UP IN SMOKE?

Now that police have broken up the biggest pot growing operation in
Canadian history, they face a second problem: how to dispose of 30,000
marijuana plants.

"Something this large, there is no normal practice," said Barrie Police
Sgt. George Cabral. "That may present some difficulty in itself."

The plants will either be burned or buried.

But there's so much stock, the police aren't exactly sure how they should
proceed with the process.

And since the plants are in various stages of growth, many of them still in
potting soil, police won't know exactly how much volume they're dealing
with for several days.

"We're not talking pounds and pounds," Cabral said. "We're talking tons and
tons."

Authorities are considering the dilemma in the wake of a massive weekend
bust. Police uncovered a sprawling marijuana grow operation hidden in plain
sight in the former Molson brewery on Highway 400 near Barrie. The site
held eating and sleeping quarters for up to 50 men, police said, and was
capable of generating hundreds of millions of dollars.

Right now, police aren't even sure who will make the final decision on
what's to be done with the piles of pot. "We'll just have to wait to see
what's going to be done," said Cabral. "They will have to be destroyed."

Keith Solomon, director of the Centre for Toxicology at the University of
Guelph, has some suggestions. "The easiest thing would be to have it
incinerated," Solomon said.

Police are also considering shredding the plants, mixing it with other
garbage and burying it.

"If it were buried, they have to make sure it's deep enough so that it
wouldn't germinate," Solomon said. "If it's mixed with other garbage, it
would be a lot of work to dig it up, but some people ... might attempt to
do that. So I suspect they'll incinerate it and won't tell anybody where
they're doing it."

- - Torstar News Service

Police have confirmed that whatever happens to the plants will happen at a
secret location.

But even if certain enthusiasts are able to attend an outdoor bonfire, they
aren't likely to get much for their trouble, according to Solomon.

"The joke would be that people should stand downwind," Solomon said.

"But the concentrations wouldn't be effective. All you'd get is a lung full
of smoke, but it would be diluted because it mixes with the air and
wouldn't be effective."

For now, police are busy getting a handle on the enormous size of their
bust and cataloguing the evidence.

- - Torstar News Service

"They're in doing photographs and video and cataloguing the various
pieces," said OPP superintendent Bill Crate. Samples are being taken in
order to forensically determine that the plants are marijuana. Those few
samples will then be presented as evidence. "We're not going to take 30,000
plants into court with us," Crate said.

- - Torstar News Service