Dialogue: Growers not giving up, just changing methods

By DANIEL JACKSON in northland

In a recent cannabis-recovery operation, 25 police officers from Northland and Auckland used about 90 hours of helicopter time to locate and either pull or spray 25,000 cannabis plants, which had an estimated mature value of $25 million.

However, in 1995 when police raided cannabis plots in Northland they pulled 45,633 plants - nearly twice as much.

Northland police drug squad boss Sergeant Warren Moetara confirmed that the number of plants seized in recent years was decreasing. He believed the annual police recovery operations and ongoing busts were hurting cannabis growers and information received from growers and observations from officers in the recovery suggested there were fewer plants around.

But it's hard to believe that the green- thumbed crims are just giving up on a multimillion-dollar industry.

Northland's warm conditions and sparse population make it ideal for cultivating the drug while the local economy receives a boost at the end of harvest season when wild men from the hills roll into town with wads of cash.

A British TV documentary some years ago profiled the region's cannabis culture.

Evidence uncovered in the operation suggests growers are not giving up on the lucrative drug trade but are changing their ways. Instead of the large, well-tended and farm-like cannabis plots once common, police have found that growers have switched to spreading their plants in the bush to hide them from aerial surveillance.

The biggest find during the recent campaign was a plot of about 500 plants, which may seem like a lot but used to be a common size in past recovery operations.

Smaller and better-hidden plots are now the norm. Police are finding clusters of two or three plants - which, combined with the 20 or so similar-sized plots surrounding them, make an impressive total.

What's more, the plants being recovered from outdoor operations have changed as well. Instead of the 3m whoppers with sparse leaf coverage once common, police are turning up what they believe are specially bred hybrids of indoor and outdoor plants, about 1.5m to 2m tall. These smaller, bushier plants give a good yield of quality cannabis - proving that the dedicated professional cannabis grower does not think twice about combining the best characteristics of plants to increase profits.

Growers are also moving indoors to escape detection. During the recent operation, police found 10 indoor cannabis-growing set-ups ranging from three or four plants under heat lamps to 100 or more grown hydroponically.

Another explanation for the decreasing amount of cannabis found up north is that growers have moved out. Sick of losing plots and getting busted every year they could have upped stakes and moved south to less vigilantly patrolled areas.

In 1997, members of the Kerikeri motorcycle gang FTW were caught in New Zealand's biggest-known cannabis-growing operation in the wild bush country of the Whanganui National Park.

The Wanganui police had halted aerial surveillance after the death of an officer in a helicopter accident some years before.

Police found out about the huge operation through tip-offs. When they busted the plot, officers seized tonnes of cannabis, estimated to be worth up to $15 million, and believed to be destined for the Greater Auckland.

Perhaps most disturbing is the thought that growers are turning away from cannabis and moving into the production of the increasingly popular and hugely profitable methamphetamine or speed.

The cannabis-recovery operation in Northland this year uncovered a meth lab in Kaitaia and the drug was also found on numerous suspects, indicating that its use and sale in Northland is on the up as it is elsewhere in New Zealand.

Methamphetamine may be more difficult to produce than growing cannabis but it's smaller and easier to move, which makes it attractive to gangs and organised rings which in the past may have put more energy into cannabis growing.

If Northland's well-established growing rings are switching to methamphetamine, it may not be long before their sophisticated distribution networks are pumping the drug throughout the country like they once did with cannabis.