HIS MOCK-POT BUSINESS IS GROWING LIKE WEED

Joseph White's Silk Marijuana Plants Are So Lifelike That Police Are
Using Them In Training.

GREENFIELD, Mass. -- Joseph White's home office is like a modern-day
hippie hangout.

Books on Buddhism and yoga mingle with business planners and a laptop
computer. An acoustic guitar rests next to a shuffle of sheet music
for "Mr. Tambourine Man," just across the room from a fax machine.

And then there are the marijuana stalks. Towering six-footers.
Pint-size plants. He even has a few ripe buds kicking around on a
desk, not far from his cellphone.

His stash is for sale, but it won't get you stoned. These lifelike
flora are made of silk and wood.

Behold, counterfeit cannabis.

During the last two years, White -- a trim 51-year-old with thinning
hair and a small stud in his left earlobe -- has rolled his pro-pot
activism and business savvy into New Image Plants, a company that
sells the make-believe marijuana online.

"The business name reflects exactly what I'm trying to do -- create a
new image for these plants," he said. "They're beautiful plants and
people should be able to enjoy them without fear of arrest."

White won't say whether he smokes pot or has in the past. But he
began pushing for marijuana legalization about seven years ago after
talking to one of his sons about anti-drug advertising.

"He wanted to know why adults were talking down to kids and trying to
scare them," White said.

Although he doesn't condone the use of marijuana by minors, White
dismisses the notion that pot is a harmful drug that leads to the use
of harder drugs.

"Kids know those claims aren't true," White said. "So when they hear
an anti-drug message like that, they just discount it."

So he started a nonprofit group in 1999 called Change the Climate,
which advocates the legalization and taxation of marijuana and better
education about the drug.

"My vision was that I needed to tell the truth about marijuana," White said.

In getting his artificial plants into private residences and public
spaces, White is betting that more people will start appreciating the
natural beauty of the real thing's jagged, seven-point leaves, lithe
stems and robust buds, instead of thinking of marijuana as an evil weed.

His early customers were people looking for gag gifts, party planners
in search of unique decorations and law enforcement agencies seeking
replicas for training.

Then Hollywood came calling, and New Image Plants hit a financial high.

In April, White received an order for 355 plants from "Weeds," the
Showtime cable television series about a single suburban soccer mom
who deals marijuana to support her family.

Julie Bolder, the show's set director, needed to concoct a grow room
stocked with what would look like $1 million worth of marijuana. She
called White after stumbling on his website.

"I looked hard to find somebody to make us good weed, and Joe did the
best job," Bolder said. White's pot makes its television debut this
month, early in the show's second season.

"All the weed you see on the show is Joe's weed," Bolder said.

The order brought in about $40,000, about five times what White said
his company had earned since it sprang up 18 months ago. Suddenly,
the business became bigger than he expected -- or needed.

Along with his continued work for Change the Climate, White is the
senior vice president of Share Group, a private organization that
offers consulting, fundraising and marketing services to nonprofit
organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and
Planned Parenthood.

He is also the president of another marketing company that works with
smaller clients.

White sees no competition in the mock marijuana market and expects
his sales to continue building from the interests of "the hundreds of
millions of people who smoke pot and the hundred of millions of
people who have no problem with it."

The plants are assembled in Jupiter, Fla., by workers who attach
stems and leaves made from imported Chinese silk to a thin wooden
trunk. The plants are wedged into a pot with a foam base, then topped
with moss. The flowering marijuana models that sell for $80 to $190
come with a few buds attached. His hemp models, which do not have
flowers, sell for $65 to $150.

Until his order from "Weeds," White's biggest buyers were law
enforcement agencies in Virginia and Ontario, Canada. And that was
hard for him to deal with.

"I have deeply mixed feelings selling to law enforcement," he said.
"They've been some of our largest customers. If an average order is
$150, the average law enforcement order is over $1,000.

"But at least those tax dollars are coming back to help fund the
reform movement," White said.

His products haven't disappointed even the most discerning customers.

"When you come through the door and look at them, you'd swear you're
looking at real marijuana," said John O'Reilly, an instructor at the
Ontario Police College in Canada.

After finding just one other company that makes fake pot plants, the
college bought 30 of White's 2-foot-tall stalks to simulate a
homegrown marijuana cultivation operation.

"We've had people see them and want to know why we're growing
marijuana," O'Reilly said.

The New Image plants have also fooled other connoisseurs.

After ordering a bogus bud online, one customer called White to ask
when her shipment would arrive.

"I could tell in her voice that she thought she had ordered the real
thing," White said. But he insisted that she not try getting high on
the silk supply.

"We cannot be held liable for stupid people smoking our plants," he said.