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 veggie
Registered: 07/26/04
Posts: 13,985
Loc: 
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 [CO] Local officials say medical marijuana supply grown locally, DEA disagrees 
#12032566 - 02/15/10 10:35 AM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Local officials say medical marijuana
supply grown locally, DEA disagrees
February 15, 2010 - coloradoan.com
Where does Northern Colorado's medical
marijuana come from? That depends on whom you ask.
Local police and dispensaries say it's largely being grown locally, in
homes and warehouses across the area, generally using systems sold
ostensibly for growing hydroponic tomatoes and other food crops.
But the federal Drug Enforcement Administration's chief agent in Denver
says there's "no possible way" that people growing three to six plants
at a time could be meeting the massive demand that's now suddenly
visible.
Jeffrey D. Sweetin, special agent in charge of the DEA's four-state
Rocky Mountain Field Division, said his agents are seeing more and more
large outdoor "grows," generally on national forest lands in the
foothills, tended by armed guards brought in from other states
specifically to protect the crops.
Capt. Jerry Schiager of Fort Collins Police Services said he's not
aware of major amounts of marijuana being smuggled into Larimer County.
Instead, he said, people are growing it inside basements and trailers
and garages all over the city. Schiager said there are likely about 100
grow operations in Fort Collins at any one time.
"This is happening in a lot of basements in Fort Collins," he said.
"There is money to be
made in this. There are people who are growing pounds and pounds of
marijuana."
Schiager said quality marijuana costs about $400 a pound to grow but
sells for about $7,680 a pound.
Sgt. Joe Shellhammer of the Larimer County Sheriff's Office said much
of the marijuana is being grown locally.
"The commercial operations in Larimer County have exploded,"
Shellhammer said. "And commercial operations run by felons have
exploded."
Local grow
Abundant Healing, a medical marijuana dispensary in Old Town, has its
own "grow" in a nondescript warehouse in an industrial area not far
from the shop. The building carries no signs indicating what is going
on inside, where more than 100 plants are growing in large pots.
Sun lamps hung from the ceiling direct light on the plants, and fans
circulate the air. The walls are lined with plastic and
aluminum-covered boards to keep the heat in.
The skunky smell of plants fills the air.
The building is completely secure, said Drew Brown, co-owner of
Abundant Healing. Video cameras monitor activity inside and outside the
structure.
Security measures include lasers mounted on the walls to detect motion.
Guard dogs spend their nights inside the building.
All city building codes were followed in retrofitting the building,
Brown said.
"We're doing what they want us to do," he said. "We're following the
rules; we just hope the rules don't change."
Other dispensary owners interviewed by the Coloradoan say they get
their marijuana legally from people with proper state caregiver
paperwork.
On Tuesday afternoon, a couple came into Dave Watson's Kind Care of
Colorado dispensary at College Avenue and Trilby Road, offering to sell
ounces of marijuana. Watson asked what kind they were offering -
"Blueberry" - and declined, saying he already had an ample supply of
that particular strain.
Users prize different strains for the different types of effects. Some
strains are considered better for aiding sleep, while others are
considered better for nausea or pain. Kind Care was recently offering
strains ranging from Mack Truck to Weasel and Crypto Diesel.
Watson said there's plenty of locally grown marijuana available, a
point echoed by Joe Dice, who owns The Grow Shop in Fort Collins. He
said the number of people buying hydroponic gardening setups and indoor
lighting kits indicates how many would-be growers are out there.
"Right now, it's a farmers market," he said. "There was a huge demand
for supply. It's being met."
Dice's son Nick, who owns the Medical MJ Dispensary in Campus West,
said some people have offered to sell him imported marijuana. He said
he'd rather pay more to buy from local growers with caregiver licenses.
"It's not worth the risk to save a couple of hundred bucks," Dice said.
DEA viewpoint
Sweetin, of the DEA, said his agents are seeing large indoor grows in
warehouses, especially in the Denver area. He said many growers believe
the Obama administration's decision on medical marijuana patients has
given them "carte blanche" to grow thousands of plants at a time.
DEA agents in October made a series of marijuana raids around Larimer
County, including in Fort Collins and Rist Canyon. Sweetin said he
could not discuss the raids.
After the raids occurred, a DEA spokesman referred a Coloradoan
reporter to remarks by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who issued
guidelines telling federal drug agents to effectively de-prioritize
enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have legalized the
drug for medical purposes.
The guidelines made it clear that federal agents would enforce the
federal laws when they find "commercial" pot-growing enterprises or
when state marijuana-legalization laws are being invoked as a "pretext"
by large-scale growers.
The DEA on Friday raided a Highlands Ranch grower who was featured
in the media.
"Technically, every dispensary in the state is in blatant violation of
federal law," Sweetin told The Denver Post on Friday. "The time is
coming when we go into a dispensary, we find out what their profit is,
we seize the building and we arrest everybody. They're violating
federal law; they're at risk of arrest and imprisonment."
At the Way to Grow organic and hydroponic gardening store on East
Mulberry Street, the shelves are stocked with multi-spectrum grow
lights, ventilation systems, organic plant foods and activated-carbon
filters to scrub plant odors from exhaust air. The store's owner, Corey
Inniss, did not respond to a request for comment.
Sweetin said such stores have long operated with a "wink and a nod"
toward marijuana growers, pointing out that few people would buy such
expensive systems to grow tomatoes.
"I've been in hundreds, and hundreds and hundreds of grows. I've never
met anyone who grows hydroponic tomatoes or orchids," Sweetin said.
"We've created a great market for people who are not at all concerned
about medicinal needs. They are simply interested in making money."
Schiager said he believes regulations are necessary to move grows from
residential areas into industrial parks, where buildings are properly
equipped with high-capacity electrical wiring.
At a presentation Feb. 8, Schiager showed pictures of basements
festooned with wires, lights and irrigation systems.
"You take a warm, moist environment and you put electrical wires in
there," Schiager said. "That's one of the things that's very dangerous
about this. It's going on in residential zones."
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Green_T
Getting to the chopper
Registered: 10/02/08
Posts: 4,024
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Re: [CO] Local officials say medical marijuana supply grown locally, DEA disagrees [Re: veggie]
#12032763 - 02/15/10 11:36 AM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Maybe if the DEA weren't such pricks they could actually regulate it to ensure it is grown safely and not by violent felons?
Good job deregulating the industry, officers. You created all the problems mentioned in the article by making people live in fear.
On a side note...wouldn't growing legal marijuana for medical use be a great job for felons who can't get employment anywhere else and have to return to crime to survive? I'd rather a robber be tending plants to be able to eat rather than driving around my neighborhood looking for targets.
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"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" - Thomas Jefferson
Legalize Meth | Drug War Victims
Their vial of acid, which is on the table over there, tastes vile because they're incompetent chemists.
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 bigkingjc
chillin.
Registered: 08/29/06
Posts: 50
Last seen: 2 years, 3 months
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Re: [CO] Local officials say medical marijuana supply grown locally, DEA disagrees [Re: Green_T]
#12033353 - 02/15/10 01:42 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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"We've created a great market for people who are not at all concerned about medicinal needs. They are simply interested in making money."
yes...but isnt this the same mentality as the pharm. companies?...and auto manufacturers...and banks...and mainly every company in the U.S.?!
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ToiletDuk
Child of the Corn
Registered: 05/17/03
Posts: 81,720
Loc: Earthfarm 1
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Re: [CO] Local officials say medical marijuana supply grown locally, DEA disagrees [Re: bigkingjc]
#12033498 - 02/15/10 02:07 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Well, that's okay, as they can kill legally.
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Dutchie3k
Psychic Drifter
Registered: 12/16/08
Posts: 348
Loc: this hazy bubble, state o...
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Re: [CO] Local officials say medical marijuana supply grown locally, DEA disagrees [Re: veggie]
#12298453 - 03/30/10 01:12 PM (3 years, 2 months ago) |
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$480 an ounce. Impressive.
Dickheads
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"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others - the living - are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later"
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