WHERE MARY JANE IS THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

ARCATA, CALIF. -- LaVina Collenberg thought she had ideal tenants for
her tidy ranch-style home on the outskirts of this university town
nestled in the redwoods of the North Coast. Then the 74-year-old
widow received an urgent call last September from a neighbor, who
said firefighters had descended on the house she had rented to a
pleasant young man from Wisconsin.

Collenberg found her charred and sooty rental filled with grow lights
and 3-foot-high marijuana plants. Seeds were germinating in the spa.
Water from the growing operation had soaked through the carpeting and
sub-flooring. Air vents had been cut into the new roof. A fan had
fallen over, causing the fire.

"It was the first time I had been in a grow house," Collenberg said.
"I had heard about them but never thought I had one. I was completely shocked."

Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 1,000 of the 7,500
homes in this Humboldt County community are being used to cultivate
marijuana, slashing into the housing stock, spreading building-safety
problems and sowing neighborhood discord.

Indoor pot farms proliferated in recent years as California
communities implemented Proposition 215, the statewide medical
marijuana measure passed overwhelmingly a dozen years ago. A backlash
over the effects and abuses of legally sanctioned marijuana growing
has emerged in some of the most liberal parts of the state.

For example, in neighboring Mendocino County, a measure on Tuesday's
election ballot seeks to repeal a local proposition passed eight
years ago that decriminalized cultivation of as many as 25 pot plants.

The experience of Arcata, a bastion of cannabis culture, reveals the
unintended consequences of the 1996 Compassionate Use Act, designed
to provide relief to AIDS patients, cancer victims and others.

"If the average citizen . . . could see what I see, they probably
would vote against it now," Police Chief Randy Mendosa said of
Proposition 215. "We are seeing large-scale grow operations where
greedy people are taking huge amounts of affordable housing and are
using entire houses to grow marijuana. The going rate is $3,000 a
pound [wholesale], and they are selling it and making a huge amount of money."

State officials say such problems exist throughout the state,
including Southern California, but are particularly prevalent in
northwestern counties that have relatively liberal limits on
possession and cultivation of medical marijuana.

"People who clearly are in it for profit see it as a loophole and
have flooded into these areas from across California and the U.S.,"
said Kent Shaw, assistant chief of the state Bureau of Narcotics
Enforcement. "What comes along with it is criminal elements who want
to come and steal marijuana," sometimes through home invasion robberies.

Medical marijuana advocates say problems have been isolated, and they
question the validity of attempts to link crime to a medicine. "Law
enforcement sensationalizes a lot of the issues around growing and
dispensaries," said Kris Hermes of Americans For Safe Access.

A doctor's recommendation is required for a medical marijuana patient
to use, grow or acquire cannabis. Activists estimate there are more
than 200,000 patients statewide.

In Arcata's leafy neighborhoods, residents and officials say the
telltale signs of grow houses are evident: no full-time dwellers,
blacked-out windows, scruffy yards, comings and goings at night. Then
there's the skunk-like odor of marijuana and the whirring fans and
electricity meters that generate thousand-dollar monthly power bills.

So many houses have been converted into pot farms that the
availability of student rentals has been reduced and the community's
aura of marijuana is turning off some prospective students, said
Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond. "My own sense is
that people are abusing Prop. 215 to allow them to use marijuana . .
. as recreational drugs," he said.

Arcata Mayor Mark Wheetley said marijuana growing has become a
quality-of-life issue in the town of 17,000. "People from all camps
say enough is enough," he said. "It is like this renegade Wild West
mentality . . . I think people want to see a greater level of control
and oversight."

Mark Sailors, 37, a medical marijuana patient and caregiver who moved
here from Baltimore, said the community was overreacting. "They claim
to support 215, and do not want you to have access to medicine," he
said. "It sounds like the older people . . . are afraid of the younger."

The largest of the city's four pot dispensaries is the Humboldt
Cooperative, known as THC, the abbreviation for the psychoactive
chemical component in marijuana. Officials say that the nonprofit at
a former auto dealership has 6,000 registered patients, 2,000 of whom
are currently eligible to buy weed, and that it has paid roughly
$500,000 in taxes over the last five years.

The dispensary grows marijuana in an on-site warehouse and buys
additional pot from about 100 patients -- most from outside Arcata --
who do not need all they have grown under Proposition 215.

THC founder Dennis Turner said that many residential growing
operations amount to "full-on crime" and that he would welcome more
regulation for dispensaries, particularly to protect marijuana
quality. "There are holes in this [Proposition 215] like a piece of
Swiss cheese," he said.

The City Council recently issued a moratorium on new dispensaries
downtown, on grounds that agriculture is not permitted there. New
land-use guidelines also are in the works.

Officials say secretive marijuana operations in houses are their
highest priority for increased regulation. They say they do not know
how many people are violating the county's legal requirements
limiting them to 100 square feet of leaf canopy and as many as 99
plants -- provisions that may be invalidated by a recent state
appellate court decision.

Community development Director Larry Oetker said the city does not
even know the locations of grow houses because growers tend not to
get permits for electrical and plumbing work.

Oetker said they fear prosecution by federal authorities who do not
recognize the state's medical marijuana law. "The concern is . . .
the federal government will use city records to go bust the people."

Some growers have cut holes in floors so plants can go directly in
the ground below, officials say. And many use jury-rigged wiring and
extension cords that overload circuits.

Arcata Fire Protection District Chief John McFarland says that most
local structural fires involve marijuana cultivation -- and that
after a fire starts, it often spreads quickly through holes cut for
ducts, pipes and wires.

Wade DeLashmutt, a carpenter who voted for Proposition 215, said he
complained for many months about marijuana odors that hovered over
his backyard after a man from Montana moved next door.

But the neighbor contended that it was medical marijuana. "He said,
'The voters of California said I could do this,' " DeLashmutt recalled.

In March, the county drug task force arrested the neighbor and
another man after hundreds of marijuana plants, $12,000 and 27 pounds
of processed pot were seized at that home and another in town.

Humboldt County Dist. Atty. Paul Gallegos said his office does not
keep statistics on prosecutions for marijuana growing in Arcata. But
Gallegos said he would prosecute any growers who posed a safety
hazard, a public nuisance or environmental harm.

"If you converted a house to grow dandelions, petunias and roses, my
concerns would be the same," he said.

LaVina Collenberg wishes she had known that her friendly young
renters from Wisconsin intended to turn her house into a
marijuana-growing cooperative. Her insurance paid $55,000 to repair
the damage from the fire and modifications.

The former tenant did not respond to calls seeking comment. Dr Ken
Miller, who issued the tenant's medical marijuana recommendation,
said he did not recall the patient.

A petition campaign dubbed "Nip It in the Bud" is asking the City
Council to bar marijuana growing and dispensing from residential and
public gathering areas.

A neighborhood ban is overdue, said 82-year-old Wilma Johnston.

"We are becoming a community of rentals for marijuana plants instead
of people," she said.