ON THE LOOKOUT FOR POT CROPS

It's just about harvest time for the OPP.

As the calendar flips to August, the provincial police force is
escalating its effort to uproot marijuana crops before the would-be
"farmers" have a chance to cash in.

While indoor growing operations have become a major source of the pot
supply, police say the old-fashioned outdoor marijuana field hasn't
dried up.

"We definitely have a problem with our indoor marijuana growing and as
well at this time of year our outdoor growing. It's still very
prevalent in our communities," said Detective Chris Dobler.

He's with the OPP's eastern Ontario drug enforcement section and works
out of Ottawa.

In this part of the province, Dobler said, police are finding outdoor
grows ranging in size from a few dozen plants up to
"thousands."

One raid in the Kingston area netted 20,000 plants.

Dobler said the trend is definitely toward larger outdoor plantings,
however.

"We're finding anywhere from 1,000 or 2,000 to 3,000 plants. It
definitely seems that people are going larger on the outdoor grows,"
he explained in an interview with The Recorder and Times on Wednesday.

Obviously, it's profit that's driving that trend.

"It's just becoming big business, marijuana production," said
Dobler.

For some Canadians, police officers like Dobler tell only part of the
marijuana story.

Reached at his home in British Columbia yesterday, marijuana activist
Marc Emery said the OPP should just leave the pot where it is.

Rather than a product fuelling dangerous criminal gangs, he argued the
reality is marijuana is simply another cash crop.

"These grows provide billions of dollars to people in rural Canada and
that money is essential in many small towns across Quebec, Ontario and
British Columbia," said Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine.

He called the typical producer an "ordinary Canadian" who's no threat
to the community.

"It's something I believe we should embrace and not discourage - and
certainly not eradicate what amounts to a cash crop to many
communities," said Emery.

Back in eastern Ontario, Dobler said illegal marijuana grows take root
wherever there's available space - from swampy, scrubby pieces of
Crown land to being shrouded in the middle of a legitimate field of
corn.

Dobler said the amount of oversight on a marijuana crop depends on its
size and the potential profit to be reaped.

Smaller plantings are done in the spring and largely forgotten about
until it's time to harvest.

"A lot of people rely on just Mother Nature to nourish their plants,"
he said. "And they may go back just a couple times a year to check on
it."

But where plants number into the thousands, it's an around-the-clock
venture.

"What we're coming across is people camping with a trailer, residing
at the location to tend to the plants and provide security and
protection," said Dobler.

It's often a hit-and-miss proposition for OPP when they come upon an
untended marijuana field as to whether charges are ever laid.

However, Dobler said he considers it a success even if all they do is
destroy the crop.

"Our ultimate goal is to lay charges," he stressed, adding, "A large
portion of the time it is just eradicating the marijuana so it doesn't
hit the streets.

"Every gram that we can keep out of the hands of a youth is a
bonus."

Although fly-overs are effective in spotting some grows, Dobler
stressed police rely on the public to notify them about hard-to-spot
operations.

Often hunters and anglers will tip off police, while Dobler said there
are still farmers shocked to discover there's more than the crops they
planted in the spring on their property.

Dobler said someone who finds pot growing on their land has no reason
to be hesitant about calling police - if they didn't plant it, of course.

"We rely on the community to give us the calls."

Dobler recommended tipsters use the Crime Stoppers line at
1-800-222-TIPS.

In contrast to Emery's characterization of pot producers as "ordinary
Canadians" out to make a buck, Dobler said the drug is linked to
robberies, assaults and other crimes across the region.

"Marijuana is definitely a large problem in our communities. ... We
can't turn a blind eye to it," he said, adding, "It's not the
warm-and-fuzzy drug that people may believe."

Even with public tips and fly-overs, Emery estimated police in Canada
get their hands on about two per cent of the marijuana grown outdoors.

"The police are down the list after nature, after theft by teenagers,
after drought, after fire," he said of what keeps growers up at night
worried.

"Police get almost nothing."

"We're doing the best we can with what we have to eradicate
cannabis-marijuana in our communities," countered Dobler.

"We're making a difference every time we make a seizure and remove
that from the streets."

But he conceded there are still many willing to take the
risk.

"It almost seems, in my eyes, that every year it's an expanding
crime," said Dobler.