In January, 2011, a home in the Seattle area caught fire, which police later revealed was the result of a marijuana growing operation. Marijuana plants, they said, were being grown in several rooms. From the Pacific Northwest to the Florida Keys, grow houses have been the targets of local and state authorities as they try to thwart growers who often rent out homes in order to convert them into indoor farms.
Profitable Venture
Such operations involve a lot of equipment, and require a lot of electricity, with power needed to run grow lights, ballasts, pumps, timers and other devices used in the hydroponic gardening process. Police estimate that a single-family home can be used to produce as much as six million dollars’ worth of marijuana each year. High electric bills aren’t any more likely to discourage growers than are mortgages or rental payments.
On The Case
Police have honed their approach to tracking down illegal growers (although the criminal onus is shifting away as of late, with more states legalizing “medical marijuana”). It no longer takes blind luck, such as a house fire or a burglary reported by a neighbor. For instance, authorities have been able to forge agreements with trash collectors, who will report any suspicious items in the garbage – and they’ve been briefed on what to look for, such as “root balls”, irrigation hoses or fertilizer bags.
They also note that houses that are rigged with mobile-track grow lights, timer-controlled watering systems and hydroponic growing mediums may not have any space suited for living conditions. This means that the house will spend most of its time unoccupied, with someone stopping by only once in a while to make sure the operations is functioning properly. Growers take as much pride in their craft as the police do in stopping them.
Posted under Analytical Socialism, Human Nature
This post was written by MReed on September 18, 2011
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