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Current Affairs 2007 - Cultivation (119 items)
| Apr 28, 2007 | Old Marijuana Grow Ops Can Be Great Deals For Home Getting a deal on a property once used to cultivate marijuana in the basement isn't a problem as long as you know the house is safe, say purchasers of former Whitehorse grow-ops.
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| Apr 17, 2007 | LTE: Pot Busts And Police Propaganda Ladysmith RCMP Cpl. Rob Graves stated the net street value of 60 plants seized in the arrest was approximately $70,000.
Such a claim leads me to two obvious conclusions.
1 ) Corporal Graves and his "Green Team" task force from the Nanaimo RCMP have been smoking the proceeds of [drug busts] to derive such a net worth from 60 plants, as they seem to believe one plant has a street value of more than $1,000 dollars.
2 ) The RCMP [intentionally] exaggerate the value of seized marijuana crops by more than 90 per cent when it is seized as undried plants and have been doing so for years.
As the article [The Chronicle] published provided a picture, it was handy so the public can see from the wide angle of the lens shot what the police cut and weighed that day to come up with the ludicrous $70,000 value.
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| Apr 16, 2007 | Health Canada Marks Up Medical Marijuana 1,500% [...Records obtained under the Access to Information Act show that Health Canada pays $328.75 for each kilogram of bulk medical marijuana produced by Prairie Plant Systems Inc.
The company has a $10.3-million contract with Health Canada, which expires at the end of September, to grow standardized medical marijuana in an abandoned mine shaft in Flin Flon.
Health Canada, in turn, sells the marijuana to a small group of authorized users for $150 -- plus GST -- for each 30-gram bag of ground-up flowering tops, with a strength of up to 14 per cent THC, the main active ingredient. That works out to $5,000 for each kilogram, or a markup of more than 1,500 per cent...]
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| Apr 14, 2007 | Firefighter Busted For Grow-Op Ironically, the Vancouver fire department assigns two of its fire prevention officers to the Vancouver police department's Grow Busters Team. The fire prevention officers accompany police officers when they are taking down marijuana grow-ops.
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| Apr 11, 2007 | Police Find Marijuana Nursery For Grow-Ops A police search of an underground bunker hidden away on a rural property in the Fraser Canyon revealed a marijuana grow-operation suspected of being a nursery for other growers who buy young plants.
RCMP officers from Hope and Agassiz detachments arrested two men and a woman on suspicion of producing and possession for the purpose of trafficking 3,051 marijuana plants.
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| Apr 5, 2007 | Cops Take Kids In Drug Raid A toddler and a newborn were apprehended by police Thursday under new provincial legislation designed to protect children from families involved in the drug trade.
The joint EPS/RCMP Green Team took down a marijuana grow operation at 9:15 a.m. in a home near 190 Street and 83 Avenue. Officers seized 210 marijuana plants, worth about $210,000, and arrested three adults.
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| Mar 28, 2007 | A Fine Can Be Fine For The Crime On Jan. 19, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a sentence imposed in a marijuana grow-op case.
A provincial court judge had found that a $20,000 fine would best address the root of the offence: the prospect of huge profits in a black market. The Court of Appeal thought differently and sentenced the accused to a year in jail.
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| Mar 23, 2007 | Bylaw Leaves Homeowner In The Cold An Abbotsford homeowner says a city bylaw meant to weed out indoor marijuana gardens has put him out on the street and is forcing him to prove his innocence.
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| Mar 17, 2007 | Number Of Criminal Groups Growing The number of organized crime groups in B.C. grew for the third year in a row in 2006 -- to 124, up from 108 identified the previous year, says a 2006 RCMP report obtained by The Vancouver Sun....The graph in the report looks alarming, starting in 2003 with just 52 groups and rising in each of the last three years. But the report also says better record-keeping and analysis of crime groups accounts for some of the increase...
[Duh... when the government abdicates responsibility to regulate and tax this plant like everything else from liquor to pet food, or allow individuals to grow it like tomatoes and petunias, then the only group left to grow and distribute it is the criminals, so why is this news not surprising or unpredictable? Until citizens demand the government create an alternative to the current system by using the existing wine, tobacco or liquor model or creating a new model, things will get MUCH worse before they get better.] |
| Mar 17, 2007 | No Business Like Marijuana BRITISH Columbia is fast becoming the only province in Canada in which the biggest industry is illegal. In 2005, forestry ( $10 million ) was B.C.'s top economic driver, and construction ( $7.9 billion ) ranked second. But what was this, coming up fast on the inside to move into third place? The marijuana industry. Puff, puff.
With annual sales of $7.5 billion, it was worth more than the combined total of hotels and restaurants ( $3.8 billion ) and mining, oil and gas ( $3.5 billion ). Construction now booms as never before in B.C., but that won't stop the pot trade from steaming into second spot. After that, forestry industry, watch your behind.
"The amount of marijuana produced each year in British Columbia," said a 2005 study by the University College of Fraser Valley, "is estimated to have increased from 19,729 kilos in 1997 to 79,817 in 2003."
Is this a growth industry, or what?
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| Mar 15, 2007 | Alberta Grow-Ops Growing In Size
"The number of grow-ops we're busting in rural areas is way down, but the size of each bust is way up,"...
Gillan said the surge finds police busting fewer and fewer grow-ops with less than 100 plants. Most seizures these days net about 50 kg of marijuana, harvested from as many as 5,000 plants.
[More proof that home cannabis gardeners are being squeezed out by criminals thanks to "get tough" government policies... and the public goes along with discarding common sense to support US global drug policy] |
| Mar 14, 2007 | Pushing Out Pot Farmers Marijuana grow ops are no joke in the Tri-Cities, where hardly a week goes by without a bust or a raid. And area residents are increasingly at risk of being in the line of fire when criminals try to steal from criminals. ...1) Even so, most Coquitlam residents would probably put public safety over individual rights if it would make their neighbourhoods safer. ...2) But until someone comes up with a better idea, this get-tough, search-and-seizure program is the best tool cities have to push pot farmers out.
[1) Warning lights should go off when someone tries to convince us to give up more privacy rights for public safety... 2) Many good solutions and better ideas have been suggested, but they fall on deaf ears] |
| Mar 11, 2007 | It's Long Past Time We Legalized It
BRITISH COLUMBIA is fast becoming the only province in Canada in which the biggest industry is illegal. In 2005, forestry ( $ 10 million ) was B. C.'s top economic driver, and construction ( $ 7.9 billion ) ranked second. But what was this, coming up fast on the inside to move into third place?
The marijuana industry. Puff, puff.
With annual sales of $ 7.5 billion, it was worth more than the combined total of hotels and restaurants ( $ 3.8 billion ) and mining, oil and gas ( $ 3.5 billion ).
Construction now booms as never before in B. C., but that won't stop the pot trade from steaming into second spot. After that, forestry industry, watch your behind.
" The amount of marijuana produced each year in British Columbia," said a 2005 study by the University College of Fraser Valley, " is estimated to have increased from 19,729 kilos in 1997 to 79,817 in 2003."
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| Mar 9, 2007 | A Futile War On Marijuana Grow-ops are dangerous because they're clandestine, not because there's something intrinsically hazardous about the plants in them. The only reason for chasing them down, at root, is a prohibitionary approach toward marijuana that we don't apply to alcohol or nicotine.
The war on pot is futile. It's long since time to declare a ceasefire.
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| Mar 8, 2007 | OPP Busts Huge Marijuana Factory Ontario Provincial Police said they seized 3,100 marijuana plants in varying stages of growth, along with nearly $700,000 in lighting, and electrical and building equipment, after executing a search warrant on the former Nordik Imperial Mushroom Farm, at 1454 Highway 138, on Tuesday.
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| Mar 7, 2007 | BC Must Protect Grow Op Kids - Social Workers Last December, Alberta passed the Drug-Endangered Children Act, which establishes that having kids in a grow op or meth lab environment can be considered abuse.
An association representing social workers in this province said similar guidelines are needed here.
[It is a very dangerous precedent to term something "child abuse" when it could be nothing of the sort] |
| Mar 5, 2007 | Put Pot Growers Behind Bars, Court Of Appeal Tells Judge The B.C. Court of Appeal has told lower court judges that pot growers should be jailed to buttress the anti-marijuana law.
In a significant unanimous ruling that tries to address vexing questions raised by judges dealing with pot offenders, a three-judge panel unanimously ordered a 12-month jail term for a Courtenay man with no criminal record who was caught growing dope for profit.
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| Feb 20, 2007 | RCMP Zero In On Pot Growing Mission RCMP officers are gunning for marijuana grow operation owners within the district....Lemaitre said the marijuana police find is seldom for personal use.
"This pot is meant for export and sale and that comes back to Canada in the way of cocaine and firearms," Lemaitre said, pointing to the recent arrest of a suspected gun smuggler at the Aldergrove border crossing.
[Why do the police have so much time to deal with prohibition related crime, rather than crime that impacts citizens like robbery, assault, rape?]
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| Feb 17, 2007 | Appeal Court Takes Away Pot Trafficker's House He lost his weed and his freedom, and now a Grand Lake property owner has lost his home.
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled Friday that a judge erred when he decided not to forfeit Rady Siek's home to the Crown in a marijuana cultivation case.
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| Feb 17, 2007 | Home Owner Disputes Inspection Bill The City of Pitt Meadows has now inspected seven homes in the past two weeks for abnormally high hydro consumption.
The inspections are part of a three-month pilot project to eliminate residential marijuana grow operations through safety inspections.
No marijuana operations were found at any of the seven homes in Pitt Meadows.
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