boom! It`s gone,” said agent Roy Garcia of the North Central Narcotics Task Force, a state drug enforcement agency that administers the marijuana seizure program in Kane, De Kalb and McHenry Counties.
And while machetes and weed cutters are primary tools on this front, conventional weaponry has its place, too. Helicopters and canoes as well as automatic shotguns and pistols, army fatigues and even the help of the National Guard are employed in some operations.
From posh suburban homes with elaborate marijuana-growing operations to vacant fields interspersed with ”ditch weed” plants to manicured plots of premium cannabis, police are sending pot dealers` illegal businesses up in smoke.
Increasingly, police say, the drug is cropping up in the suburbs, especially this time of year when the harvest is plentiful. But unlike the biblical proverb, the laborers are more than a few.
”We are getting more calls from people about people selling or growing marijuana from their homes,” said Tom Braglia, spokesman for Northeastern Metropolitan Enforcement Group, an anti-drug agency.
In Inverness, for example, federal authorities in March were led to a half-million dollar home where they discovered more than 3,000 marijuana plants being grown in an elaborate greenhouse-like operation. A few days later, authorities seized about 2,500 marijuana plants from two semi-trailer trucks being used to grow premium pot in a Carol Stream warehouse.
Authorities attribute the record number of seizures-already 18 million wild plants alone above last year`s toll-to heightened enforcement efforts and federal funding to stem the marijuana trade, which has flourished despite its displacement in the 1980s by cocaine as the drug of choice.
”All that happened was that cocaine took a priority for a while. Marijuana did not go away,” Braglia said.
”It has always been here. We just don`t have the hippies using it anymore.”
Indeed, marijuana continues to find popularity among urban thrill-seekers, middle-class suburbanites and teenagers despite their gravitation in recent years toward alcohol, experts say. In fact, police said it was three teenagers who led them to the Sleepy Hollow stash.
”They told us that they had heard about this at a party and it (the news) was all over their high school,” said Howard Beyer, a Sleepy Hollow police investigator.
Although marijuana has been around for centuries, it came into national prominence during the 1960s and flourished in the 1970s, said Steven Hager, editor-in-chief of High Times, a magazine devoted to marijuana use.
Since its peak, however, authorities said the drug has suffered at the hands of a massive law enforcement campaign, which caused prices to skyrocket, and a national education campaign against drugs.
”These things had a tremendous impact on usage,” said Hager, who estimated that there were 20 million to 30 million marijuana users nationwide. ”It put marijuana out of the hands of the people who wanted it.”
Despite the national ”Just Say No” campaign, however, the drug`s popularity apparently never lost its foothold since the days of flower power, and in fact has rebounded in recent years, authorities say.
”Marijuana is definitely on the way back,” said Lt. Gene Karczewski, of the Chicago Police narcotics section. ”The strength of the drug is now stronger. And there are tons of money to be made by selling the stuff.”
Experts attribute marijuana`s longevity and recent popularity surge to a number of factors. Perhaps most notable is the fact that the drug has become more potent with modern cultivation techniques, Karczewski said.
In fact, drug suppliers commonly cross-breed marijuana to produce a plant with a four to five times higher potency of the drug`s active ingredient known as tetra hydracannabinol (or THC), Karczewski said.
Because of its increased potency and demand, dealers can now charge more, according to Karczewski. Marijuana, for example, now sells for twice what it did five years ago, Karczewski said.
Also aiding marijuana`s resurgence is the common notion that the drug is harmless in relation to other more addictive narcotics such as heroin, cocaine and crack, its derivative, experts say.
Marijuana has consistently ranked second in seizures and arrests only to cocaine or crack since the multi-jurisdictional agency was founded in 1972 to combat illegal narcotics. In fact, marijuana seizures by that agency alone have increased from $150,000 in 1989 to $4.8 million already this year.
Marijuana accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all drug seizures made by the agency, Braglia said.
Authorities have made discoveries of marijuana growth in the state from the Shawnee Forest in southern Illinois to Stephenson County near Freeport on the Wisconsin border. But wild marijuana is hard to spot because it grows along roadsides and in fields.
Wild marijuana, also known as ditch weed, is of lower quality than the cultivated plants. In fact, ditch weed sells for a fraction of the premium marijuana like Sinsemilla, which can go for as much as $2,500 a plant.
In this year`s first eight months, state officials say, a team of 15 state troopers and officers from local police departments destroyed more than 38 million ditch weed plants compared with 20 million plants seized in 1991.
Local authorities were led on Sept. 3 to a patch of mature marijuana plants worth about $750,000 in rural McHenry County just north of Union. A retired Indiana state trooper, who is also a private pilot, happened to spot the patch of dark green typical of marijuana while flying over the field and later alerted local authorities, Garcia said.
Anyone wishing to report marijuana being grown or harvested can call the task force at the following numbers: 708-697-6430 in Kane County; 708-516-0084 in McHenry County; or 815-756-2032 in De Kalb County.
