INSIDE GROWING OPERATIONS

A look at three of the thousands of marijuana producers in the Lower Mainland, operations that police vow to close -- one at a time.

With just two lights and 100-odd spindly plants, the marijuana-growing operation in the south Vancouver basement looks amateurish at first.

Amateurish enough and small enough that the owner, a chain-smoking, nail-biting man in dirty jeans and an unbuttoned shirt figures anyone who comes through the door, whether cop, or robber, might just turn around and leave without much trouble -- so long as they don't look too closely.

A few steps farther along the dark basement hallway, the man reaches up and runs his dirt-stained fingers to the top of the wall. He smiles nervously and peels away a piece of paneling. The paneling hides a hole that's big enough to crawl through.

This part, he hopes, no one will find.

The hidden room thrums with the oscillating sound of electric fans and the street-lamp buzz of high-powered lighting. Electrical wires criss-cross the walls, snaking along the ceiling, and a set of blowers sucks cool air in and returns it through an ozone filter to the unsuspecting neighbourhood outside.

Two sodium lamps circle in a slow, motorized arc from a boom in the ceiling and another four lights hang sunshine-bright and motionless, coaxing their crop -- wall-to-wall waist-high plants -- to sticky-sweet maturity.

This operation is kids' stuff, the man tells me, speaking in a way that says he has seen much, much better. But if all goes well, he estimates, in seven weeks this crop of 110 "Blueberry" marijuana plants will deliver 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds ) of drug-rich, triple-A grade, U.S.-bound weed: $30,000-worth of product every eight weeks.

If all goes well, that is.

While police in B.C. contend that most growing operations are controlled by organized crime, much of the province's marijuana is grown by independents who work entirely outside of organized crime's sphere, neither growing for, nor selling to gangsters.

Over the past three months, three such full-time Vancouver marijuana growers have given The Vancouver Sun unprecedented access to their operations.

One grows strictly for the cash. Unlike many Vancouver growers, the quality of Bill's crops is so consistent they're sold before they're planted.

Another grower, Kevin, splits his time between consulting and genetics, helping new growers get started and striving to build the perfect plant: pot so good, he promises, it's like angels crying on your tongue.

The third grower, Eric, went headlong into business last year in search of easy money, but instead he has faced just about every type of disaster, and he's not through yet.

To be sure, Bill, Kevin and Eric -- not their real names -- are just three growers in a city that has thousands of operations.

All three are well-spoken and all three defy the police-perpetuated stereotype of the gun-toting, house-destroying, green-thumbed thug.

The three growers have explained who they are, how they got started, why they do it and how their business works, from set-up to sale.

They have explained what they do to survive, and even prosper, through B.C.'s escalating war on drugs.

And for what may be the first time in B.C., they have allowed the press a glimpse inside one of the province's most profitable, secretive and failure-prone industries.

A truism in the industry holds that most growers are greedy, desperate, stupid, or a combination of varying proportions of all three. All three adjectives fairly describe Eric.

Eric and his girlfriend, a cheery woman who waits tables in Vancouver, live in a nice house in a quiet neighbourhood not far from the Fraser River.

It is their second home in the past two years.

Two years ago, Eric told a friend at work he wanted to grow full time. The friend helped him buy the equipment and lined up a rental house. In exchange, the friend would recoup his initial investment -- nearly $3,000 -- plus a cut of the profits.

The set-up was simple, but pricey, with a shopping list that included $1,200 in high-powered lights and bulbs, $500 for light shades, $500 for air ducting, $400 for fans, $300 for assorted tools, $250 each for an ozone generator (for killing odour) and an exhaust, $700 for seeds and plants, plus $1,000 more for plastic sheeting, paint, lumber, pots and soil, a fire extinguisher and smoke alarm, temperature and humidity meters, fertilizers and plant food.

Eric made a mistake.

He planted one small token of his business in the back yard. He figures a neighbour reported it. Even before the first harvest, the operation got busted. Vancouver police arrested Eric, charged him and took his plants. But they forgot one.

First chance he could, Eric took 100 cuttings from the plant, and the tiny "clones" gradually developed roots. His business partner came up with more cash for equipment, found a new house and put up the first month's rent and the damage deposit.

Eric and his girlfriend moved in and started again. This time, Eric put in the false wall. He took other precautions as well, hiring a professional electrician, for example, to inspect his wiring.

Eric skipped his court date and did his best to keep out of sight.

Eric is medium tall and of medium build, and he's a good-looking man even with his longish, greasy hair. In the evenings, his girlfriend, Elaine, usually flops on the couch after riding home on the bus and plays with the cat, or watches television and lights up a joint.

Eric doesn't smoke his product -- the work makes him paranoid enough already, he says -- so he chain smokes cigarettes instead.

In many ways, they seem an ordinary, blue-collar couple. If you look closely though, both have a few small pimples on their faces and their eyes look dark and tired. The front of Eric's neck is usually red and sweating.

While still in his teens, Eric, now 30, took up a heroin habit. Elaine is also a junkie.

These days, a young man who looks like a university student pulls his car into the driveway and opens the screen door without knocking. He delivers $150 worth of heroin before Elaine goes to work, and he comes back another three times throughout the day.

Eric and Elaine fear that if they had a day's worth all at once, they would use it. They are managing, barely, but they want off.

By early May, the operation produces only a fraction of what it should, far below the pound-per-1,000-watts standard most good growers get. One early crop went mouldy and another crop after Christmas -- dog days for dope growers -- fetched half the price Eric expected. Now spider mites have infested his plants and Eric, unwilling to use a chemical pesticide, has to raise the heat and install a humidifier to encourage organic mite killers.

The change is choking his crop.

Still, Eric is learning. His technique is improving. Just one big crop, Eric figures, could get him enough capital for a short-term, high-yield warehouse operation. Then they could get cleaned up, he says, and they would never work another day in their lives.

Kevin could hardly be more different. He manages his own "gardens" with a mix of precision and adoration, and settles his nerves with equal measures of righteousness -- it's a plant that grows in the dirt; it makes people well; plants don't jump up and steal or kill or rape, he says -- and frequent tokes of whatever product he's testing.

A lanky man with a perennial smile and eyes tinged red from smoking, Kevin also knows as much about growing as anybody in Vancouver.

He compares his work to that of a fine French winery. He grows a variety of hard-to-find and one-of-a-kind strains and sells them in-country; in his case, to medicinal users and big-paying connoisseurs.

The money's fine, he admits with a smile, but he grows for a higher cause as well: Half the crop goes to the Compassion Club for distribution to cancer patients and others, Kevin says.

That work brings him personal satisfaction, he says, but it also has the potential to keep him out of jail should he get busted. On June 27 a B.C. Court of Appeal judge threw out charges against a man who grew medical marijuana for the club.

In the warm months, he keeps what he calls "the girls" (only female plants grow the flowers that cause a high) in a compact growing room in the basement, with his four lights, his fans and an exhaust blower perfectly arranged to keep the roots cool, the stems blowing and the flowers basking in the warm lights overhead.

Kevin keeps another three rooms in the attic: two for flowering in the cool months, and one for mass reproduction. Here under the low ceiling, Kevin grows hundreds of tiny "clones" from cuttings. He sells them for between $5 and $20 each. People will pay for the best genetics, he says, and he plans to build a market.

His consulting grows naturally from that desire. Kevin works sometimes with big-time growers, but he prefers setting up single moms and medicinal smokers and people on welfare, he says.

He tells most people to limit their operation to one or two lights. He warns them of the constant stress, the difficult learning curve, the inconsistent income, the high rate of failure (more than 50 per cent of the small operators get out after a year, he says) and the risk the police, or worse, will bust through the door.

That said, growing can supplement an income nicely, he tells them. With a bit of electrical work (much of it available custom-made from grow shops) and a 1,000-watt lamp, anyone with an extra closet can get into growing, he says.

If all goes well they will net a pound every two months, and sell it ounce by ounce to friends and family, grossing $12,000 a year.

Bill is the most nervous of the three, in part because he makes the most money.

Bill ran a legitimate company until recently. Two years ago, he built his first marijuana-growing operation as a short-term sideline to his other business. He would grow for two years, make some cash, then get out.

By this spring, Bill was running three separate operations in three Vancouver rental homes. His legitimate company was long forgotten.

The new line of work brought Bill seven kilograms every two months, he says -- $50,000 worth of product -- but it demanded all his time and energy.

In March, Bill sensed one of the landlords was getting suspicious, so he shut down his largest operation. Now he grosses about 2.75 kilograms every eight weeks from his two remaining operations. He's no less edgy, however.

Bill does not want me to see his work. Vancouver is dangerous enough for a pot grower without taking stupid chances, he says. He never goes to other growers' operations, he says, drawing on one of the cigarettes that always seems to be on his lips. That way no one can finger him for telling.

And only an extremely select group of his friends and family knows where he lives. There are narcs crawling all over town, he says -- a large, black SUV with tinted windows followed him once from the local Home Depot -- and police propaganda has a way of turning otherwise kindly neighbours into snoops.

He asks me if I'm sure I need to see it.

Yes, I say.

We have to be in and out in 15 minutes, he says.

Agreed.

The set-up leaves no doubt of Bill's expertise. Thick, protective plastic covers the carpet and walls and the electrical gear is mounted neatly on a power board in the closet. Two high-pressure sodium lights, fully enclosed and air-cooled inside their shades, slide rhythmically back and forth on a ceiling-mounted track above each of two custom-built tables.

A large canister of carbon dioxide in the closet discharges automatically to keep the room at 800 parts per million -- the air mix marijuana craves.

Each of the 64 plants is pruned to grow just one long cluster of buds massed in the shape of a cola bottle. They look as if they should tip over from the weight.

This crop -- strong enough to put you on the couch and keep you there -- is already sold, Bill says. So is the next one. And the next.

Finally his work is paying off. He's worried about pushing his luck, he says, especially in Vancouver. Still, Bill could sell ten times as much product if he had it. He's leaning toward staying a while longer.

At its most basic, indoor growing does not take much. You need a light to replicate the sun, a medium in which to grow, and water and nutrients to feed and stimulate your plant.

Those are the basics, but the real world has a way of introducing other variables.

In the summer, rooms overheat under the powerful lights, stunting marijuana's growth. Humidity also kills production. Most new growers over-fertilize their plants, figuring that when a little helps, a lot must be better. This usually kills the plants.

So does inattention: You can't leave them for more than a day or two.

Or a male plant will blow pollen on the females, turning their flowers to seed. Sometimes, like this past winter, just about every grower in town gets stem rot or mould problems (a few, like Bill, swear the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency clandestinely sprays the mould -- toxic only to marijuana -- from above).

There are fungus, gnats, and spider mites that suck the chlorophyll out of plants and cling to life even in spite of a grower's best efforts to eradicate them.

Then there are the variables, best attributed to carelessness: fire, blown circuits that take days to repair (you can't just call B.C. Hydro for help), carbon monoxide poisoning (a by-product when some growers burn propane to produce carbon dioxide) and electrocution.

And of course, other problems arise when people other than the grower take interest in a "grow op."

If you're smart, like Kevin and Bill, you don't have a business partner. In this business, your partners will take everything you have, and the Better Business Bureau is not going to save you. Your romantic life, if you have one, stays far away from your operation. As Kevin complains, pot growers are particularly vulnerable to vindictive ex-spouse's.

Get your wiring inspected. Pay your landlord on time, with a smile, and build your operation so it can be made to disappear without a trace on 24-hour inspection notice.

Keep your neighbours happy by cutting the grass and planting flowers. Bill says happy neighbours are the best security, and his neighbours love him.

Go away in the morning and return in the evening, just like everybody else. Make sure the place looks lived in.

But turn the stereo down. Guard against light leaks, and if you install new vents, make sure they aren't obvious.

Use a carbon filter or an ozone generator to kill the smell, and run the exhaust up the chimney. If you order seeds by mail, have them sent to a friend's house.

Pay for grow equipment in cash. Don't drive straight home from the grow shop.

Keep your hydro bills low: $300 is pushing it. The lights go on at night, never during the day when meter readers are around. Never steal power. Eventually, B.C. Hydro will catch you.

Tell Revenue Canada you're a consultant, or that you own a business. Pay taxes.

And this is important: Never burn your buyers. Give them what you told them, on time. Never deal from home. And never tell them where you live.

Eric's basement is hot. His fans and blower can't keep up with the summer heat. He can't afford $1,500 for a water-cooled air conditioner. At 32 C (90 F), marijuana shuts down. It's nearly 30 C (86 F).

To make things worse, Eric can't get rid of the spider mites, and his business partner just claimed a $5,000 dividend from his investment.

Still, Eric says, the worst thing that can happen is somebody finds you out. If you're smart that does not happen.

Eric always pays the rent on time. He and Elaine have disconnected the stove to keep their electric bills at $300. They survive on salad and cereal and sandwiches. They don't steal power.

Eric keeps his head down on the street and pays his SkyTrain fare; he still faces outstanding charges, after all.

His guard does slip sometimes. Most growers take their shake (the leaves and stems they cut away from their product) to the city dump. Eric has been putting it out in the trash. He's been dumping his used Sunshine Mix, the soil-less compound the plants grow in, in his yard.

A few weeks ago, he unloaded several 107-litre bags of Sunshine Mix from the back of a taxi into his driveway, in plain view of the neighbours.

And in an effort to boost his bottom line, he has been carrying plants in pots to a local golf course and planting them in the bushes late at night.

Eric inhales deeply outside a neighbour's home one night as he takes me on a walking tour of his neighbourhood. The smell of "skunk," a common term for high-power marijuana, drifts lush and heavy on the cool air, and a new vent gleams atop the sealed garage.

If the police don't nick them, he says, robbers will.

He takes me a few doors down, to a dilapidated house on the corner where a Vietnamese man and a young woman watch television in their upstairs living room. They don't know we're watching. Eric points to their basement windows, sealed and dark. The windows never open, he says, and in the winter they're soaked with condensation.

They'll get nailed, too.

He tries not to worry that maybe people are watching him, too.

By police estimates, there are 4,000 marijuana-growing operations within Vancouver city limits alone, between 7,000 and 8,000 in the Lower Mainland over-all, and a total of 10,000 across B.C.

They're fighting to whittle those numbers down, one operation at a time.

Last year, police reported 3,364 cases of marijuana cultivation in B.C. -- more than in any other province.

In one week last April, police in the Lower Mainland executed 196 search warrants on suspected grow houses. In Vancouver last month, city council approved a $275,000 plan to hire five fire and electrical inspectors to help police in shutting grow shows down. The new staff should quadruple the number of busts in Vancouver from eight a week to 32.

Law enforcement in B.C., led by the Organized Crime Agency, has also launched a massive public-relations effort to fight growers, arguing that marijuana-growing operations fund gang activities such as prostitution and violent crime.

One agency report used by a Crown prosecutor during a pre-sentencing hearing last spring said police found a cyanide bomb in an operation they busted, and a shotgun hooked up to a trip wire in another.

Police say growers endanger their children and their neighbours, and that indoor growers trash their rental homes.

For police and some prosecutors, the implication of such horror stories is that anybody who grows is just as dangerous.

Those horror stories -- and they seem to be everywhere lately -- mean property management companies and landlords are joining the war. Urged on by police and municipal governments and even a City of Vancouver plan that penalizes homeowners whose tenants are busted for growing, they are demanding house inspections on 24 hours' notice.

Residents' groups are circulating pamphlets and sponsoring workshops on how to spot a "grow show," the growers' term for their operations, and Vancouver police have a new tip line where neighbours can call in suspicious activity.

That much heat hits growers hard, Bill complains. Most landlords in the city won't rent houses to young, single men any more, he says.

And other landlords -- landlords who know exactly what their tenants intend -- charge a premium.

If you ask growers like Kevin and Bill, or 33-year-old entrepreneur Larry Ware, who owns several hydroponics-related companies, including the WTI Hydroponics & Garden Supplies chain of four shops, the war on pot is working.

A new type of business is flooding into Ware's newest store, a warehouse in Delta: consignment growing equipment. The shop has more than 40 growing set-ups, and people come in every day to unload more.

The sellers, however, are not the Vietnamese growers police accuse of bringing a new level of violence to the business. They are not the gangsters or the biker growers, either, Ware says.

"The people who have just gotten into it -- the bikers, the Vietnamese -- aren't the ones getting out," Ware says.

"It's the momsies and the popsies who just don't want to have the risk any more."

Every two months or so, Kevin and four trusted friends sit hunched over knee-high mountains of fresh-cut weed, snipping and trimming and styling each individual bud, dropping sticky, stinky leaf on everything. The floor is piled high with separate stacks of fan leaves, smaller shake and finished product.

The room, sealed tight with the ozonator buzzing at full tilt, is hot and humid. Everybody sweats and they're covered head to toe in marijuana leaf.

Every few minutes Kevin slips out the door and shuts it quickly, returning again with more beer or pizza or water, and each time the door opens, a bit more of the reek escapes.

In this room, they talk about weed (a favourite topic) and music and girls and their plans for the future and each will be paid with an ounce of Kevin's very finest.

But an element of paranoia lies underneath their work, as well.

Kevin's house, he will admit, is not the safest place at harvest time.

When the plants are ripe, they smell more, and when Kevin starts moving them around and cutting them down, anyone who steps within a few metres of his house knows exactly what is going on inside.

Robbers go into business at harvest time. All the growers know the stories. And the stories make them fear the robbers far more than the police.

Some people come home to find a window broken and the tops cut off all their plants. If they're smart, they pack up and move out the next day. Others get robbed and beaten at gun point.

According to a story Kevin tells, bandits on the Gulf Islands robbed one small-time grower, then raped his girlfriend.

Neither Eric, Kevin or Bill own or carry guns. They don't have booby traps or baseball bats and not one of them is particularly brawny. But they lock their doors and they try to keep the smell down.

They all say that if a robber comes they will hand over everything they have. And here's the thing that really scares them: They know, and the robbers know, that whatever happens no one is going to call the police.

Eric can't sell his product. Back in May he was certain that any good grower could sell -- everyone knows people who smoke, after all. Anyone can go online and find old Deadheads in the States who are friends of friends who would gladly pay $4,000 a pound for top-quality weed, he said.

The business is hardly so rich, or so easy. First off, B.C. weed, like any other B.C. produce, is graded according to size, variety and appearance. Triple-A's take top dollar -- in Vancouver the average price runs from $2,500 to $2,800 a pound -- and the bottom grade, called "schwag," takes $600 to $800.

The prices also bob and dip like the prices for wheat or hogs or oil.

And no matter what police or anybody else says, they don't reach $5,000 a pound until the product is more than 300 kilometres south of the border.

Right now happens to be the best time for selling. Many indoor growers don't even try battling the summer heat, instead shutting down for the season. And outdoor growers -- the people who grow thousands of plants in urban forests, off logging roads, on hobby farms and in greenhouses -- are still months away from harvesting.

Right now, triple-A's can fetch $3,000 to $3,200 a pound, if you've got them.

Come late September and October, the outdoor crop is ready and the prices will begin to tumble.

After Christmas last year, when the Canada-U.S. border was all but shut down because of terrorist threats, many growers could not sell their product for $1,800.

That's what happened to Eric. He has not developed the contacts he needs. His luck just won't improve.

In the months since Christmas, he's been doing one-pound and half-pound deals with the kids who sell $15 baggies along Commercial Drive.

He's been doing deals at a bus stop a few blocks from his home, he says.

Anyone could follow him right back to his show.

Kevin could sell far more product than he grows. Half his work goes at a discount to the Compassion Club, he says. The other half -- about a pound a month -- he sells in one- and two-ounce deals to a client roster of connoisseurs who pay $200 an ounce.

Bill sells some of his product to the Compassion Club as well, he says, but mostly he sells in big deals for U.S. export.

He does not sell to biker gangs, he says, claiming they have their own growers and their own network.

His deals begin with U.S. brokers who comes to Vancouver, holing up in downtown hotels with wads of U.S. cash and 100- or 200-pound orders to fill for U.S. clients. The brokers tap into an established B.C. network, sending out Vancouver-based runners who maintain contact with growers.

Bill gets calls every week from runners saying there's a broker in town.

They are always looking for 10 or 20 pounds, he says. When he has product to sell, he usually calls a few other growers and they pool their crops.

The runners return to the brokers with half-pound samples and the brokers determine whether they want to buy, judging on aesthetics only, Bill says; they never smoke it.

When the brokers have filled their order, they send it on to smugglers who send it across the border with other runners carrying backpacks, or in kayaks, cars, RVs and tanker trucks or floating hollow logs that drift --with the help of a tiny motor -- south along the coast into Washington state.

And the entire cycle, from grower to runner to broker to smuggler, repeats itself hundreds of times each year.

Kevin has big plans for the future. His new strains are growing well, and one in particular, called "Jazmin's Rain," could be a big hit. In a few weeks he's travelling to see friends north of Nelson. Those friends have a 2,000-plant outdoor crop grown from Kevin's genetics, and he's excited to see his offspring.

Kevin says he has done well in Vancouver, but he is ready to get out, to the Sunshine Coast, maybe, or better, the Kootenays.

Up there, he says, you can build a garden in the middle of nowhere and power it with a generator, or better still you can grow outdoors. That's the best way to do genetics, he says. What's more, you don't get residents' groups and landlords and hell-bent drug cops busting down your door.

The Kootenays look better and better to Bill, as well.

The Vietnamese and the gangsters and the idiots who take up pot growing for easy money are giving the industry around Vancouver a bad rap, he says.

He's sick of living in a tiny living room, of being terrified of his neighbours. He's going on two years, four months of full-time growing in Vancouver, and the police, the landlords -- the industry -- are eating at his nerves.

He says he wants his own home and some space. He wants the lifestyle his business can afford.

On a recent Sunday night, Eric walks up Commercial Drive toward the SkyTrain and he looks upset. His hat is pulled low over his eyes, his sunglasses are smudged and dirty and he's moving quickly, slouched and staring at the sidewalk.

He turns when I call after him and he walks back toward me.

How's it going, I ask him. Not too good, man, he says, and he points two of his fingers like a gun. Three men -- he doesn't know who they were -- came and robbed him today, he says.

They came with guns.

Eric didn't have anything to give them, he says. His plants had just begun budding and they weren't yet worth anything. But the men know where he lives. They will come back if he lets them.

Eric's neck is red and sweaty and his white undershirt is stained with a few dried drops of blood on the sleeve. This was his second try at a grow house. He has lost crops to mould and heat and spider mites, and last month another crop went to seed.

Nothing has worked the way he planned.

What will he do, I ask him.

I already know what he'll say.

Eric looks down and turns to walk away.

He is flushed and he's upset.

He's going to have to move, he says.

Then he will start over.

Inside An Expert's Flowering Room

1. Sealed hood over 1,000-watt light has a built-in fan and exhaust system to reduce heat.

2. Custom-built tables have raised edges and are plastic-lined. A drain on each one allows waste water and nutrients to empty into a bucket. At this operation, each table holds 32 mature plants.

3. Flexible ducting connects lights with a blower that carries heat and smelly air up into the attic. Here, the air is scrubbed through an ozone filter before being released through the chimney.

4. Small motor carries the lights slowly back and forth over the plants, to provide even coverage.

5. Fans wash air over the plants to exchange air and to keep the stems strong.

6. Nutrients and fertilisers.

7. Bucket for waste water.

8. Custom-built electrical board in the clothes closet holds high-power ballasts for the lights, as well as outlets and timers. The board is connected to the home's fuse box.

9. CO2 canisters, available wherever bulk soda-pop is sold, slowly release the gas into the room, nourishing the plants.

10. The walls and floor are covered in thick protective plastic. The entire room can be packed down in 24-hours, and with expert patching of a few small holes for ducting and electrical work, the grower says, the empty room will never look like it was used for a growing operation.