FROM THE CATALOGUE OF BIZARRE IDEAS: A Fungus to Wipe Out Coca -- and Corn, and Tomatoes, and Peppers, and ... Everglades Too Precious For Fungus Experiment -- So Let's Try Colombia's Jungle Daryl Lease is a free-lance writer in Bradenton, Florida. In recent weeks, U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey has tried to wheedle promises from Hollywood to make films preaching the horrors of drug use. Meanwhile, he and an unusual team of collaborators have been hurriedly writing an anti-drug script of their own. Their drama -- let's give it a blockbuster title, Fungus! -- is set in the Amazonian jungle, and McCaffrey's people describe it as a can't-miss international hit. Others, however, are making a persuasive case that it'll be a B-grade horror flop, more deserving of a title like, Hey! Who the Hell Ate the Rainforest? The fungus in question is Fusarium oxysporum, a relatively unknown actor with a voracious appetite for marijuana, cocaine, heroin and -- according to some critics -- just about anything else that's leafy, green and unable to pull up roots and flee. Last summer, Florida officials briefly, and rather theatrically, pondered experimenting with this soil-borne fungus as an alternative means to combat the state's thriving marijuana trade. Promoters touted it as a lean, mean weed-eating machine, but skeptics pointed out -- accurately -- that precious little is known about what else it might munch up in the process. Interestingly, the fungus foes included David Struhs, Governor Jeb Bush's appointee to head the state Department of Environmental Protection and a man known for not letting the environment get in the way of a business deal. Early in the debate, Struhs joined a chorus of opponents, including a predictably offkey contingent of potheads, in denouncing the fungus plan as risky and perhaps foolhardy. He warned Jim McDonough, who'd traded in his title as director of strategy for McCaffrey to become Florida's drug czar, that the Fusarium species is "capable of evolving rapidly" and may prove "difficult, if not impossible, to control." "The mutated fungi," Struhs wrote, "can cause disease in a large number of crops, including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn and vines, and are normally considered a threat to farmers as a pest, rather than as a pesticide." In the steamy soil of Florida, the fungus could live for decades. We've been down this road before -- in several notorious attempts to put species from other countries to work in the United States, we were startled to discover that the plants take on wildly different personalities in our environment. Kudzu was originally introduced to the southern United States from China as a natural means of erosion control; it's overwhelmed native species. Punk trees, or Melaleuca quinquenervia, were imported to help dry up the Everglades back when some folks thought that was a dandy idea; the trees marched relentlessly onward and continue to suck up water wherever they please. "I personally do not like the idea of messing with Mother Nature," said Bill Graves, senior biologist at the University of Florida Research Center, told the New York Times last summer, shortly before state officials shelved the idea. "I believe that if this fungus is unleashed for this kind of problem, it's going to create its own problems. If it isn't executed effectively, it's going to target and kill rare and endangered plants." Fast forward to this summer, as the Clinton administration and Congress prepare to send a $1.3 billion anti-narcotics aid package to Colombia. The package, much to the surprise of many who witnessed the Florida debate, is wrapped tightly with a string -- $3 million to test the effectiveness of Fusarium oxysporum on Andean coca bushes. McCaffrey and other supporters of the experiment hope it will demonstrate that the mycoherbicide, or fungal herbicide, is safe and can quickly be put to work wiping out Colombia's estimated 300,000 acres of coca. There have been at least two instances of the fungus laying waste to coca plants. In the 1970s, Coca-Cola began growing coca in Hawaii to use in its flavoring process, but the crop was destroyed by a fungus later identified as a strain of Fusarium oxysporum. In 1992, Peru's cocaine producers lost thousands of acres to the fungus. The fungus has long held the attention of anti-drug warriors, who constantly find themselves under fire by environmentalists and health advocates for aerial spraying. (Lately, the U.S. has been spraying glyphosate, sold at your local home-and-garden supply store as Roundup.) During the Cold War, both U.S. and Soviet governments secretly tested Fusarium oxysporum for use in their own drug wars. Not all Colombian officials are thrilled with playing host to a killer fungus. Within days of a report by the New York Times this month about the experiment, Colombia's environmental minister, Juan Mayr, fired off a letter to the editor saying he opposes the tests "because any agent foreign to the native ecosystems of our country could present grave risks to the environment and human health." Others echo his fears. "If it's bad for [Florida], why is it good for us?" Colombian Senator Rafael Orduz recently asked the Miami Herald. He also questions stipulations in the aid package that would make Colombia solely responsible for any problems that arise during testing, the Herald reports. In a lengthy and ground-breaking piece in its May issue, Mother Jones magazine recounted, among other things, research indicating that the same strain of fungus that wiped out the coca plants in Peru also killed banana and other food crops. Writers Sharon Stevenson and Jeremy Bigwood also raised alarms about the U.S. government's supposedly reassuring claims that the fungus will attack only plants within the genus Erythroxylum -- a genus that includes more than 200 plants besides coca. McCaffrey's office says more than 100 species of plants have been tested with the fungus and none has been affected. But that's only a tiny fraction of species contained in the Amazon jungle, the second most biodiverse region in the world. In addition to the environmental concerns, opponents in Colombia and elsewhere have pointed to studies indicating that the fungus can be toxic to humans under some circumstances. Drug czar McCaffrey's office contends that the toxins would affect only "immune-suppressed cancer patients whose defense levels were very low, making them vulnerable to almost any microbe." Those folks, McCaffrey's report says, would be hospitalized or quarantined and thus out the way during spraying. Despite pleas to stop McCaffrey's blockbuster production, the experiment at this point appears to be a done deal. The idea has the backing of the White House, the Republican leadership in Congress, and the U.N. Drug Control Program. And, for the most part, Colombian officials are eager to get that $1.3 billion aid package. The cheering squad now includes at least a few Florida politicians. Representative Bill McCollum, a Republican who hopes to win his party's nomination for the Senate this fall, recently told the Associated Press that the fungus "could be the silver bullet" in the drug war. Perhaps McCollum is correct, and Fusarium oxysporum will be one of those rare instances in the history of government where the law of unintended consequences will be temporarily suspended. Maybe we really are looking at major turning point in the war on drugs. In an event, we should be sure to bring plenty of extra popcorn to McCaffrey's show. The fungus may well appear on our doorsteps in mid-viewing -- with a really bad case of the munchies. http://tompaine.com/opinion/2000/07/21/1.html <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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