A Cure Worse than the Disease?

Paraquat spraying in Georgia puts the DEA under fire

It started out as partly a drug raid, partly a well-orchestrated publicity campaign. As a helicopter swooped over the horizon of Georgia's Chattahoochee National Forest, technicians on board directed the aerial spraying of selected plots of illicit greenery. Camera crews dutifully recorded the 20-min. operation. It was, said the Drug Enforcement Administration proudly, the first-ever aerial use of the potent weed killer paraquat on domestic marijuana fields. A White House spokesman hinted that similar airborne anti-pot hits might be staged this year in as many as 39 other states.

But by week's end the Reagan Administration's latest anti-drug campaign was coming under siege, with both its motives and its methods being questioned by elected officials and citizens' groups. Charging that the DEA was conducting "chemical warfare" against them, a coalition of 400 area residents won a temporary order in U.S. district court barring further paraquat spraying in Georgia's White County, which includes the Chattahoochee. A motion for a similar order was denied in London, Ky., near the Daniel Boone National Forest, where the DEA began spraying Friday. Republican Congressman Harold Rogers, in whose district the spraying took place, called it "a tragically silly operation run by a bunch of incompetents." Republican Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee also voiced opposition to scheduled paraquat spraying in his state. For his part, DEA acting Administrator Francis Mullen seemed to be fudging on how many states can expect to be doused by paraquat from the air. Said he: "It could reach 40; it could be three or four."

Critics of the program charge that the airborne spraying is not an effective way to wipe out the estimated $10 billion U.S. marijuana crop. Because it is grown surreptitiously, most pot "fields" in the U.S. are actually small plots that are most efficiently cleared by simple uprooting or by ground spraying. For the DEA's first raid, the point seemed true enough. The take from seven small Georgia patches totaling less than an acre was about 60 plants, though the Feds managed to destroy larger amounts in Kentucky.

The real purpose of the operation, DEA's detractors claim, was to encourage countries like Colombia, where marijuana is grown in large fields, to follow suit. Mullen maintained that was not the main goal and insisted that helicopter spraying is useful even on small plots of marijuana in rough terrain.

It is also a good way to scare the public. Paraquat can be lethal to humans if swallowed in doses as small as one-tenth of an ounce and can cause serious lung scarring if inhaled.

Some states are reluctant to use the herbicide as an aerial spray because of the chance that it will drift, contaminating nearby crops and livestock. Federal officials claim that the isolation of national forest lands, plus the | containment factor provided by a helicopter's downdraft, minimizes that risk. Others disagree. Says Jay Feldman, head of the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides: "There is no aerial application that doesn't involve drift."

For U.S. marijuana smokers, who may number as many as 30 million, the DEA program raises an old dilemma: the possibility of smoking tainted weed. Farming marijuana domestically, in fact, became a growth industry only when the U.S. provided funds for Mexico to use paraquat on its fields from 1975 to 1979, and contaminated samples began showing up in smuggled pot. Though not a single case of lung poisoning has so far been traced to marijuana use from that era, U.S. health officials estimate that nearly 10,000 users annually inhaled enough paraquat to be still considered at risk. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.