HOMEGROWN: HOW DO COPS PUT A VALUE ON THE BUSTS?

When San Rafael police raided an indoor pot farm last month, they
seized 600 plants and estimated their street value at $800,000.

Yet when the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force raided an indoor
farm in Ignacio days earlier, they seized 224 marijuana plants and
estimated the value at up to $1 million.

One estimate pegs the street value of each pot plant at $1,333, the
other at $4,464. Why the big discrepancy?

"There's no exact science on this stuff," said San Rafael police
Sgt. Dan Fink. "There's so many factors involved."

The variables that determine street value can include the maturity
of the plants, their potential yield and their potency, investigators say.

A plant's potency depends on the amount of THC, or
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, it contains. Gordon Taylor, a special
agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, said a typical pot
plant has a THC content of about 8 percent, but marijuana cultivated
in sophisticated indoor hydroponic facilities can be as strong as
15 percent to 25 percent.

Prices vary accordingly. Sgt. Rudy Yamanoha of the Marin County
Major Crimes Task Force said low-grade marijuana sells for about
$340 a pound, mid-grade for $750 a pound, and high-grade for $2,500
to $6,000 per pound. A fully mature plant can a produce a
quarter-pound to three-quarters of a pound of pot, according to
various estimates.

Dealers sell marijuana in eighths of an ounce, ounces, quarter
pounds, half pounds or pounds, Yamanoha said.

"It really varies," he said. "A lot of marijuana sellers sell
different increments in weight."

But Lynnette Shaw, director of the Marin Alliance for Medical
Marijuana in Fairfax, said the $6,000-per-pound figure is highly
inflated because the legalization of medical marijuana in California
has brought prices down.

"The most a pound would cost on the street right now - the very,
very, very most - would be $4,800 a pound," she said.