Pubdate: Sat, 31 May 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page, bottom, continued on Page A22
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Authors: Tim Reiterman and Eric Bailey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
Cited: Americans for Safe Access http://www.americansforsafeaccess.org
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Marijuana - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Proposition+215
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Marijuana - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/dispensaries

WHERE MARY JANE IS THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

ARCATA, CALIF. -- LaVina Collenberg thought she had ideal tenants for 
her tidy ranch-style home on the outskirts of this university town 
nestled in the redwoods of the North Coast. Then the 74-year-old 
widow received an urgent call last September from a neighbor, who 
said firefighters had descended on the house she had rented to a 
pleasant young man from Wisconsin.

Collenberg found her charred and sooty rental filled with grow lights 
and 3-foot-high marijuana plants. Seeds were germinating in the spa. 
Water from the growing operation had soaked through the carpeting and 
sub-flooring. Air vents had been cut into the new roof. A fan had 
fallen over, causing the fire.

"It was the first time I had been in a grow house," Collenberg said. 
"I had heard about them but never thought I had one. I was completely shocked."

Law enforcement officials estimate that as many as 1,000 of the 7,500 
homes in this Humboldt County community are being used to cultivate 
marijuana, slashing into the housing stock, spreading building-safety 
problems and sowing neighborhood discord.

Indoor pot farms proliferated in recent years as California 
communities implemented Proposition 215, the statewide medical 
marijuana measure passed overwhelmingly a dozen years ago. A backlash 
over the effects and abuses of legally sanctioned marijuana growing 
has emerged in some of the most liberal parts of the state.

For example, in neighboring Mendocino County, a measure on Tuesday's 
election ballot seeks to repeal a local proposition passed eight 
years ago that decriminalized cultivation of as many as 25 pot plants.

The experience of Arcata, a bastion of cannabis culture, reveals the 
unintended consequences of the 1996 Compassionate Use Act, designed 
to provide relief to AIDS patients, cancer victims and others.

"If the average citizen . . . could see what I see, they probably 
would vote against it now," Police Chief Randy Mendosa said of 
Proposition 215. "We are seeing large-scale grow operations where 
greedy people are taking huge amounts of affordable housing and are 
using entire houses to grow marijuana. The going rate is $3,000 a 
pound [wholesale], and they are selling it and making a huge amount of money."

State officials say such problems exist throughout the state, 
including Southern California, but are particularly prevalent in 
northwestern counties that have relatively liberal limits on 
possession and cultivation of medical marijuana.

"People who clearly are in it for profit see it as a loophole and 
have flooded into these areas from across California and the U.S.," 
said Kent Shaw, assistant chief of the state Bureau of Narcotics 
Enforcement. "What comes along with it is criminal elements who want 
to come and steal marijuana," sometimes through home invasion robberies.

Medical marijuana advocates say problems have been isolated, and they 
question the validity of attempts to link crime to a medicine. "Law 
enforcement sensationalizes a lot of the issues around growing and 
dispensaries," said Kris Hermes of Americans For Safe Access.

A doctor's recommendation is required for a medical marijuana patient 
to use, grow or acquire cannabis. Activists estimate there are more 
than 200,000 patients statewide.

In Arcata's leafy neighborhoods, residents and officials say the 
telltale signs of grow houses are evident: no full-time dwellers, 
blacked-out windows, scruffy yards, comings and goings at night. Then 
there's the skunk-like odor of marijuana and the whirring fans and 
electricity meters that generate thousand-dollar monthly power bills.

So many houses have been converted into pot farms that the 
availability of student rentals has been reduced and the community's 
aura of marijuana is turning off some prospective students, said 
Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond. "My own sense is 
that people are abusing Prop. 215 to allow them to use marijuana . . 
. as recreational drugs," he said.

Arcata Mayor Mark Wheetley said marijuana growing has become a 
quality-of-life issue in the town of 17,000. "People from all camps 
say enough is enough," he said. "It is like this renegade Wild West 
mentality . . . I think people want to see a greater level of control 
and oversight."

Mark Sailors, 37, a medical marijuana patient and caregiver who moved 
here from Baltimore, said the community was overreacting. "They claim 
to support 215, and do not want you to have access to medicine," he 
said. "It sounds like the older people . . . are afraid of the younger."

The largest of the city's four pot dispensaries is the Humboldt 
Cooperative, known as THC, the abbreviation for the psychoactive 
chemical component in marijuana. Officials say that the nonprofit at 
a former auto dealership has 6,000 registered patients, 2,000 of whom 
are currently eligible to buy weed, and that it has paid roughly 
$500,000 in taxes over the last five years.

The dispensary grows marijuana in an on-site warehouse and buys 
additional pot from about 100 patients -- most from outside Arcata -- 
who do not need all they have grown under Proposition 215.

THC founder Dennis Turner said that many residential growing 
operations amount to "full-on crime" and that he would welcome more 
regulation for dispensaries, particularly to protect marijuana 
quality. "There are holes in this [Proposition 215] like a piece of 
Swiss cheese," he said.

The City Council recently issued a moratorium on new dispensaries 
downtown, on grounds that agriculture is not permitted there. New 
land-use guidelines also are in the works.

Officials say secretive marijuana operations in houses are their 
highest priority for increased regulation. They say they do not know 
how many people are violating the county's legal requirements 
limiting them to 100 square feet of leaf canopy and as many as 99 
plants -- provisions that may be invalidated by a recent state 
appellate court decision.

Community development Director Larry Oetker said the city does not 
even know the locations of grow houses because growers tend not to 
get permits for electrical and plumbing work.

Oetker said they fear prosecution by federal authorities who do not 
recognize the state's medical marijuana law. "The concern is . . . 
the federal government will use city records to go bust the people."

Some growers have cut holes in floors so plants can go directly in 
the ground below, officials say. And many use jury-rigged wiring and 
extension cords that overload circuits.

Arcata Fire Protection District Chief John McFarland says that most 
local structural fires involve marijuana cultivation -- and that 
after a fire starts, it often spreads quickly through holes cut for 
ducts, pipes and wires.

Wade DeLashmutt, a carpenter who voted for Proposition 215, said he 
complained for many months about marijuana odors that hovered over 
his backyard after a man from Montana moved next door.

But the neighbor contended that it was medical marijuana. "He said, 
'The voters of California said I could do this,' " DeLashmutt recalled.

In March, the county drug task force arrested the neighbor and 
another man after hundreds of marijuana plants, $12,000 and 27 pounds 
of processed pot were seized at that home and another in town.

Humboldt County Dist. Atty. Paul Gallegos said his office does not 
keep statistics on prosecutions for marijuana growing in Arcata. But 
Gallegos said he would prosecute any growers who posed a safety 
hazard, a public nuisance or environmental harm.

"If you converted a house to grow dandelions, petunias and roses, my 
concerns would be the same," he said.

LaVina Collenberg wishes she had known that her friendly young 
renters from Wisconsin intended to turn her house into a 
marijuana-growing cooperative. Her insurance paid $55,000 to repair 
the damage from the fire and modifications.

The former tenant did not respond to calls seeking comment. Dr Ken 
Miller, who issued the tenant's medical marijuana recommendation, 
said he did not recall the patient.

A petition campaign dubbed "Nip It in the Bud" is asking the City 
Council to bar marijuana growing and dispensing from residential and 
public gathering areas.

A neighborhood ban is overdue, said 82-year-old Wilma Johnston.

"We are becoming a community of rentals for marijuana plants instead 
of people," she said. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake