DEALING WITH MARY JANE

The Charlatan's Heather Wallace digs into the world of growing,
dealing and smoking marijuana. The names of the sources in this story
have been changed for protection.

John White and his former roommates are like any other Carleton
students. Though White recently moved out, the town home that he
shared with three other boys looked like any other students would
rent: white walls sparsely decorated with posters boasting college
humour, and uncovered lamp lights brighten the street from the large
living room window as the boys didn't want to blow their limited
student budgets on lampshades or curtains.

The four boys go to school, do homework and participate in intramural
sports like any other Carletonites, but all are, by definition,
criminals. The evidence of their crime lies in small pots on their
deck, leafy green marijuana plants they tell curious guests are hemp.

In the middle of winter, the plants look sparse, but in warmer seasons
the plants are full of big green leaves. When these leaves start to
change colour and the boys will cut them down and bring them in to dry
out for a couple of days. Then they say they will remove the plant's
buds, which contain the drug Tetrahydrocannabinol (commonly referred
to as THC), and leave those out to dry for more than two more weeks.
Once the buds are ready, they are snapped off their stems and stored
in plastic bags until they are smoked.

White has been growing marijuana for more than eight years, since he
was in Grade 9. Though he says since he moved out of the house he
doesn't grow marijuana plants in Ottawa, he continues to grow them in
mass amounts over the summer in his hometown of Lucan, Ont.

He says he and his friends started growing marijuana after they
stumbled upon a bunch of cannabis plants in a cornfield. They took one
plant and replanted it in the cornfield of a friend, and now every
year when the corn stalks get high, so do they.

"We didn't really know much about it then, we just planted it and it
grew. But you learn a lot just by talking to people, and lots of trial
and error," White explains.

White says he doesn't really know why his friends started growing
their own weed, and he isn't even sure why he continues to do it now.
He admits growing his own stuff is cheaper than buying it off the
street, but says he doesn't think that is what motivates him.

"I think it's just a habit now," he explains.

All of the boys deny dealing their product, though White says after
his weed is dried and cured, which is the process of putting marijuana
buds in jars for weeks to add flavour, he will sell off large
quantities to individual buyers who either keep it all for personal
use, or act as middlemen who then resell it to other buyers. He says
he tried dealing small amounts of marijuana in his first year of
university, but it became too much of a hassle, so he gave it up.

"I was always getting calls at like three in the morning and it was
just way too much," he explains, adding his business wouldn't work as
well anyways now that he doesn't grow in Ottawa.

He says growing in Lucan is different than growing in Ottawa because
in Lucan it's almost risk-free.

"Unless [the cops] catch us with weed in our hands, it's almost
impossible to trace it back to us. We basically can't get arrested for
growing it," he says.

White says on average he and his friends will grow about 50 plants a
year, hiding their cannabis in patches of forest and in cornfields in
his hometown. The process starts when they get their clones - which
White describes as a branch of another plant that is replanted - and
then when the ground softens in late spring they begin planting. White
says he plants only a couple of plants in each location, partly
because of space, and also so that he and his friends won't lose their
whole supply if someone finds one batch.

"People can stumble across your plants pretty easily. One year, we
grew 50 plants and then found another 65 when we were out walking, so
we had over 100 plants by the end of the summer," he says.

White and his friends all swear by cannabis grown outdoors. Though he
doesn't have a direct reason why, White says he would never grow weed
inside, and his friend Joanna Johnson agrees.

"His stuff is the only stuff that doesn't make me twitch. It's so much
better, and I think [it's better] because it's grown outside without
any chemicals," she says.

Johnson says she only smokes about once a month, and refuses to smoke
anything from anyone but White. She says she doesn't trust dealers
because there is no way to be sure what they have done to their plants
before they sell them to you.

For this reason, both say they think the government should
decriminalize marijuana and offer it through government-controlled
stores that would be similar to the LCBO and the Beer Store.

"The way things are, [marijuana] is impossible to control," White
says, using his grow-op in Lucan as an example for how government laws
fail to prevent the distribution of pot. "At least if [the government]
sold it, they'd make some money off it. . . . I think that's the only
way to do it."

Johnson says it is also important for people who are going to smoke
weed whether or not it's illegal to have a safe and healthy option for
buying it. She says government-run stores could offer people a way to
avoid run-ins with drug dealers and know their product is clean.

But not all of their peers agree. Katelyn Saunders, a self-proclaimed
marijuana aficionado, says she thinks no matter how you get your weed,
growing, selling and smoking pot should remain illegal.

"I've had some bad trips, even just smoking marijuana. On my worst
trips I've cried. . . . Even if you know your dealer you're never sure
what you're getting, so the government shouldn't encourage that," she
says.

Saunders adds even if people can buy bud legally, she thinks there
will still be an underground market that will become even harder to
police if marijuana were decriminalized.

White says he agrees making marijuana legal wouldn't stop independent
grow-ops like his own. He says even if he could buy marijuana legally
from a store, he would continue to grow his own in the cornfields of
Lucan, and his friends would still pick buds off the potted plants in
their backyard.

To hear White tell it, his "gardening" venture is based on the idea of
no harm, no foul: "I'm not selling hard drugs, and I'm not hurting
anyone, so why would I stop?"