CASH AND NO CONSEQUENCES IN POT TRADE

In the simplest of behavioural management jargon, there are no significant
societal consequences for those who grow indoor marijuana for buckets of cash.

Those who have watched the meteoric growth of the marijuana growing
industry in B.C. say the money is too good with little or no consequences
for getting caught.

"Why wouldn't you have one?" asked Darryl Plecas, chairman of the
University College of the Fraser Valley's criminology department.

In May he and three others released their empirical study of police
involvement with marijuana growing operations throughout the province.

Plecas said that 40 of 100 growing operations caught actually make it into
court and only eight people from those 100 gets a jail sentence.

"Two per cent of all grow operators go to jail with each [operation]
making, on average, $390,000 a year," Plecas said.

"For someone who has a [criminal] record, it's hard to see why not [to run
one]," he said. "People who are in the business have every single incentive
to continue growing and those incentives grow when they get caught."

Tim Felger, who ran for mayor of Abbotsford last month as a Marijuana Party
candidate, is currently before the court system on charges of cultivating
marijuana.

His mantra was that marijuana "prohibition" is "the most expensive failed
social experiment" of our time.

Felger said starting a growing operation is easy and often seen as a viable
option for suddenly unemployed people lacking marketable skills.

"They have a barn, they need a job. It's easier to get into this business
than it is to get a job," Felger said.

To run an 18-light operation, an upstart operator would have to pay roughly
$7,700 [$3,000 for lights; $1,000 for pots and dirt; $1,400 for 'ebb and
flow' tables; and $2,300 for plant 'clones'] plus another $5,000 for three
months rent and $6,000 for hired help.

Throw in another $1,200 for food and personal expenses and the total cost
of getting the operation off the ground is $13,900.

Felger said the return is around seven-10ths of one pound of dried
marijuana per light - or 12.6 pounds for the 18-light operation.

At an average price of $2,200 a pound, the operator takes in $27,720.

["You probably cut off the 0.6 to smoke it so make it 12 pounds at $2,200 a
pound," Felger suggests.]

He believes most operators are older than 30.

"You need a barn. You need to be stable," he said. "So it's the Green Team
[police grow-op dismantling teams] versus the grey wave."

Mission RCMP Insp. Ted Upshaw said marijuana operations are more and more
frequent in the district and look like an attractive option for many people.

"Right now it looks attractive throughout B.C.," he said.

But, he added, "I believe there's going to be some changes. The solicitor
generals, they're going to be looking at it."

Upshaw noted B.C.'s solicitor general will meet with his Canadian
counterparts in the next month or so.

He said police regularly encounter repeat offenders in the pot-growing
trade, which uses scarce, and valuable, police resources.

"At the end of the day, when it's found [that] it's a good case, a good
charge, let's find some way that we don't have to come back to it," Upshaw
said.

Plecas and his study backs the inspector up, saying it's clear that the pot
industry continues to grow in B.C.

"I'm not seeing that in Alberta and I'm not seeing that in Washington," he
said. "Within the range that we studied, in Alberta people caught with grow
ops, 76 per cent of them went to jail."

But the two have different views on the best way to curtail the growth in B.C.

Plecas noted that often those doing the work have nothing to do with the
growing operation's ownership or operation.

"I think they should go after the little guy [and] make the big guy do it
himself," Plecas said.

Upshaw hopes law changes will be more effective for police but in the
meantime he believes the proceeds-of-crime laws should be used.

"If we can show that you're using that money to buy the house to grow that
dope, through the proceeds of crime we have to be able to seize that house
[or] that car," he said. "In order to put the bite into grow ops, you have
to take the profit out of it."

In the simplest of economic jargon, there are no significant societal
consequences for those who grow indoor marijuana for buckets of cash.