ENDING INDOOR POT GROWS HAS ITS CHALLENGES

It's a bit of leap of logic to say that nearly every one of the nearly
4,000 homes in Nanaimo identified as using unusually high amounts
electricity is growing marijuana.

Information from B.C. Hydro shows that 3,986 city addresses exceed the
threshold of using 93 kilowattt-hours per day that may show an indoor
growing operation.

Is indoor marijuana growing a problem in Nanaimo? Without a doubt, and
it has been for at least a decade. Nearly 10 years ago, in April 2000,
Nanaimo RCMP told the Daily News they estimated there were between 750
and 1,000 indoor growing operations in the city.

But let's sit back and think this through very carefully before we get
the idea that thousands of Nanaimo residents are engaged in growing
dope indoors.

If the city is going to request and make use of lists of addresses
with usually high electricity rates, it must carefully eliminate all
sorts of other potential causes other than cultivating pot before
acting on the information or giving it to the police.

Whether Nanaimo still has an estimated 750 and 1,000 indoor
pot-growing operations is a difficult question. There are any number
of reasons for such high consumption of electricity.

Someone could be growing tomatoes and others may have a large number
of big aquariums. Excess use of air conditioners, pool heaters, dryers
and old refrigerators may also push some homes into the area of what
is considered suspicious use.

The city itself acknowledges that poorly insulated older homes making
use of heat pumps may also be a cause. The city needs to be aware of
the problems inherent in doing anything with the information in this
form. Adding to this problem is that an unknown number of growing
operations are either stealing electricity or bypassing the electrical
meter. Or they may not be on the B.C. Hydro grid at all by using generators.

All this adds up to the very real concern by the B.C. Civil Liberties
Association that the legislation used to gather this information, The
Safety Standards Act, may be abused.

It would be no surprise if some of the lawmakers and police who
support this legislation were unwittingly above the
93-kilowatt-per-hour threshold, victims only of living in a large
house with appliances badly in need of being upgraded to be more
energy efficient.

Law enforcement is quite right that the billion-dollar profits of pot
growing fuel organized crime. The question to be answered is whether
the Safety Standards Act is an effective way to do this.

It certainly doesn't look like it, and for police to say the act is
just one piece that fits into the enforcement puzzle has to make
anyone wonder whether this enforcement puzzle has to be so large.

Suspects potentially include a large family with lots of kids doing
constant laundry, or some rich guy paying a king's ransom to keep his
large fish tanks at just the right temperature for his exotic pets.

We hear a lot about pot use and production and nobody seems to ask why
it's so popular that it's a billion-dollar industry. It is a very
small number of people who use it medicinally. The rest are
recreational users who look at pot as no worse than alcohol. Some
argue it's better than alcohol. Regardless, we have a culture that
tacitly sanctions the use of pot as a way of feeling good.

Are so many people so chronically unhappy with their lives, jobs,
relationships and themselves that they flee into marijuana thinking it
will make them feel better?

Perhaps the Safety Standards Act, combatting the success and profits
of pot growers and potentially compromising privacy rights, represents
more a certain failure as a society.

But many believe the myth that the pleasure of pot can make their
lives better and barring legalization, indoor pot growing will
continue to be a serious problem.

We need not only a responsible use of the Safety Standards Act, but an
approach that questions why so many people use marijuana.