Pubdate: Tue, 25 Feb 2014
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2014 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Patrick White

IN ALBERTA, WORRIES GROW THAT LEGAL POT WILL CULTIVATE A CRIME WAVE

Worlds collide in Stan Swiatek's smoke-filled office. Like many in
this region of dirt roads and Denver Hayes, he wears a large belt
buckle, drives a Ford F-350 and hangs an assortment of equestrian
ribbons on his wall. There are horses in the back pen and a train of
trucks towing hay bales up the driveway.

"You were expecting some kind of reggae pot commune?" he says in a du
Maurier rasp. "I'm antidrug."

Within seconds of such pronouncements, Mr. Swiatek lights a cigarette
and talks an hour at a single breath about plans to become a
$350-million-a-year marijuana baron - the legal kind - a goal that has
this rural community of commuters, retirees and farmers portraying him
as a Pablo Escobar of the Prairies, certain to bring violence and gang
infiltration should he make good on his ambitions.

Health Canada's new marijuana production laws have kindled similar
flashpoints all over the country. The updated regulations promise to
replace Canada's home-based patchwork of 26,000 marijuana production
licences with a few dozen large scale pot farms. But in Rocky View
County, the drug's sinister associations still overshadow any medical
benefit, and the prospect of a super-sized grow op is seen as a
federal affront to local law-and-order values.

"This is a Conservative riding and this is what we might get in
return, a marijuana farm next door?" said one of Mr. Swiatek's
neighbours, who refused to give his name. "I didn't vote for them so I
could get shot by some gang stealing marijuana."

Starting April 1, all 38,000 people authorized to smoke marijuana in
Canada will have to score their supply from one of the new
super-grow-ops. Mr. Swiatek, proprietor of Sundial Growers,
desperately wants to be one of them - even if it means bringing
security guards, armoured cars and a surveillance system worthy of
Fort Knox to his former cucumber greenhouse.

Health Canada is still considering his proposal, but he says Ottawa
has sent a number of encouraging signs, including a note saying his
operation fits all its criteria.

Local support has been less forthcoming. When Mr. Swiatek alerted
Rocky View County about his plans last summer, an official replied two
days later with an all-clear. A former cucumber farmer, Mr. Swiatek
held a federal permit for horticultural development. "The County does
not regulate what can be grown in the greenhouses," wrote county
official Yvonne Maughan.

The tenor changed when word got around town about Mr. Swiatek's
aspirations.

Several neighbours contacted their councillor, Lois Habberfield, to
see if she could block the application. The county is now exploring a
new zoning bylaw that would confine commercial marijuana operations to
industrial areas. From Nanaimo, B.C., to Charlottetown, virtually
every town and city in the country is hashing out bylaws to gain a
measure of control over the federally mandated farms.

The new rules impose hefty security requirements on aspiring medical
marijuana kingpins. Mr. Swiatek said the tab for cameras, motion
sensors, steel doors and a concrete vault has topped $150,000. "I'll
have 20 people working here in the day, all of them close to a panic
button, so you're not going to rob the place then," he said. "So you
better come at night." And in case anyone is worried about his
delivery truck being carjacked, he's priced out armoured vehicles at
$1,500 per trip.

None of that has placated neighbours, who don't want their bucolic
lifestyle upended, whether by bullet or Brinks truck.

"We don't want armoured cars here," said Naomi Kerr, a geologist whose
property borders Mr. Swiatek's. "We don't care how big the fences are.
What we don't want is something that will attract a segment of society
we moved here to get away from."

A petition is circulating and Ms. Kerr has hired a lawyer. They say
they have nothing against the product, just the location, a view they
share with the local Mounties. "Commercial areas are clearly more
appropriate than residential areas for this kind of operation," said
Staff Sergeant Gord Sage of the Airdrie RCMP. "Compared to corn or
cucumbers, this is a high-value product. You don't see too many people
ripping off a cucumber truck."

Despite his position, Sgt. Sage has just as many unanswered questions
about the new laws as the residents he's supposed to protect. "We
haven't received much information about this from Health Canada and
there's a huge security concern around that."

In an e-mailed statement, Health Canada played down criticisms,
explaining the new measures replace a program that "was subject to
diversions to the black market, home robberies and in some cases, of
fires in homes and houses."

Mr. Swiatek is hoping the economic potential will trump any security
worries. Health Canada expects medical marijuana sales to top
$1-billion within a decade. He has plans to max out his
28,000-square-foot greenhouse and then expand to another property a
kilometre east. "If our expansion goes to capacity we could get to
$350-million gross," he said. "How many jobs is that? Yet there's no
support here."

That could be a stretch considering Alberta's paltry appetite for
medical marijuana. The province counts about 1,400 legal pot-smokers
among its 3.6 million people. British Columbia, by contrast, has
800,000 more people and 10 times the number of medical marijuana
prescriptions, according to Health Canada.

But with two U.S. states recently launching sales of recreational
marijuana, there's no telling how big the market could grow if the
legalization trend spreads. "There is tremendous opportunity in the
industry and, if Alberta and Canada don't get on board, we will be run
over by the U.S.," said Mohyuddin Mirza, a greenhouse researcher on
the board of the Alberta Greenhouse Growers Association.

Mr. Swiatek has no intention of being run over. He wants to be
producing within three months - as long as Health Canada's approval
comes through. "It'll work if they let me do it," he said. "People
attack without having the facts. It's the stigma of marijuana. If this
were Salem, they'd call it a witch hunt."
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