CONSUMERS PAY FOR POT-GROW BOOM

TORONTO -- A growing plague of electricity-gobbling illegal marijuana
grow-houses is costing Ontario's hydro utilities upwards of $500 million a
year, an amount ultimately paid by all energy consumers, power distributors
say.

Fuelled by massive marijuana-generated profits, the operations, which have
sprouted by the thousands in the past few years, also carry a huge social
cost, they say.

"The days where a grove of marijuana would be masked up north in a field
are over," said Andrew Evangelista, a lawyer who represents electricity
distributors.

"There has been a proliferation of residential houses hidden in residential
neighbourhoods all across Ontario being used to grow marijuana."

Worth as much as $4 billion a year, marijuana is among the most valuable
cash crops in the province.

Police say Ontario is fast catching up with British Columbia as Canada's
pot-growing capital with that province's $6-billion-a-year market. It's a
powerful lure for organized criminals, they say.

Police estimate a single hydroponic grow-house can churn out plants worth a
street value of more than $1 million a year and much of it ends up in the
United States.

Growing marijuana indoors requires powerful lights and ventilation,
consuming about $2,000 in electricity a month, but hydro thieves simply
bypass the meters to avoid the overhead and make tracing the operations harder.

"The demands on the system are enormous," Evangelista said.

York Region Det.-Sgt. Gary Miner said authorities in Markham, just north of
Toronto, have been shutting down up to 10 such operations a week.

"It's out of control, it's an epidemic, it's a virus," he said. "This year
we've done 107 warrants and the more we do, the more we find."

In a recent one-day national crackdown, police scooped up $47 million worth
of pot plants, 136 suspects, and found 28 children in the houses, some
booby-trapped to discourage intrusion.