Agent Green--The US Leads Efforts to Use Biological Weapons in the War on Drugs.

• Author: Belvadi, Melissa

"Agent Green" is a phrase currently used to refer to at least two different fungi, called "mycoherbicides." The United States government wants to use these fungi in its "War on Drugs." What they have in common is that they are both being promoted by the US-led United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) as part of a global plan for the eradication of illicit crops. This plan is known by the name SCOPE (Strategy for Coca and Opium Poppy Elimination). In 1998 the UN General Assembly explicitly rejected SCOPE, but the UNDCP continues to support research into these biological agents with US financing.

The US denies the categorization of these organisms as "biological weapons," preferring to call them "biological controls" and noting that under the United Nations' Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, they are legitimate if they are approved by the government of the land in which they are used.

The first Agent Green fungus is Fusarium oxysporum, a family of "wilting" fungi whose species attack everything from corn and cotton to basil to watermelon. The anti-coca. fungus species, Fusarium Oxysporumn f. sp. Erythroxyli, was discovered accidentally when it wiped out a test plot of coca being grown in Hawaii. From that strain, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) developed the strain "Isolate EN-4," which is supposed to attack only the coca plant, and which the US and UN want to spray extensively in Colombia.

The use of fusarium oxysporum to eradicate marijuana in Florida was proposed in 1999, and was soundly rejected by state officials as being a threat to the environment and agriculture. Secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection David Struhs wrote in an April 6, 1999 letter:

Fusarium species are capable of evolving rapidly... Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide. It is difficult, if not impossible, to control the spread of Fusarium species. The mutated fungi 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. Fusarium species are more active in warm soils and can stay resident in the soil for years.

Despite the Florida rejection, the US and UN went ahead with plans to pressure the Colombian government to use the fungus. The Clinton administration at one point tried to tie a $1.3 billion aid package to Colombian...