KMAX: News of the West

Opium plantation found in Sierra Nevada

By BRIAN MELLEY
Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO (AP) Tens of thousands of opium poppies have been seized in the Sierra Nevada, marking the first time the drug-producing plants have been found in a national forest in California, officials said.

No arrests were made after the 40,000-plant garden was discovered, although a suspected cultivator with cuts on his face and brown residue on his hands was stopped and questioned, said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Sue Exline.

A hiker happened upon the plants Wednesday in a fire-ravaged area of the Sierra National Forest that has been home to illegal marijuana gardens in the past, Exline said.

When officers arrived, three men dressed in camouflage fled into a steep, rugged section n of the forest above North Fork, about 45 miles northeast of Fresno. The forest borders the south side of Yosemite National Park.

The suspects had been slashing pods on the plants to let the opium ooze out. Opium is a narcotic that can be smoked on its own and serves as the main ingredient in heroin.

Officers recovered a fingerprint that may help identify other suspects, Exline said. If arrested, the suspects could be charged with possessing opium, which is a felony.

The amount of plants scattered across two acres would have yielded about 40 pounds of raw opium, said Gordon Taylor, who heads the Drug Enforcement Agency for the eastern part of California.

There was no evidence the drug was to be used to make highly addictive heroin, which is a complex manufacturing process and is usually done in Mexico or Columbia, where most imported heroin originates.

Taylor said raw opium is sometimes found in the Central Valley in shipments mailed from Southeast Asia. Some members of Southeast Asian communities, which are prevalent in the valley, smoke the drug or use it medicinally.

``We've actually been into apartments and homes where opium dens have been set up in closets and parts of the house,'' said Robert Pennal, commander of the Fresno Methamphetamine Task Force.

Forest employees and narcotics officers pulled the plants from the ground Thursday and Exline said they will be incinerated.

The lavender and green-flowered poppies were scattered in a sunny two-acre section of charred pines and manzanita at 3,000 feet above sea level. In 2001, the area burned in the 5,000-acre North Fork fire.

The area has been home to numerous marijuana gardens destroyed in the Sierra Nevada foothills in recent years by law enforcement.

Officials have become increasingly wary of pot plantations that are sometimes patrolled by armed guards and have connections to Mexican drug cartels. Three years ago, a father and son hunting on their land in El Dorado County were shot and seriously injured when they stumbled upon a marijuana garden.

``This is a pretty alarming development,'' said Matt Mathes, a forest service spokesman. ``The environmental and public safety problems posed by marijuana are bad enough. I would think this would be worse.''

^ =

On the Net:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sierra/

(