NEW LAWS HAVE TOUGHER PENALTIES FOR POT GROWERS

Starting Monday, a new state law will bring harsher penalties for
marijuana growers.

Under the new Florida law, a "grow house" will be classified as a
building containing 25 or more marijuana plants. Before, the
threshold was 300 plants. The charge will remain a second-degree felony.

"Our laws were way out of date on that," Florida Attorney General
Bill McCollum told the Tallahassee Democrat .

The law also allows law-enforcement agencies to dispose of grow-house
equipment after taking pictures or recording video.

Tallahassee police say that in the past, they have had to store every
single marijuana plant and piece of equipment until the people
arrested went to trial.

"The storage is expensive, and we spend a lot of time packaging the
material, time we could be investigating other criminal activity,"
said David McCranie, spokesman for the Tallahassee Police Department.

Also, it will be a third-degree felony for someone to own, lease or
rent a place while knowing that it is being used for drug trafficking
or making drugs.

Here are highlights of other new Florida laws taking effect Monday:

n Salvia divinorum, a plant native to Mexico, and Salvinorin A, both
believed to cause hallucinogenic effects, will be illegal to possess or sell.

# People who can't pay fines for noncriminal traffic offenses will be
able to pay off their debt through community service.

# Aggravated abuse of an elderly person or disabled adult will be a
first-degree felony. Law-enforcement personnel will be trained over
the next three years to better recognize abuse.

# Law-enforcement agencies will have to adopt written policies and
procedures to be used when investigating missing-children and
missing-adult reports.

# People who have been wrongfully convicted of a crime and
incarcerated in the state Department of Corrections system will be
able to seek compensation.