MARIJUANA GROW-OPS CREATING MAJOR HEADACHE

EDMONTON (CP) - Usually, says Don Dickson of the Calgary Real Estate Board,
only the Christmas lunch is so well-attended.

But last month, 526 real estate agents showed up at one of the board's
seminars. The topic?

Marijuana grow-ops.

"It was pretty amazing," says Dickson, president of the board. "It's
obviously a topic of great concern."

Real estate agents aren't the only ones alarmed by the increasing number of
quiet, suburban homes being used to grow lucrative crops of high-quality
marijuana. No longer solely the concern of law enforcement, the rapid
spread of such grow-ops is changing the way agencies from insurers to
municipalities do business.

"What originally started as a B.C. problem has spread Canada-wide," said
Dave Way, standards and practices co-ordinator for the Insurance Bureau of
Canada.

It's becoming a familiar sequence from coast to coast, says Const. Richard
Baylin, RCMP national co-ordinator for marijuana grow-ops: the empty house
on the nice suburban street, the quiet new neighbours, the cop cars, the TV
crews.

Then it's back to the empty home - this time full of toxic mould from high
humidity, its foundation chipped away to get at power lines, its drywall
damp and crumbling.

As far as grow-ops are concerned, British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario are
"the Big Three," Baylin said.

A March RCMP report estimates the number of Ontario grow-ops grew 250 per
cent between 2000 and 2002, a year in which there may have been up to
15,000 of them active in the province.

Now they're showing up in Halifax. Winnipeg has called Baylin's office for
advice.

A little over a year ago, seven homes on the same upscale Calgary suburban
street were busted. Edmonton has increased the number of police officers
working on grow-ops to six from four.

Experts offer a variety of reasons for the increase from organized crime
exploiting a high-profit enterprise to low prison terms for those caught.
But for Canadian business, the bottom line is that it's starting to affect
the bottom line.

Real estate agents, who may unwittingly sell a former grow-op or sell to
someone wanting to build one, may have the most at stake.

"A Realtor is the one stuck in the middle," says Bob Linney of the Real
Estate Association of Canada.

Agents are obliged to disclose anything that may affect the integrity of
the house, he says. But sellers may not tell their agent everything. As
well, a house's grow-op history may be several buyers in the past.

And telling a buyer his or her prospective home used to be a grow-op may be
slanderous unless a criminal conviction was actually obtained.

"The Realtor walks a very fine line," Linney says.

The B.C. Real Estate Association now includes a clause on its listing form
that specifically asks the seller if he knows if the building has been used
as a grow-op.

The national association now publishes a 24-page book on how to recognize a
grow-op house, or spot a possible customer who plans to build one.

"If someone's more interested in the basement than the kitchen, that could
be the first sign," says Linney, who has distributed 50,000 copies of the book.

Most Canadian insurers now put specific riders in their homeowner policies
that absolve them of any liability if a property has been used as a
grow-op, says May.

Power companies are also stinging from the growing grow-ops.

Ontario police estimate Ontario Hydro lost anywhere between $3 million and
$36 million per month in 2002 from stolen power - losses that get passed on
to other consumers.

As well, grow-op homes are typically bought with little cash down. A few
crop cycles are usually enough to create serious damage, and
mortgage-holders lose big when the property re-enters the market.

The Insurance Bureau estimates the average repair bill for a former grow-op
house is between $60,000 and $80,000. A profitable sideline has appeared
for environmental consulting companies in certifying the rehabilitation of
former grow-op houses.

Municipalities are also starting to feel the strain.

"The workload is becoming an issue," says Glenn Jenkins, an environmental
health inspector with the City of Edmonton. His job is supposed to centre
on inner-city housing, but since January he's been inspecting former
grow-ops on an almost weekly basis.

"The first thing you notice is the smell," says Jenkins, who's seen one
home so mouldy that brown stalactites hung from it. "It has a kind of skunk
cabbage smell."

Jenkins says he's training a second inspector to deal with the problem.

After years of cleaning up hundreds of grow-ops at a cost of about $2,500
each, the city of Surrey, B.C., passed a bylaw making owners of such homes
liable for the costs. The bylaw, passed in 2001, also gives city health
inspectors the right to enter a house where a grow-op is suspected.

The spread of grow-ops comes at the same time as Canadians are becoming
increasingly liberal in their attitude to marijuana use.

But police officers such as Cpl. Lorne Adamitz, a member of Edmonton's
so-called Green Team of municipal and RCMP officers, strive to separate the
two issues.

"It's not a victimless crime," he says. "It's not just somebody wanting to
smoke a joint.

"I do believe attitudes toward simple possession of marijuana, those
attitudes have changed," Adamitz says.

"But I don't believe that commercial production of marijuana has been
accepted by the general populace."