POT STILL POTENT CASH CROP

It seems fewer Windsor neighbourhoods are going to pot.

City police raided 37 marijuana growing operations in 2004, five fewer than
they shut down in 2003.

The slight drop is consistent with provincewide figures provided by the
OPP, but both the Windsor and provincial forces say the marginal decline in
total busts doesn't necessarily mean there's less weed on the street.
Grow-ops are getting larger and busts may be down because police don't have
the resources to keep pace, they argue.

Windsor police Staff Sgt. Ed McNorton said the 2004 bust total is
"consistent with what we've seen for the last few years." In 2003, Windsor
police busted 42 grow-ops. They raided 44 in 2002, 36 in 2001 and 14 in 2000.

"We think the trend is going to stay," McNorton said. "There's a lot of
money to be made. It's a very lucrative cash crop."

Det-Supt. Jim Miller of the OPP drug enforcement unit saw the same pattern
provincewide -- there were fewer busts in 2004, but the dip was negligible.

'They haven't stopped growing them, it's that we don't have the resources
to take them all off, there's so many of them," he said.

"We're getting information on grows, but there are so many of them, by the
time we get there sometimes they've already been harvested."

The most recent statistics show that by the end of September the OPP had
overturned 498 operations across the province, including 230 grow-houses
and 268 outdoor pot farms. OPP provincewide statistics only include areas
policed by the OPP.

In all of 2003, the provincial force closed 522 pot grows. In 2002 they
busted 729.

Those numbers can be deceiving. Although OPP busted 227 more operations in
2002 than they did in 2003, the raids they conducted in 2003 were larger,
with more plants seized.

The force scooped up a total of 214, 891 marijuana plants in 2003, 16,521
more than in 2002.

This pattern looks set to hold in 2004, with 216, 448 plants already seized
by the end of September.

The number of plants confiscated in 2004 may be inflated by the largest
grow-op bust in Canadian history.

Last January, provincial police discovered a jungle-like pot factory inside
a shuttered Molson's brewery in Barrie. OPP estimate the plant cranked out
$60-million worth of weed a year.

Miller said the massive operation was just one more indication organized
crime retains a stranglehold on Canada's marijuana trade.

Seizing the assets of organized crime leaders could act as a deterrent, he said.