LEGAL GROWERS BECOME INVITING TARGET

Smoking marijuana can be hazardous to your health, but the effects
are insidious and long term. When it comes to growing marijuana,
legally or not, the risks are more dramatic and immediate.

On the street, marijuana brings between $1,500 and $4,000, depending
on its quality and potency. And the buyer doesn't care whether the
seller grew it himself or robbed a legal grower licensed under
Oregon's medical marijuana program.

At least two Yamhill County growers learned that the hard way.

After the barn where he was legally growing pot got hit twice, Ernest
Holter installed an electronic alarm system. When it went off in
January 2005, he rushed out to confront the intruder.

Big mistake. The intruder punched him in the face so hard and often
that Holter suffered a broken nose, two shattered eye sockets and a
dented and lacerated skull, leaving him unconscious.

Things turned out even worse for Michael Castilleja, who was growing
medical marijuana in his greenhouse when armed intruders paid him a
visit in October 2002.

Then serving as a patrol deputy, Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Ray, who heads
the Yamhill County Interagency Narcotics Team, handled the case. And
he recalls it vividly.

When Ray showed up, he found a naked Castilleja bleeding from five
bullet wounds.

The unlucky pot grower had taken slugs to the buttocks, scrotum,
chest and left arm. They had tumbled through his diaphragm, spleen,
abdomen, small intestine, large intestine and left lung.

According to the police report, Castilleja had gone outside to have a
cigarette when he heard voices coming from his adjacent greenhouse.
He discovered two men stealing marijuana he smoked to treat knee and
back pain, and they shot him.