[SeniorBuzz]

Will legalization in California lead to less homes being gutted for grow ops in residential neighborhoods? It's an interesting debate.

Buckingham Boulevard residents are hyper-vigilant about watching out for their neighborhood, quick to report anything suspicious. But a police detective's early morning knock at one neighbor's front door was the first clue that something illegal was happening inside the house across the street. The detective said there would be a raid, and suggested the neighbor might want to leave in case there was gunfire. When the man drove back up the canyon a few hours later, police were still hauling out marijuana plants, bags of buds, money and growing equipment from two expensive, hillside homes that had housed an extensive indoor pot farm.

"These people were growing $1 million worth of pot and I had no clue at all," said the resident, who asked that his name not be used because the ringleader escaped during the police raid and has never been caught. "They had two houses, one to grow the pot and another house where they packaged it for sale. The amazing thing is I talked to the people who lived in the house between the two, and they had no clue."

The luxury enclave in the Oakland hills may seem far removed from a Chinatown fortune cookie factory, a Hayward warehouse, or suburban tract homes in Brentwood or Antioch. But they all have one thing in common: they were used to illegally cultivate potent indoor varieties of marijuana, often right under the noses of their neighbors.

The lucrative and illegal indoor ganja market is growing, fueled by the demand for medical marijuana, experts say, and it's only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt in a grow-house fire or by armed intruders trying to steal plants that can yield thousands or millions of dollars in sales.

Last month, a grower in Oakland was shot in the leg by two masked men who didn't want to bother cultivating their own weed. He survived, but others have not been as lucky. The same day, less than a quarter-mile away, a smoky fire broke out in a small house brimming with about 400 pungent, bud-rich plants. The next day, a small house fire in Antioch proved to be the undoing for the owner of a 500-plant crop.

Marijuana advocates believe that legalization of the herb will put a dent in the black-market dealers who are causing the biggest risk to public safety.

A statewide measure on the November ballot would, if approved, give cities the right to regulate and tax commercial production and sales of marijuana for recreational use. And Oakland Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid will soon introduce an ordinance to regulate marijuana cultivation by licensing a limited number of large commercial growers to supply dispensaries. The growers would be required to obtain a business license and building permit to make sure the operation is up to code. They would have to hire security and, like the dispensaries, pay taxes. Kaplan said the new oversight would clamp down on illegal growers, reduce the fire hazard and put a dent in the criminal element.

But El Cerrito Police Chief Scott Kirkland, a member of the California Police Chiefs Association who has written extensively on the topic and opposes efforts to legalize pot, said there is just too much money and gang activity in illegal cultivation to think that all the growers will melt away or go legit based on a few new laws.

"It's very dangerous, the new push for legalization," he said. "It's naive to think decriminalization will take care of the problem."

Nearly every week in the Bay Area, police or firefighters uncover large indoor crops. There were 28 in Oakland alone in 2009, but unlike certified medical marijuana patients or caregivers who are allowed to grow up to 72 plants each, these busts usually involve several hundred plants. Sometimes the grows are operated by professional crime rings across several cities and multiple homes or warehouses. More often, the indoor grows involve crops grown by individuals trying to cash in on the medical marijuana boom.

Improvements in indoor growing equipment, readily available at local stores, can turn someone with a brown thumb into a weed king, experts say, but it doesn't make a person smart.

"It's interesting, and also alarming from a community safety standpoint," Kirkland said. "It exists everywhere."

Click here for more on this story.

[icdude]

They are so moist...

Interesting Read. Ty SeniorBuzz .

[SeniorBuzz]

during any given week, there are a dozen, or more,

negative articles, around marijuana,

medical, or otherwise;

and that's just in California.

[lilnick]

you can do well enough with under 100 plants and still be able to provide for patients no need to get feds involved

[mexicangreen420]

Originally Posted by lilnick

you can do well enough with under 100 plants and still be able to provide for patients no need to get feds involved

hell yeah, grow em BIG!!!!

[Dopeboy668]

Are the media and news people who write this shit really that nieve. Surely thay toked in college or somethin. Im jus sick of hearing about the big bad marijuana plant an how bad it is. when we all now its excactly the opposite.

[Hammerhead]

I sure hope he was not comparing Decrim with Legalizing there completely different.

[Hydrosun]

Originally Posted by lilnick

you can do well enough with under 100 plants and still be able to provide for patients no need to get feds involved

Or any free person may do as they wish and the PIG US gvt. will do as they wish. I feel for anyone messed up with the pigs and the answer is to over grow the world and harvest the bacon.

[Strainhunter]

A statewide measure on the November ballot would, if approved, give cities the right to regulate and tax commercial production and sales of marijuana for recreational use. And Oakland Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid will soon introduce an ordinance to regulate marijuana cultivation by licensing a limited number of large commercial growers to supply dispensaries. The growers would be required to obtain a business license and building permit to make sure the operation is up to code. They would have to hire security and, like the dispensaries, pay taxes. Kaplan said the new oversight would clamp down on illegal growers, reduce the fire hazard and put a dent in the criminal element.

We all know what that boils down to, right!?

"You either buy from "them" - or not at all."

Because, according to the above article, the small scale home grower is certainly NOT going to get licensed.


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