Cannabis Chronicles

As was detailed in the previous entry here at the Cannabis Chronicles, a movement was started in the late 1990’s to use Fusarium fungus as a bio-herbicide to exterminate both Cannabis and Coca. Our archival coverage continues with another article from 1999, this one from a magazine called the New Scientist.

Operation Eradicate

* 11 September 1999
* From New Scientist Print Edition.
* Kurt Kleiner

FLORIDA’S law enforcement agents destroy about 100 000 marijuana plants every year. And that’s just 20 per cent of the estimated total grown there. Many of the crops lie deep in the Everglades, where there is dense vegetation to camouflage them and alligators to deter inquisitive state officials. But last April, Jim McDonough, director of Florida’s drug control policy, decided to get tough. He suggested spraying the Everglades with a fungus that would kill off the marijuana but leave other plants untouched.

When the story appeared in newspapers in July, it enraged environmentalists and provoked a lawsuit from a pro-marijuana group. Some critics described it as a form of biological warfare. The St Petersburg Times urged that the “killer fungus” should not be released. And several months before the story broke, David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), had expressed fears that the fungus would mutate and attack other plant species.

McDonough’s suggestion was based on research into biocontrol funded by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), aimed at finding a cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to herbicides. The Florida office of drug control policy now says both the media and the DEP had misunderstood McDonough’s proposal. He never suggested actually spraying the fungus over the swamps, the office maintains, but merely wanted to test it in a quarantine facility in Gainesville. Indeed, the DEP has since sanctioned this proposal, but according to Albert Wollermann, the office’s lawyer, there are no immediate plans to go ahead with the tests.

Selective killers
The Florida eradication scheme may have been shelved, at least temporarily, but the USDA continues to spend $23 million a year on research into biocontrol agents that would selectively kill coca plants, from which cocaine is derived, and opium poppies. And some of those are poised to move out of the greenhouse and into the open.

Biocontrol of weeds is certainly not a new idea, but in the past it has usually involved insects. The use of a fungus is not, however, unprecedented. For the last 25 years, researchers have had varying degrees of success in trying to control rush skeletonweed (Chondrilla juncea), which affects wheat, with a fungus called skeletonweed rust (Puccinia chondrillina).

The fungus at the centre of the Florida row is a variety of Fusarium oxysporum. Fusarium species infect the vascular system of a number of plants, from bananas to wheat, causing them to whither and die. The Florida scheme was based on work carried out by a researcher at Montana State University, Bozeman, called David Sands, who suggested that this particular variant would be lethal only to cannabis.

Sands did initially have a grant from the USDA to look at using Fusarium to control marijuana. But when he approached the Florida state government it was as head of his own company, Ag/Bio Con. The USDA says it stopped funding his research a few years ago, when lab tests showed the fungus was only marginally effective against cannabis. “The results were mediocre,” says Eric Rosenquist, leader of the USDA’s international programmes, who oversees the agency’s funding for narcotics biocontrol, “If it’s that mediocre in the greenhouse, it’s unlikely to work in the field.”

Sands would not speak to New Scientist. But his company continues its research in this area. And recent evidence suggests that he has improved the technology. Before the story broke in July, John Masterson, director of the Montana office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), received an anonymous e-mail informing him of the Florida proposal and the Montana research. He promptly phoned the university, which confirmed that the research was taking place. But it refused to say more, explaining that its policy was not to disclose results before publication. NORML sued, and in August, before any judgment was handed down, the university began to release documents relating to the research. In some, Sands discusses patent applications he has made on a process for “virulence enhancement” of bioherbicides. It’s not clear what this enhancement consists of, but in a letter he says that he developed it after USDA funding stopped.

In the meantime, the USDA is collaborating with the UN on a programme at the Institute of Genetics in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. They hope to use the Pleospora papaveracea fungus to control opium poppies. But its main effort is concentrated on another variety of Fusarium oxysporum that attacks coca plants.

This fungus was discovered accidentally when it wiped out a test plot of coca being grown in Hawaii. Since then, USDA researchers have worked on manufacturing large amounts of the fungus in a form that is easy to store. More importantly, they have assured themselves that it will attack only coca plants. Since most pathogens evolve with their hosts, they can often survive only in that host. This selectivity can be confirmed in the lab by trying to persuade a fungus to infect first close relatives of the target plant, then progressively more distant relatives, until researchers are convinced no other plants will be affected. “We’ve done host specificity studies,” says Rosenquist of the anti-coca fungus. “We’re convinced of its safety. We’re actually at the point now where we couldn’t go any further in the greenhouse.”

In the case of cannabis, even the most rigorous host specificity studies will not reassure some people. If the anti-cannabis fungus is now more effective, it could spell disaster for farmers who grow industrial hemp. These varieties of Cannabis sativa end up as vegetable oil or fibre and can be grown legally because they are low in delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active component of cannabis.

Masterson points out that Montana, where some of the work on the fungus has been done, borders the Canadian province of Alberta, where hemp has been grown industrially since 1998. If the fungus somehow spreads to fields in Alberta, it could damage the legal crop.

“For the hemp industry, it would be devastating for the fungus to get out,” says Douglas Brown, a director of the WestHemp Cooperative in Vancouver, British Columbia. “There would be millions of dollars of losses. If this fungus is looking for Cannabis sativa, it’s not going to differentiate between high-THC and low-THC varieties.”

And even if the fungus stays put, it could destroy wild cannabis that has adapted to conditions in the areas where it is released. Losing the wild plants could make it harder to breed hemp with the traits future farmers will need, says Brown.

But Rosenquist says the real question is not whether a fungus will spread uncontrollably, but whether it will work at all. “The biggest problem with classic biocontrol is when you release it into a complex ecology,” he says. “What may work well in one place may not work in another.”

So the next step for the USDA will be to convince the government of one of the coca-producing nations—such as Peru, Bolivia or Colombia—to let field experiments take place there. But Pat Mooney, executive director of the Rural Advancement Foundation International in Winnipeg, says using biocontrol agents against narcotics crops is “agricultural terrorism,” especially if it is done without the consent of the target country.

And according to The Miami Herald, some Peruvian farmers think that this has already happened. They have accused the US of testing an anti-coca fungus that has since spread to bananas, yucca and tangerine crops.

Rosenquist denies this. And he stresses that work won’t start without permission from the country concerned. But even with the country’s consent, says Mooney, it’s dangerous. “The solution to narcotics is not just to destroy the crops. It’s a fundamental social problem, and it’s not going to be solved by a silver bullet from an airplane.”

From issue 2203 of New Scientist magazine, 11 September 1999, page 20

To our “bird brains”, it really does seem self evident that the solution to narcotics, and drugs in general, is never going to be a magic bullet from above. Not only does the specter of the inclusion of bio-warfare as a part of the drug war scream of desperation, it flies in the face of past attempts to solve one problem by introducing another one.

Pest species, whether they be an insect or a fungus or a bacteria, usually exist in enormous numbers. Pesticides and herbicides are never 100% effective for this very reason, and the population that does survive often inherits resistance.

In a worst case scenario, the Fusarium fungus released to control Cannabis is less than perfectly effective, while at the same time the fungus also mutates to attack an important food crop. This isn’t an unlikely scenario, as Cannabis itself is a resilient species, and many food crops are quite inbred as well as usually being planted in a huge mono-culture that are a pest’s or disease’s almost literal wet dream.

With all of that in mind, here’s continuing coverage in the Fusarium Attack archive, this time from Montana . . .

Montana NORML Sues University To Get Info On Fungus Research
Group Sues MSU Over Anti-Marijuana Fungus
October 14, 1999
From The Missoulian
By Michael Moore, of the Missoulian

GROUP SUES MSU OVER ANTI-MARIJUANA FUNGUS

The Montana chapter of a national organization that favors reform of marijuana laws has sued Montana State University in a battle over documents relating to a fungus that destroys marijuana plants.

The suit is filed in Missoula District Court because the director of the Montana chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, John Masterson, lives in Missoula.

The suit stems from research done at MSU involving a fungus called fusarium oxysporum. The fungus is typically associated with tomato wilt, but varieties of fusarium have caused problems for dozens of crops. Because of its ability to cause wilt, fusarium has drawn attention from national and state governments interested in eradicating illicit drug crops - particularly marijuana, coca and opium poppies.

According to the suit, Masterson and NORML learned in March that MSU had conducted experiments with a fungus that destroyed “all plants in the cannabis family, including industrial hemp.” Masterson later learned that the fungus was fusarium, which is being successfully used in Africa to fight weeds that ruin farm crops.

“We started learning about fusarium and we got concerned,” Masterson said Wednesday.

Fusarium, a soil-borne fungus, is controversial. A proposal to use the fungus in Florida to eradicate marijuana caused a controversy between state officials and environmentalists, who worried that the fungus might loose its lethal wilt on other plants there.

“It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of fusarium species,” David Struhs, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, wrote to the head of the state’s drug control office.

The fungus that Florida would have used - the plan was shelved pending in-state studies - was developed at least in part by researchers at MSU.

In addition to the fusarium that cripples marijuana, MSU scientists have reportedly worked with a strain of fusarium that goes after coca plants. An MSU scientist who spoke to the Missoulian last year on condition that his name not be used said he believed that the coca-killing fungus was targeted for use in South America.

That same scientist said that he didn’t believe sufficient testing had been done on the potential harm the fungus might do in ecosystems where it might be used.

Alarmed at the potential uses of fusarium, Masterson and NORML eventually contacted MSU in an effort to access any university documents relating to fusarium research.

“We were very concerned that the zealotry and lunacy associated with the drug war could be driving us to a point where we might be using a potentially dangerous fungus on American soil,” Masterson said. “It seemed like a nightmare waiting to happen.”

Masterson’s initial request for information fell on deaf ears at MSU. “On May 24, 1999, MSU’s legal counsel responded to Plaintiff’s broad request for information in a single paragraph which denied all access to any information about the project held by MSU for the reason that all documents were proprietary information and trade secrets,” the lawsuit states.

The university later told Masterson and NORML that contracts signed by MSU regarding the fusarium project “contained secrecy clauses that forbade MSU from divulging any information whatsoever about the project,” the suit states.

After MSU’s refusal to provide documents, Masterson and NORML filed suit, asking a District Court judge to order the school to make public all documents related to the fusarium experiment.

In a three-page answer to the lawsuit, MSU attorney Leslie Taylor admitted that the school has worked with fusarium, including a greenhouse experiment in Missoula in the 1980s. That experiment was conducted with the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

However, Taylor said funding for the fusarium research ended in December 1998 and that the university has conducted no further research. Masterson and NORML contend that the research is continuing.

MSU also claims that since initially denying information to Masterson, the university has since received permission from the federal government to release some information about the research.

That information has been provided to Masterson and NORML, Taylor states in MSU’s answer. Once he got it, Masterson posted it at Montana NORML’s Web site, www.montananorml.org

“We’ve gotten some good information, but I think there’s more we need to know about what they’re doing over there,” Masterson said.

As we’ll see with the next journal entry, the story (and the truth) seems to be a bit of a moving target as told by “authorities”.