Pubdate: Sun, 1 Jun 2008
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.mercurynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/390
Authors: Tim Reiterman and Eric Bailey, Los Angeles Times
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

NEIGHBORS DOING SLOW BURN OVER HUMBOLDT POT HOUSES

ARCATA - 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 state's northern 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 growing 
lights and 3-foot-tall marijuana plants. Seeds were germinating in 
the spa. Water from the growing operation had soaked through the 
carpeting and subflooring. 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 have implemented Proposition 215, the statewide "medical 
marijuana" measure passed overwhelmingly a dozen years ago. 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."

Liberal Limits

State officials say such problems exist around the state 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 neighborhoods, residents say the signs of grow houses are 
evident: No full-time dwellers, blacked-out windows, scruffy yards, 
comings and goings at night. Then there's the skunklike odor of weed 
and the whirring fans and electricity meters that generate $1,000 
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 prospective students, said 
California State University-Humboldt, President Rollin Richard.

"My own sense is that people are abusing Proposition 215 to allow 
them to use marijuana . . . as recreational drugs," he said.

Quality of Life

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."

The largest of the city's four pot dispensaries is Humboldt 
Cooperative, known as "THC," the abbreviation for the psychoactive 
chemical component in the plant Cannabis sativa. Officials say the 
non-profit located at a former auto dealership has 6,000 registered 
patients, 2,000 of whom are eligible to buy marijuana, and that it 
has paid roughly $500,000 in taxes over the past five years. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake