ONTARIO'S NO. 3 CASH CROP: POT

Police Estimate Illegal Marijuana Growers Bring In $1 Billion A Year

Ontario's indoor marijuana industry is the province's third-largest
agricultural sector, statistics show. Police — who stress the difficulty of
measuring an illicit part of the economy -- estimate revenue to Ontario's
indoor pot growers at a billion dollars a year.

In terms of revenue to farmers, that makes grow-house marijuana larger than
Ontario's hog industry ($958 million a year, according to agricultural
statistics), and dwarfed only by beef cattle ($1.2 billion a year) and
dairy farming ($1.3 billion a year).

"When you look at the number of grow houses that are estimated to be out
there, you do the math on that and estimate that those houses alone would
bring in, with three crops a year, a million dollars a home," explains
Waterloo regional police Inspector Matt Torigian.

Police assumptions are based on a grow operation producing three crops of
500 plants each a year.

"There have to be a thousand houses in Ontario, and we estimate there to be
a couple of hundred just in our region alone. If there's a thousand houses,
you're looking at a billion dollars," Torigian says.

Most of that value is because of the risk pot growers take, not the cost of
production, explains Georgia-based business professor Mark Thornton, an
expert on narcotics economics.

"The vast majority of that billion-dollar figure is due to the illegality,"
he says. "A ballpark figure might be something like 80 to 90 per cent. With
full legalization and no taxation, it would probably be in the $100-million
area. Of course, if it was legal, they might not grow any in Ontario."

Statistics Canada does not try to estimate the size of illicit parts of the
economy, such as narcotics trafficking, a spokesman said.

Last year, the federal auditor-general criticized Ottawa for not trying to
assess the role marijuana growing plays in the national economy.

On the West Coast, marijuana operations are being joined by those
specializing in hallucinogenic mushrooms. Mushrooms are just as profitable
and a lot harder to detect.

"They're not using the same amount of electricity, they're not creating a
big smell," explains RCMP Corporal Doug Culver, who works on drug cases on
Vancouver Island. "Just like marijuana grow operations, they like to use
rental properties."

The RCMP broke up four indoor mushroom grow houses on the island last year,
he says.

"All of a sudden, these four quite large operations popped up, and now they
seem to have gone by the wayside again. We know that the demand is still
out there -- it's very popular at raves, and with the younger kids."