(Nanaimo Daily News) VANCOUVER – Len Gratto says there’s no way he is paying a $5,200 fine to Mission, B.C., for growing cucumbers in his basement.

How is it that our Canadian cucumber cultivating friends are being fined for growing a legal plant in their basements?  Because our neighbors to the north have adopted “grow op bylaws” to combat the conversion of residential properties into marijuana grow houses.  These laws make me very happy we still have enough of our 4th Amendment here in America that we don’t have mandatory inspections by the electric company.

In a move that could potentially alter the landscape of drug enforcement in B.C., the B.C. Civil Liberties Association says it will join the battle against Mission, widening the focus into a region-wide challenge to “home grow-op bylaws.”

Grow-op bylaw programs, which are based on provincial legislation, allow municipal inspectors to enter homes with abnormally high hydro[-electric] usage – about 93 kilowatts per day or more – and look for evidence of illegal marijuana grow-ops for public safety reasons.

Inspectors don’t have to find grow-ops, but if they find residual evidence, such as high mould readings, they levy search fees and order repairs. If homeowners don’t comply, homes are tagged under the bylaw and effectively condemned as unsafe, and unsellable.

According to proponents, the bylaws have been phenomenally successful in driving pot production out of B.C.’s Lower Mainland.

Well, sure, if you allow inspectors to run roughshod through people’s homes you’re going to drive out grow houses.  The problem is that you also impact a lot of innocent people like the cucumber grower.  The report explain how there were 362 searches but only 177 of those found to be breaking the law.  More than half of those cases, then, involved someone who simply used a lot of electricity.  Those people have to deal with the embarrassment of being searched and the whispers of neighbors.

Oh, the lengths to which governments will go to avoid taking the simple and sensible step of legalization of cannabis…

??(San Jose Mercury News) LOS ANGELES—A 1,700-plant marijuana grow house in Southern California erupted in flames when a living room compost pile ignited.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators say the fire broke out about 11 a.m. Monday in a one-story home in the unincorporated north San Gabriel area.

Detective David Mertens told the Pasadena Star-News that a man was seen running from the home but there are no arrests.

Mertens says gangs rent out homes to raise pot and investigators find a couple of similar marijuana grow houses each month.

You know what you never hear of gangs doing?  They never rent out homes and set up elaborate beer-making facilities.  They never build extensive indoor tobacco growing operations.

Nobody wants unregulated industrial cannabis factories in their residential neighborhoods.  Legalize marijuana so we can regulate, inspect, and set zoning for cannabis production.  The demand is not going away and all we’re doing is obscenely incentivizing the growers to take any risk necessary to supply that demand.

In a legal system, vast marijuana fields can grow in the open air and sunshine, which does the dual eco-friendly trick of ending the power wasted to recreate the sun indoors and provides a massive carbon sink for greenhouse gases.  Sure, some boutique growers and those aiming for higher potencies will still grow indoors, but they can be licensed and inspected to guarantee safe practices.  The mid-grade, outdoor marijuana will be good enough for most and cheap enough to virtually eliminate the criminal element from its production and distribution.

Or we can keep doing what we’re doing now: funding gangs and watching the occasional rental go up in flames.

(Los Angeles Times) In the end, despite a sophisticated filtration system, it was the smell that smoked out the marijuana-growing operation located just 25 feet from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Topanga station in Canoga Park.

LAPD officials said officers began noticing the smell of pot Tuesday morning, investigated, got warrants and closed down the indoor farm within eight hours.

Three men were taken into custody earlier Wednesday after officers served a search warrant on the warehouse in the 8400 block of Canoga Avenue.

Growers had built three rooms in the building — one for seedlings, another for medium-sized plants and one where harvesting was apparently conducted, police said. The lights were controlled so they wouldn’t overheat, watering systems were automated and oxygen levels were supplemented by carbon dioxide tanks, according to police.

Oh, for the life of me, I cannot even begin to imagine the cognitive processes and critical thinking that went into this particular choice of real estate for this particular commercial venture.  Wait a minute, yes I can…

BRAD: Dude, check it out, I found an awesome place to grow pot!

JEFF: Oh, gnarly!

BRAD: It’s not in the best location, though.

JEFF: I see the globe right there.

BRAD: Well, yeah, it’s in California.  No, dude, I mean, like, it’s right next to the cop shop.  You know, the po-po!  The five-oh!

JEFF: I know that dude.

BRAD: Yeah, so I’m kinda worried that they’ll figure it out and bust us.

JEFF: Those guys are f…

BRAD: You’re right, man.  Besides, check it out, they’ll never figure it out.  I got these awesome air filters and we’ll seal up the whole inside with caulk!

JEFF: Hey, bud, what’s your problem?

BRAD: No, caulk, you know, like you use to seal up window cracks and stuff!

JEFF: Totally.

BRAD: So whaddaya say, are you in, brah?  Look at all this amazing weed, huh?  We’re gonna make a lotta money, dude, and we’re doing it all just 25 feet away from the LAPD!  Are you in?

JEFF: I am today.

(we hear sirens, police bursting in…)

OFFICER HAND: Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you think you are doing?  What are you people, on dope?

JEFF: You dick!

BRAD:  Aw, this really sucks.  How did you find us?  Hey, you don’t have to hit us!  Ow! Ow!

JEFF: That was my skull! I’m so wasted!

(Thanks to the site MovieWavs.com for what shall be a very entertaining podcast segment!)

(Washington Post) ARCATA, Calif. — Stiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.

Illicit pot production in the United States has been increasing steadily for decades. But recent changes in state laws that allow the use and cultivation of marijuana for medical purposes are giving U.S. growers a competitive advantage, challenging the traditional dominance of the Mexican traffickers, who once made brands such as Acapulco Gold the standard for quality.

Wait, are you telling us the limited legalization of marijuana has put more of a hurt on Mexican drug gangs than all that law enforcement expenditure on arrests and interdiction?  Are you telling us that the best way to battle a supply and demand problem is to legalize the supply to satisfy the demand?

While the trafficking of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine is the main focus of U.S. law enforcement, it is marijuana that has long provided most of the revenue for Mexican drug cartels. More than 60 percent of the cartels’ revenue — $8.6 billion out of $13.8 billion in 2006 — came from U.S. marijuana sales, according to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The exact dimensions of the U.S. marijuana market are unknown. The 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health estimated that 14.4 million Americans age 12 and over had used marijuana in the past month. More than 10 percent of the U.S. population reported smoking pot once in the past year.

There is no better marijuana on the planet than American-grown marijuana.  We’d be more than happy to put Mexican growers out of business.  Just let us grow our own!  In addition to the elimination of 60% of violent drug gangs* revenue, we’d also create many new jobs right here when we are in an unemployment slump.  It would also drive demand for all the stuff growers need, like lights, fertilizer, timers, air conditioning, air filtration, growhouse construction, and so on.  Then there are the payroll taxes and sales taxes we’d raise from legal marijuana.

So many who oppose this common-sense solution fear that we’d be sending the message that it’s OK to smoke pot.  Well, the messages we’ve been sending so far haven’t convinced anyone to not smoke pot, so are we just funding violent Mexican drug gangs out of stubbornness?  Forget about “messages”; people smoke pot, period.  Accept the reality that millions of us like to use cannabis responsibly and that the only harms to society from that use are due to its prohibition, not the cannabis.

*By the way, it’s “drug gangs” not “drug cartels”. Cartels are economic units of cooperation, like OPEC, where all the members work together to fix prices and control production. Cartels don’t fight amongst each other and decapitate their rivals.

It’s only a matter of time before some grower develops a strain called “Sarah Connor” and Terminators from the future are sent back to eradicate it…

Does anyone else think unmanned aerial drones spying on our citizenry will make excellent target practice for a nation of free people who love firearms?

One crazy idea can fix Lees money troubles | fortmyers.floridaweekly.com | Fort Myers Florida Weekly
One business that appears to be thriving in Southwest Florida is that of marijuana grow houses. Last year, the sheriffs office confiscated $8 million worth of the herb. This year, we’re approaching $7 million. Let us generously assume that the sheriff’s office is wiping out a quarter of our county’s marijuana crop every year. That would give us a $30 million a year industry that goes untaxed and unexploited by taxpayers. Our high foreclosure rate ensures that entrepreneurs can find plenty of grow houses at bargain-basement rates.

The way the system currently works, money that could be used to fund our economic survival instead ends up in the pockets of second-rate criminals and mobsters in the northeast.

Imagine that marijuana could be taxed at exorbitant rates, 100 percent even, in exchange for granting legalization of the plant. Our hypothetical modest $30 million could begin to build a comprehensive, world-class transportation system. It could be used to build a municipal, super-highspeed Internet system that makes broadband speeds look tortoise-like. A system like that would show big technology firms that Southwest Florida means business. Commercial impact fees might be waived for qualifying new businesses. We could fund educational programs and scholarships that would make us a magnet for the greatest minds in the nation.

The prohibitionists will say, “oh, no, then the streets will be filled with potheads!”  Not exactly, but they’ll claim these claims of revenue from taxation and regulation fail to take into account the increased social costs from increased use of legal cannabis.  As if everyone who wants to smoke pot isn’t already doing that… that’s why the grow house business is so profitable!

Another canard is “you can’t tax it because everyone will just grow it themselves!”  This is often said by someone who has never tried to grow quality marijuana.  It’s harder than home brewing beer, and few beer drinkers are avoiding the beer taxes by brewing their own at home.

If I had an economic argument against legalization of cannabis it would be that so many people making an off-the-books living on low-level dealing would suddenly show up in the unemployment lines.  But that’s an argument that says it’s okay to lock up a few people so some others can make a living, and I can’t abide that.  Besides, the illegal growers and dealers of today will be the perfect job applicants for the legal growing and dealing jobs of tomorrow – they’ll just have to pay taxes and pass inspections and follow rules like the rest of us who punch a clock for a living.

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.

This law got passed through the “Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed” scaremongering of people like Florida’s Republican Attorney General, Bill McCollum:

In 2006, law enforcement detected marijuana grow houses in 41 of Florida’s 67 counties, ranking Florida second only to California in the amount of grow houses. Many marijuana growers have moved from rural fields to sophisticated growing operations in the suburbs of Florida. This cultivation shift has been accompanied by new techniques to vastly increase the drug’s potency. This extremely potent form of marijuana contains up to 15 times the amount of THC, the addictive chemical found in marijuana, than marijuana common 20 years ago.

Fifteen times… twenty-five times… four hundred times more potent! Bwaa-ha-ha, it’s Super Pot! Oh, wait, only twice as potent, maybe? And good bud has always existed? And the data from twenty years ago was flawed? And potency is irrelevant because marijuana’s non-toxic? And marijuana is about as “addictive” as coffee? Got anything better than that, Bill?

Grow house marijuana has a street value of $4,000-$6,000 per pound and can be traded pound for pound for cocaine.

Really? Then somebody’s losing money in the deal, since cocaine is selling at about $17,000/kg in Florida, and when Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff announced the seizure of 42,000 lbs. of cocaine was worth around $300,000,000, that puts the price at about $7,150/lb.

The legislation, sponsored by Senator Steve Oelrich (R – Gainesville) and Representative Nick Thompson (R – Fort Myers), creates a tough new penalty for those who grow 25 plants or more. This legislative change specifically targets for-profit growers who exploit Florida’s current standards of 300 plants and the federal threshold of 100 plants to avoid prison time. Additionally, the bill creates a new penalty against those who own a house for the purpose of cultivating marijuana, as well as a new penalty for those who live in or are the caretakers of marijuana grow houses.

Perhaps Stephen Blythe gets a pass because he didn’t own the home for the purpose of growing marijuana; he owned it for the purpose of renting it. But I don’t know if I’d want to rely on a prosecutor trying to imagine my intent when I choose a renter. I’ve written before about the possible unintended consequences of this bill – will property owners now start drug testing renters or scheduling more frequent home inspections? Will Floridians with minor pot offenses on their record be denied housing?

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-06-18.mp3)

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.