Growing

Indoor Pot Farm Procedures Could Go Against Charter

By. Abbotsford Times
 
City public safety agencies are taking another look at Abbotsford’s public safety bylaw, in light of a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling last month that city inspectors who search houses for marijuana growing operations without warrants violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
 
The local bylaw has helped cut the number of fires from marijuana grow-ops from 15 in 2003 down to zero last year, said deputy fire chief Mike Helmer. City safety inspectors will continue to apply the bylaw, albeit with some adjustments, he said.
 
The Court of Appeal ruling found that two sections in the provincial Safety Standards Act were unconstitutional, after a challenge by Surrey resident Jason Cyrus Arkinstall.
 
From 2005 to 2007, Arkinstall had refused to allow Surrey RCMP officers accompany city inspectors into his home, which they suspected held a marijuana grow-op because of its high power usage. Read more »

Marijuana school: Prescription for a higher education

By. Mitch Potter

SOUTHFIELD, MICH.– Budding opportunity is the lesson at marijuana school, where everyone, it seems, wants to be the teacher's pet.

In a scene almost unimaginable during the George W. Bush era, a standing-room-only class of 42 people is taking down the professor's every word at an inconspicuous industrial plaza on the outskirts of job-depleted Detroit.

Some are laid-off autoworkers, others straight out of high school. But the goal is the same: to graduate with a green thumb to quietly grow and distribute medical marijuana – and the legal smarts to avoid getting caught by Michigan's finest.

Read more »

Students taught how to grow marijuana in Detroit's new cannabis college

By. Chris McGreal, Guardian.co.uk

It goes without saying that there's no smoking in class. But there is a good deal of sniffing of leaves, discussion of the finer points of inhaling and debate over which plant gives the biggest hit.

Welcome to Detroit's cannabis college, recently opened with courses on how to grow marijuana – and harvest, cook and sell it too – after Michigan legalised the drug as a medicine. 

Students get instruction from horticulturalists, doctors and lawyers as well as hands-on experience cultivating plants and guidance on how to protect their stash from the criminal element. 

Read more »

Marijuana farming rebounds in economic hard times

By ROGER ALFORD, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sept 10 2009

BARBOURVILLE, Ky. — Machete-wielding police officers have hacked their way through billions of dollars worth of marijuana in the country's top pot-growing states to stave off a bumper crop sprouting in the tough economy.

The amount only got bigger Thursday when helicopter spotters in Tennessee discovered a five-acre pot field near the Kentucky border and cut down more than 151,000 mature marijuana plants.

The number of plants seized has jumped this year in California, the nation's top marijuana-growing state, while seizures continue to rise in Washington after nearly doubling the previous year. Growers in a three-state region of central Appalachia also appear to have reversed a decline in pot cultivation over the last two years. Read more »

Free Will Foster

From Ed Rosenthal's Cannabis Culture Blog

Shortly after Christmas in 1995, police entered a middle class home looking for a meth lab, the warrant was based upon the words of a “reliable” informant. They found no meth, but even more shocking-- they found a marijuana garden so large that it could supply all of Tulsa, and perhaps the whole region.

While people in medical marijuana states such as California might not consider a five foot by five foot garden a threat to the security of the state. In Oklahoma the prosecution and the courts take this crime very seriously. After all, you have to consider the children. What if he started wholesaling his crop in counties all over the state? When you shoot marijuana you only need a little bit to change your mental state, so the yield of that garden, probably 25 pounds or more, could annihilate the youth of a whole town such as Tulsa. Read more »

New Jersey Man Gets 20 Years For Growing 51 Marijuana Plants

MyCentralJersey.com

A township man was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday morning for maintaining a marijuana production facility in his Millstone River Road home.

Nicholas Tafaro, 30, had pleaded guilty to charges of operating a marijuana manufacturing facility, manufacturing marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute and possession of marijuana.

Superior Court Judge Edward Coleman, sitting in Somerville, sentenced Tafaro to the sentence mandated for a first-degree crime. Tafaro, because he has a previous conviction, must serve 66 months before becoming eligible for parole.

Somerset County Prosecutor Wayne J. Forrest said at the time of Tafaro's arrest that the charges stemmed from aerial surveillance conducted by the New Jersey National Guard with help from Hillsborough police. Read more »

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