HOLY SMOKE!

Enormous Pot Lab Weeded Out By Peel Cops

MISSISSAUGA -- Four accused indoor gardeners were arrested yesterday and
the hunt began for "Mr. Big" after police raided what they say is Ontario's
biggest marijuana growing operation.

With just two weeks until the first harvest in a former factory on Westport
Cr., the elusive owner already has lost up to $500,000 of an investment
that would have netted him $2.5 million, Peel Region drug squad Det. Marty
Pollock said.

If the 9,600 plants seized by police had been sold on the street, police
said the illegal weed growing in the Britannia and Tomken Rds. area
industrial park building since late summer would have fetched up to $10.6
million.

Peel's biggest marijuana seizure was 5,000 plants about two years ago,
Pollock told The Toronto Sun.

Peel police said the seizure occurred during the shutdown of "the largest
known hydroponics grow lab" in Ontario history.

195 OPERATIONS

Insp. David Van Loosen, who heads the Morality Bureau and drug squad, said
Peel officers have shut down 195 marijuana-growing and processing
operations this year.

"Most of those were in residential areas," he said.

While watching colleagues use a forklift to load seized equipment onto an
18-wheel transport trailer, Pollock said "this is about as commercial as
you can get." A cube van was used earlier to haul away plants weighing more
than half-a-ton.

The operation's mastermind, who allegedly bought the 1,700-square-metre
former door-making grey brick factory earlier this year, "knew what he was
doing," Pollock said.

EXTRA FLOOR CONSTRUCTED

An extra floor was constructed behind the one-storey front office section,
where grass and weeds creeping from the interlocking brick sidewalk
presented an abandoned appearance.

More than 500 powerful lamps, electrical cables, heat ducts and vapour
sprayers were installed throughout the factory section, which was converted
into staging areas for cultivation of the plants from the seedling stage to
final trimming.

Pollock said about 5,500 130-cm plants -- capable of producing 362 kilos of
weed that would sell wholesale to about $960,000 -- were due to be
harvested "in two weeks."

Instead, he said the drug squad received a tip and raided the building
armed with search warrants early yesterday.

Workers and owners in nearby businesses said they rarely saw anyone coming
or going and had no idea of what he said "became an agriculture facility"
within the converted building.

Drifters Chi Minh Do, 25, and Minh Hiep Le, 45, plus Minh Liem Duong, 32,
of Paisley Blvd., Mississauga, and Trang Van Le, 42, of Church St.,
Toronto, are charged with marijuana-growing, possession- and
tending-related offences.