Sunday, July 6, 1997

Five RCMP officers secretly try their hand at marijuana cultivation, and
find out it's not so easy

By SUSANNE HILLER

The five cops have to admit they're not very good yet at growing
marijuana.
Since the start of the year, the members of the Halifax RCMP drug
section the "grow team" have been holed up in their very own covert
grow room, the size of a small office, gently secretly coaxing
marijuana plants to grow.
They're doing it to get inside the criminal mind, and to learn all
there is to know about the art of marijuana cultivation, which is
spreading like wildfire across Nova Scotia and is well on its way to
becoming the province's biggest cash crop.
Except, for all their efforts to fertilize, cultivate, bend and
prune, the drug investigators' plants aren't doing very well.
Only nine of their 40 original plants are still alive. The leafy
plants look tough, resilient and tall but they, too, need attention.
"There is an enormous commitment," admitted RCMP Const. Marc
Gorbet. "It's highmaintenance. We're going to bring in a radio for (the
plants) to listen to."
The "grow team" was granted a licence last fall by the federal
Department of Health and Welfare to cultivate marijuana for one year.
The room is filled with the sweet smell of the flowers; it's
pungent and often intoxicating.
The officers clone the plants to determine the sexes and for
future crops. They observe. They learn. They make mistakes. Mostly, they
concentrate on growing a leafy plant that, when found in one's possession,
constitutes a serious criminal offence.
The police won't disclose the location, saying other "topsecret
activity" goes on in the same building. They flatly refused to even think
about allowing the crop to be photographed, and even changed their minds
about a Daily News reporter visiting th e site. Police said they were too
afraid the location would some how be leaked to the "wrong" people.
The growing popularity of marijuana cultivation is forcing the
police to take a crash course in the subject.
"To fully understand what you are dealing with, you have to know
how to do it," said Gorbet. "You can't go into a room and know what the
equipment is in layman's terms. It is essential to be able to provide
accurate insight into the growing."
There's more than one way to grow marijuana, he said.
"You need to be able to understand all the nuances, and pieces of
evidence," he said, adding the team will use their new knowledge to
educate enforcement officials and the judicial system. "Not many people
are familiar with all the little aspects of g rowing, and we are taking
the onus on ourselves to educate."
"Marijuana" is the Mexican colloquial name for a plant known as
Cannabis sativa. It has other names in other parts of the world in
Africa it's "dagga," in China it's "ma." Cannabis most likely originated
in central Asia, it thrives in any climate, s preading like thistle.
The hardy weed is, and has long been, the most widely used illegal
drug in this province. Heroin and cocaine must be imported, but much of
the marijuana smoked in Nova Scotia is grown here. Locally grown marijuana
is metro's favorite drug, according t o a recent report by the Canadian
Community Epidemiology Network on Drug Use.
Nova Scotia teens are nearly three times more likely to use
marijuana than five years ago, a 1996 survey suggests. And more than 12
per cent of them freely admitted to smoking cannabis at least once a
month.
Supporters campaign for its legalization and promote its use
through books and magazines such as the popular High Times, the Internet
and music.
At a Canada Day cannabis rally on the Halifax Common, more than
600 people gathered to smoke joints and watercooled pipes. They argue
marijuana is not only a benign recreational drug but also a herbal
medicine.
And at $15 to $20 a gram, cultivation is big business.
"If you are growing kilos of marijuana and one kilo equals a
thousand grams, you figure it out," said Gorbet, who wears an earring,
jeans and sports a goatee. "From what we have seen, there is an enormous
criminal initiative, some cohesive groups sett ing up. It's very important
to have a thorough understanding of the whole process. It's around and
it's around for a long time."
The trend has piqued the interest of local entrepreneurs. The RCMP
drug squad, which operates jointly with Halifax regional police, has
busted at least 15 homegrowing operations since January four or five in
the last 60 days. A home raid near Pegg y's Cove uncovered 340 mature
plants; about $1.14 million worth of pot was seized.
"We are really backlogged in cases," Gorbet said. "There are just
so many."
There are many stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding
marijuana, he said. The team wants to be able to present an "unbiased
interpretation" of what is going on.
"When I was growing up, everyone would smoke shake," he said.
"That's the leaves and the stems. There might be bags and bags of leaves
and you might think there is a lot of marijuana, but these days it is the
flowery tops growers are aiming for .... W e're basically experimenting
with everything; we want to see what people are doing."
Not all indoor growing is hydroponic; only waterbased marijuana
is hydroponic. "There is a great distinction between soilbased or
waterbased growing," he said.
"Soil is basically an enormous root network," he said. "In water,
the root is only the size of a fist and the common idea is that water
growing yields a greater result because the concentration is on growing
rather than on the roots."
Indoor growing has travelled to Nova Scotia from the west coast in
about eight years, he said. "I was just outside Ottawa in the spring and
they were taking a grow down a day in the area," he said. "It's never been
so bad here as in the last four to f ive years. Already in the west it has
evolved into a high form, and that's what is happening here. There is no
doubt marijuana has become the drug of choice."
Not only are local homegrowing operations becoming more
prevalent; they are more sophisticated and the drug is more potent, he
said. Delta 9 terrahydro cannabinol (THC), the buzzproducing agent in
cannabis, ranged from three to five per cent 10 yea rs ago. Drug
investigators have recently tested plants in Nova Scotia at up to 18 per
cent. THC exists throughout the plant, but its highest concentration is in
the bud in the female plant.
"This is a new drug; it's much more refined. The potency rate has
gone through the roof and it's steadily increasing. That's attractive to
home growers"
It's also a risk.
Even firsttime offenders have found themselves serving federal
jail terms.
"It depends on the size of the grow and the purpose," Gorbet said.
"But often it's two years. There was a fella recently who got 36 months.
It was his first time."

Professional marijuana producers say police should leave them
alone. It's a soft drug, they say. Police should concentrate on "real"
drugs such as cocaine.
Gorbet says that's not the issue
"The bottom line is: selling drugs is illegal," he said. "It
doesn't matter if it's soft or hard. It's not a hardsoft issue. It's a
drugbusiness issue."
The "grow team" will harvest their crop next week. Their
surviving plants are four to six feet tall, and one has a 12 inch
"monster" bud. Some buds are so big the plants are falling over. The
officers will crop, dry and weigh the yield.
Then they'll destroy the evidence. Everything will be carefully
documented.
How much yield depends on the plant. A strain called Hash Plant
Pure, for example, produces about 2.5 ounces of the drug per plant, he
said. Some people grow just to develop new strains, and then they sell the
plants, he said. At one time, speciality seeds had to be smuggled across
the boarder; now you can order your fancy on the Internet.
As an annual plant, marijuana follows prevegetative and
vegetative stages that can be controlled by manipulating light. This
allows indoordope farmers to harvest more often. A crop of marijuana can
be put through the stages healthily and be ready to harvest in 60 or 80 days.
The grow room is filled with removal fans, intakeouttake fans,
thousandwatt bulbs, and an area for starting clones in which to incubate
the seeds. There is a carbon dioxide system and the team is planning to
get an ionizer to take the smell out of t he air. Depending on how
technically sophisticated you want to get, a person can spend anywhere
from $5,000 to $20,000 getting started.
The nine lonely plants are a little disappointing, admitted
Gorbet.
"It's an educational process," he said. "You have to make sure the
climatic conditions are just right, the temperature and the humidity,
coordinating the fans and the venting .... We lost a few during the
process."
The next grow will be bigger, he said.
"The first one was really an experiment in bugs," Gorbet said. "A
grower told me his biggest problem, besides the RCMP, were spider
mites."

[See part II, a growers response, which follows this post. It was
originally inset in the above article to make a two page spread that had a
big closup of the foliage of a marijuana plant at the top]