1 arrested in beachside grow house sting | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY
One man is being held at the Brevard County jail this afternoon after Brevard County Sheriff’s Office agents armed with search warrants uncovered four grow houses on Merritt Island, Satellite Beach and Indialantic.

Sheriff’s spokesman Andrew Walters said David Tobias, age and address unavailable, was charged early today after search warrants were served on three suspected grow houses. Walters said the investigation stemmed from a resident’s complaint about a week ago of suspicious activity at one of the homes involved.

In the course of the investigation, sheriff’s agents found there was another grow house Tobias is accused of operating in Indialantic. The home at 370 Rio Lane is owned by owned by Stephen Blythe, who is a candidate for a congressional seat held by Rep. Dave Weldon, who is not seeking re-election.

Contacted this afternoon by FLORIDA TODAY, Blythe said he was surprised, and had not heard from authorities.

Walters said the investigation is ongoing and other arrests are pending. No charges are pending against Blythe, but others may be charged in the course of the investigation.

Blythe said he was renting the property out to a James McJunkin. It doesn’t appear McJunkin lives in the home, authorities said. Walters said the layout is consistent with the other grow houses with the equipment and materials involved.

“I guess anybody can get caught up in this,” Blythe said. “Anybody who has a rental property.”

Agents seized several vehicles, including a Chevy Chevelle registered to Tobias parked in the garage of the home owned by Blythe.

This story follows the passage of the new Florida grow house law that makes it a second-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants in a home. But also included in the law is a “third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison to own a house where marijuana is being cultivated, packaged and distributed.” Apparently the prosecutors don’t see the need to charge the Florida Democratic Congressional Candidate with a third-degree felony.

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Dr. Mitch Earleywine joins us to discuss the decrease in teen marijuana use in the states that have accepted medical use of marijuana.  New York State Assembly approves a medical marijuana bill while Florida institutes tough new mandatory minimums for marijuana grow houses.  And NORML’s Paul Armentano was featured on the Dr. Drew radio show on Westwood One.   He followed the Drug Czar, John Walters, who appeared to tout the “not your father’s pot” myth.  Yours truly even got to call in to the show and peg some of Walters’ falsehoods.

MyFox Gulf Coast | Landmark bill targeting marijuana grow houses becomes law
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Attorney General Bill McCollum announced Tuesday that the Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act has been signed into law, giving Florida’s prosecutors and law enforcement essential tools to combat for-profit growers of marijuana.

The new law, sponsored by Senator Steve Oelrich (R-Gainesville) and Representative Nick Thompson (R-Ft. Myers), passed as House Bill 173 during the 2008 Legislative Session and was signed into law by Governor Charlie Crist Tuesday. The bill was developed because of the increasing number of grow houses operating in the state and violent crime which tend to be associated with these operations.

The new law makes it a second-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants, targeting for-profit growers who exploit Florida’s previous threshold of 300 plants. The law will also make it a third-degree felony to own a house for the purpose of cultivating, packaging and distributing marijuana and a first-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants in a home with children present.

Other important aspects of the law will provide substantial benefits to Florida’s law enforcement community. Previously, law enforcement around the state were required to store cumbersome grow house equipment in order to preserve it as evidence.

To address this growing storage burden, the new law allows a photograph or video recording of equipment used in the cultivation of a marijuana plant to be considered as evidence in the prosecution of the crime. The law will also allow law enforcement to destroy grow house equipment upon the completion of all investigations and provides immunity from any civil liability to law enforcement for the destruction of the grow house equipment.

The Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act goes into effect on July 1, 2008.

Well, then, that should do it.  Now nobody in Florida will ever exploit the profit potential of owning a suburban marijuana grow house.  Now that it is a second-degree felony, the camouflage of an unassuming suburban home won’t be enticing to a commercial grower who can produce enough profit in one crop to buy the house outright.

And the marijuana smokers in Florida, now that this law has passed, will curb their demand for fine suburban grow house marijuana.  That way, when some of the more timid growers get out of the business, the price won’t increase due to supply and demand, and the growers who do remain won’t earn an even healthier profit.

Certainly, we won’t see any unintended consequences of this bill, like perhaps an increase in violence when grow house owners have nothing to lose and decide to shoot their way out of a raid.  It’s not likely that as competition for grow houses grows that an organized criminal gang finds a way to control that market.  And since Florida doesn’t have medical marijuana, there couldn’t be any patients there growing over 24 plants just to keep themselves alive.

Bill headed to Crist would bring stiffer penalties for marijuana grow houses
Running an indoor grow house to cultivate marijuana would bring stiffer penalties under a bill now heading to [Florida] Governor Crist’s desk.

The legislation would make it a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison to own a house where marijuana is being cultivated, packaged and distributed.

The bill would also reduce the number of marijuana plants that would have to be in a home for a person to be convicted of a second-degree felony, which would be punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Right now, a person would have to have 300 plants in their home to be convicted of a second-degree felony, but the bill would reduce that number to 25.

In addition, if a child was living in the home, a person could spend up to 30 years in prison.

The Senate unanimously passed the bill today. It passed the House last month.

I think this is a bill they haven’t really put much thought into.  Suppose you are a Florida landlord and you rent your property out to someone who then grows a single marijuana plant for personal uses.  As the owner of the home, are you now headed to five years in prison?  If your renter grows 25, are you sent up for 15 years?  If your renter has kids, are you going to prison for 30 years?

Think about the consequences of this.  The rental market is tight already and landlords are always having trouble finding good tenants.  What will landlords do to protect themselves from the potential grower/renter?  Will landlords, in addition to criminal background checks they already perform, now be insisting on pre-rental and random drug testing of their renters?  Will they be forced to perform those 24-hour notice rental inspections?

And what of the people trying to rent?  If you had made a mistake in your youth and got busted with marijuana, how likely are landlords going to want to rent to you?  I believe this will create even more homeless people in Florida, as those people on the margins economically who have drug convictions in the past are rejected for rentals.