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darkhollo

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Drug war moves cultivation inside
By JULIE MURPHY
Staff Writer

Self-sufficiency, pride, the economy and a perceived responsibility to stem international terrorism all are reasons why a growing number of people are cultivating their own marijuana, according to lobbyists who want to change pot laws.

"The more government has pushed on 'outside' growers (both out of country and out of doors), the more this has moved indoors," said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "Through government programs meant to eradicate marijuana, local production has grown."

And local law enforcement agrees on one point -- more times than not, the grow houses busted belong to individuals and not drug cartels.

"Most are isolated, stand-alone cases," Volusia County sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson said after the latest operation in which two grow houses were raided on the west side of the county and three others taken down on the east side of the county. Agents seized 1,085 plants total.

Two recent raids involved highly engineered enterprises with hundreds of plants each.

One in DeLeon Springs had caverns dug below a backyard storage shed and a 65-foot crawlspace tunnel leading to it from the house. The other, west of DeLand, was a compound fortified with an 8-foot-tall concrete wall to help hide a 22-foot-tall, two-story storage shed of at least 5,000 square feet.

Two of the men arrested recently in the grow house busts are middle-age with minimal criminal backgrounds.

This jibes with what St. Pierre says of the "average" grower.

"Of the user patterns in the United States, the vast amount who grow take themselves out of the black market," St. Pierre said.

Charles Moore, 54, of Oak Hill wasn't arrested last week -- though charges are pending -- when investigators raided his property and seized seven plants and 75 grams of cultivated marijuana, but he may well be one who grows for his own use.

Moore wouldn't talk to a reporter who visited his property, and his wife said she was "shocked" by the find and didn't know anything about the pot. She told a different story to investigators.

While Moore wasn't growing anything inside his home, investigators "followed a trail" from the plants that were about 25 feet from the rear of the property to the house. While being interviewed, his wife, Mary Moore, told investigators the plants belonged to her husband and gave agents permission to search the house, where the processed marijuana was found, Davidson said.

St. Pierre said it's only because of a "bizarre incentive" given to Florida law enforcement that grow houses have become targets. The grow houses themselves are possible because of information and technology, thanks largely to the Internet.

"We're clearly as biased as the day is long," he said. "More often than not, police react to crime, but in the past few years law enforcement has chosen to concentrate on it."

In 2008, Florida voted the Marijuana Grow House Eradication Act into law, which makes it a second-degree felony to grow 25 or more plants. The previous threshold was 300 plants.

Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said St. Pierre's statement is "all a smokescreen."

He denied St. Pierre's assertion that there is an incentive for law enforcement to go after grow houses. He said the area is fortunate because the resources are available to make drug busts of all varieties.

"We work them all. If it's against the law, we make arrests," Johnson said, talking not just about his office but the Volusia Bureau of Investigation, a law enforcement cooperative pulled together in 2003. "We've just had a rash of grow houses. Not long ago it was meth labs, but we were helped when (pseudoephedrine) had to be sold behind the counter."

Johnson said it's not worth the resources to target the individual user who "gets caught for public stupidity," but it makes sense to "go upstream" to get to the base of the problem.

Jon Gettman, a senior fellow at George Mason University School of Public Policy who studies the numbers compiled by the Domestic Cannabis Eradication Suppression Program, doesn't believe law enforcement is getting to the base of the problem.

In 2004, about 28,000 plants were seized in Florida from 242 outdoor grow operations and 246 indoor operations. In 2008, those numbers jumped to 94,700 plants seized from 299 outdoor operations and 1,022 indoor operations.

"I don't think it's a matter that they were getting 10 percent and now they're getting 40 percent, because the price has not changed drastically in the last five years," he said. "People are producing more, so even though police are seizing more they haven't cut into (what is demanded) enough to cause the price to go up. There are tip-of-the-iceberg moments when police were shocked to find grow houses, and then shocked to find them in the suburbs," Gettman said.

More than 800 plants were seized outside of DeLand last week at the walled-in compound of Richard Arthur, 58. The estimated street value of his plants, when mature, is nearly $4.3 million.

"In a bad economy, people are looking to make money," Johnson said. "(Arthur) was in the construction business. I can't say that's what he's doing."

Court records show Arthur and his wife took nearly $114,000 of equity out of their house at 315 Grand Ave. in 2008. A $13,000 lien was levied against the house that year by Prestige AB Ready Mix of Daytona Beach.

Arthur, out of jail on $25,000 bail, had nothing to say to a reporter at his home two days after his arrest.

"What is it you would like me to say? What would make you most happy?" he asked. "I have no comment. I can't talk about this."

The income potential is difficult to ignore.

"One plant with buds may bring $3,000 to $5,000 at best," St. Pierre said. "But when a quality female plant is properly germinated, it can bring $5,000 to $7,000 for the seeds. It costs $10 to $40 for 10 proven seeds."

While seeds are illegal in the United States, there are hundreds of Web sites selling them, and the people behind them will ship here despite claims they won't, St. Pierre said. That coupled with the ability to buy some basic equipment at any hardware store and manuals about growing at any local bookstore (including Barnes & Noble in Daytona Beach), make it relatively easy.

Some "proven" domestic varieties are Strawberry Cough, Train Wreck and New York Diesel, St. Pierre said.

"All you need is one cutting or clone and in 38 to 45 days you have something," he said. "People take pride in (growing their own)."

Nineteen grow houses have been raided in four months, some of which are still under investigation. The anomaly -- a ring of 13 grow houses connected to one another as part of a larger operation out of Miami-Dade County -- was taken down in mid-March.

"These guys want to go where they won't be found," statewide prosecutor Bill Shepherd said. "During the housing boom, they could buy with no money down and bought houses at the price points they wanted to make money -- which includes Volusia County."

Where there is a lot of money to be made, there's crime, he said.

"There are a lot of armed home invasions that occur and we never find out about. They break in to take all the marijuana," Shepherd said. "We hear about it when something goes awry and someone gets hurt."
 
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