BUSTS SOMETIMES COME DOWN TO THE SIMPLEST TACTIC: SMELL

DAYTONA BEACH -- The garage held a monster marijuana plant, more than
9 feet tall, and to investigators it looked like something out of a
science-fiction movie.

Silver-hooded lights hung from the ceiling. Controlled by timers, the
lights darted around the room on a series of tracks.

"It's like the room was alive," said the head of Volusia County's
Westside Narcotics Task Force, who, guarding his identity, goes by Sgt. Mike H.

During April and May, narcotics agents raided four mom and pop pot
farms in Volusia County where people cultivated marijuana in a
basement, a closet, a garage, even a barn. Meanwhile, agents smashed
a Palm Coast-based grow ring, consisting of four suburban homes that
supplied high-priced, high-quality marijuana to the Jacksonville
market. The sweep marked an ominous trend.

"This was an organized criminal element," said Cpl. Steve Brandt,
head of the Flagler County sheriff's Narcotics Enforcement Team.
"Selling marijuana was their job. That's what they did."

All the investigators agreed: The grow houses looked like any other
suburban home, with manicured gardens and lawns, cars parked in the driveways.

"You could have driven down the street," Brandt said, "and have no
idea that it was a marijuana house."

Even investigators have trouble spotting them. They cannot fly over
neighborhoods, turn on a heat-seeking camera and pick out homes that
give off an infrared glow radiating from grow lights. The Supreme
Court decided in 2001 such searching was illegal, calling it an
invasion of privacy. Grow lights also draw more electricity. But
investigators cannot simply call power companies looking for homes
using an inordinate amount of juice.

Sometimes it comes down to the simplest tactic: "We smelled it once,"
said Sgt. Mike H.

And just last week, excessive heat from grow lights sparked a fire
behind a wall in the garage of a Palm Coast home. When firefighters
kicked down the wall, built to conceal, they discovered 200 marijuana plants.

Still, investigators -- about 32 in Volusia County -- do have some
high-tech tactics to root out grow houses, but they choose not to
reveal them because growers might read their morning paper.

Growing marijuana has become a growth industry because Web sites
share reams of information on how to cultivate it, and books give
tips on getting a robust crop.

"When I started, everybody tried to treat it like this big secret,"
said Jorge Cervantes, a pot expert who has written "Marijuana Grower's Bible."

"The information level is much better than it was," he said, "but you
still have to get your hands dirty."

Growers' soiled hands produced large pot profits here. The four
Volusia County grow houses added together were worth about $1.5 million.

"The people buying this stuff are willing to pay more for the high to
last longer," said Sgt. Tim H., head of Volusia's Eastside Narcotics
Task Force. "It is big business."

The Flagler grow ring earned more than $1 million in a year selling
potent sinsemilla to drug traffickers.

"The organization we had here was the top of the chain," Brandt said.
"They were not using it for personal uses, and they were not dealing
directly to users."

But it's just a few house plants, right?

"These guys make tons of money," said Al Ducharme, a federal
investigator. "Sometimes more than if they were selling cocaine."