POT GROWERS DOWNSIZING THEIR OPERATIONS

In a year that saw two record marijuana grow ops busted in Calgary, police
say the illegal operations are actually getting smaller and the people
running them are getting better at hiding their telltale signs.

On Dec. 10, police raided a house at Weston Place S.W. and found 2,600
plants with an estimated street value of $3.25 million--the largest in the
city's history. It was only seven months earlier that police set their
previous record when they entered a house on Patterson Crescent S. W. and
discovered plants worth $3.05 million.

But in the roughly 100 busts that happen in a year, the operations are
getting smaller, not bigger, police say.

Sgt. Keith Hurley of the Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigative Team
said that despite the high-profile busts netting thousands of plants, most
grow ops average about 500 to 600 plants.

"There was a time when the 1,000-plant grow was pretty much the norm,"
said Hurley. "They can go a bit more undetected when they're smaller. They
don't create as much moisture."

What's more, the people growing the drug are getting more adept at making
the houses fit into their neighbourhoods.

Traditionally, police have told people to be on the lookout for signs that
houses don't appear to be lived in. Once that message got out, the people
running the grow ops -- the majority of which are tied to organized crime,
says Hurley --have taken steps to make the houses looked occupied.

"The people who are doing this have definitely refined their skill over
the years,"Hurley said.

"They've made more of an attempt to try to hide their illicit activities,
shovel-ling snow, cutting the lawn. Regardless of what they do try to do
to give the appearance that there's somebody living there, it never fails
that when you talk to people in the neighbourhood, they always say the
same thing: 'There was something suspicious about the house.' "

But determining how Calgary compares to other cities remains difficult,
said one researcher.

University of Fraser Valley criminologist Darryl Plecas, who studied grow
ops in Alberta and British Columbia over nine years, said efforts to
continue the study have hit a roadblock. He can't find any government
money to continue studying grow ops' locations, sizes and other
characteristics.

"We need to have accurate data to know what's going on. The single biggest
problem at the moment is we don't know what the hell is going on, and
there doesn't appear to be any political will to change that," Plecas
said.

The previous study found Alberta had about one-tenth of the grow ops
operating in British Columbia. Alberta also had higher rates of charges
being laid, he said.

Use of the drug in Alberta is above the national norm. In Statistics
Canada's most recent look at cannabis use across the country, 13 per cent
of Albertans 15 years of age and older had smoked marijuana in the past
year, compared to 12 per cent nationally. The 2004 study also found a
four-percentage-point increase in Alberta from 1994 to 2002, the most
recent data available.

So far this year, the Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigative Team has
turned up roughly $60 million in drugs, on par with last year. Its record
year was in 2004 when it pulled in $101 million worth of marijuana.

Hurley said the difference in numbers comes from a change in police focus.

"Back then, it was more a matter of eradication, just getting rid of these
things.The focus has been more and more in these last few years to bring
up our arrest rate as opposed to our seizure rate," he said.

"We're in the game to do both, but in the investigation, in order for the
police to get more arrests, it takes more time."