Marijuana Law Comes With Challenges

BOSTON — Last month, voters approved a statewide measure decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Now, wary authorities say, comes the hard part. They are scrambling to set up a new system of civil penalties before Jan. 2, when the change becomes law. From then on, anyone caught with an ounce or less of marijuana will owe a $100 civil fine instead of ending up with an arrest record and possibly facing jail time.

It sounds simple, but David Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said the new policy presented a thicket of questions and complications.

One of the most basic, Mr. Capeless said, is who will collect the fines and enforce other provisions of the law. For example, violators under 18 will be required to attend a drug awareness class within a year, but it is unclear who will make sure that they do so. The fine increases to $1,000 for those who skip the class.

A complicating factor, said Mr. Capeless, the district attorney in Berkshire County, is that state law bans the police from demanding identification for civil infractions.

“Not only do you not have to identify yourself,” he said, “but it would appear from a strict reading that people can get a citation, walk away, never pay a fine and have no repercussion.”

Wayne Sampson, executive director of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, says he anticipates that many violators will lie about their identities.

“You can tell us that you’re Mickey Mouse of One Disneyland Way,” Mr. Sampson said, “and we have to assume that’s true.”

The authorities, he said, will also have to be sure that the substance they hand out citations for is marijuana, which will involve sending it to the State Police crime laboratory.

“You’re going to appeal it and go to the clerk’s hearing,” Mr. Sampson said, “and if we don’t have an analysis from the drug lab, the clerk is going to throw the case out.”

Mr. Sampson predicted that the law would result in de facto legalization of marijuana because it would prove too difficult to enforce.

“I would argue that the proponents knew these complications right from the beginning,” he said.

About 65 percent of state voters supported the decriminalization measure, which was promoted by a group that spent more than $1.5 million on the effort.

The group, the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, said that in addition to ensuring that people caught with marijuana no longer have a criminal record, the change would save about $29.5 million a year that it estimates law enforcement currently spends to enforce existing drug laws.

A spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, which supports the drug’s legalization and created the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy to get the ballot question passed here, said that judging from the experience of other states with civil penalties for marijuana possession, Massachusetts officials were exaggerating the challenges.

“I can’t help but think that the real difficulty in implementing it,” said the spokesman, Dan Bernath, “is they don’t want to do it.”

Eleven states have decriminalized first-time possession of marijuana, though in most it is technically a misdemeanor instead of a civil offense.

In Nebraska, where possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is punishable by a $300 civil fine, the process has worked smoothly for three decades, said Michael Behm, executive director of the Nebraska Crime Commission.

In New York, possession of an ounce or less of marijuana is a noncriminal violation but is still processed through the criminal system, said Robert M. Carney, the district attorney in Schenectady County.

“They are brought down to the police station so their identity is established,” Mr. Carney said of violators, “but they are not fingerprinted because it’s not an arrest.”

In Massachusetts, the Executive Office of Public Safety is working with state and local law enforcement and court officials to determine how to apply the changes. Mr. Capeless said education officials were also in on the discussions because it was unclear whether public schools and universities could forbid marijuana possession under the new law.

A spokesman for the public safety office said its legal counsel was considering “a lot of questions” as the deadline drew near. But the spokesman, Terrel Harris, would not elaborate.

“We are just trying to make sure we have all the answers,” Mr. Harris said.

Mr. Capeless said that in particular the department needed to address a clause in the new law that said neither the state nor its “political subdivisions or their respective agencies” could impose “any form of penalty, sanction or disqualification” on anyone found with an ounce or less of marijuana.

“It appears to say that you get a $100 fine and they can’t do anything else to you,” he said. “Can a police officer caught with marijuana several times get to keep his job and not be disciplined in any fashion? Can public high schools punish kids for smoking cigarettes but not for having pot?”

Mr. Bernath agreed that the law was “not completely clear” on how to handle such situations, but predicted that they would be rare.

“I think the resistance has to do with dealing with something new,” he said. “We’re pretty confident that once this gets going and the newness of it wears off, a lot of the apprehension will go away.”
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source: New York Times

Grow ops sprout in upscale 'burbs

Massive drug operations springing up under noses of unsuspecting residents

They're appearing everywhere, from apartments to million-dollar mansions.

So lucrative is the marijuana trade that growers aren't discriminating between low income neighbourhoods and upscale suburbs.

Experts say grow ops are being found in virtually every neighbourhood in Calgary, with major operations leaving homes in a decaying mess of mould costing tens of thousands of dollars to repair.

On May 9, police raided the one of the largest residential marijuana grow operations discovered in the city's history.

The assessed value of the Patterson Crescent S.W. home where 2,445 plants were found is $1.2 million. Neighbours appear to have had no idea there was a massive grow operation in their midst.

That case reinforces how any neighbourhood in Calgary -- rich or poor -- is potent territory for sophisticated marijuana grow operations.

Due to the clandestine nature of the trade, it's unknown the number of grow ops in the city. Last year, Calgary Health Region inspectors closed dozens of homes where police found evidence of drug operations.

Meanwhile, Roger Morrison, a former sergeant supervisor with the Southern Alberta Marijuana Investigative Team, said that during his time with the unit "we always commonly said we have a minimum of 3,000 in Calgary."

In a recent interview, Ald. Diane Colley-Urquhart said: "We have no idea at this point whether we have 3,000 grow-op houses or 10,000. But, we do know it's a serious problem."

The Patterson Crescent operation had all the hallmarks of organized crime, says an expert on marijuana grow ops.

Darryl Plecas is a professor at the University College of the Fraser Valley and has studied the marijuana cultivation trade in both British Columbia and Alberta.

Homes in upscale neighbourhoods can prove attractive to pot growers for a number of reasons.

Large homes simply have more room.

"The single most important thing in this case is square footage," Plecas said of the Patterson Crescent grow op. "Twenty-five hundred plants is one hell of a large grow operation for a residential home."

Many such homes are also set off from the property line, he said, making it harder for police to smell marijuana as they gather evidence for a search warrant.

The homes tend to have attached garages -- allowing privacy for the loading and unloading of equipment and plants.

Grow ops have undergone two substantial changes over the years, Plecas said.

They have clearly become larger and increasingly sophisticated in their ability to produce more within the same space.

Secondly, Plecas said, grows in B.C. are proving the single largest source of funding for organized crime.

"People have this impression that they're ma and pa, burnt out hippies, growing a plant or two," he said.

But that's not the case. Plecas's research in both B.C. and Alberta found growers often have lengthy criminal records -- many with convictions for violence.

"We're talking seasoned criminals," Plecas said. "And that also fits to the whole matter organized crime is into it up to its eyeballs."

The profits from growing marijuana are so large that homes prove to be an expendable cost of doing business.

"Most of the time they just don't care how beat-up the house becomes," said Vicki Wearmouth, a Calgary public health inspector specializing in grow ops.

"They can be really in rough shape by the time we go in there with water leaks and that sort of thing."

Wearmouth works closely with police who raid residential grows.

Often, she finds the exhaust from the furnace and hot water tanks are disconnected so CO2 filters out and spurs the growth of plants.

A hole is burrowed through the foundation walls where growers steal electricity and bypass the meter.

Also, Wearmouth said, the amount of equipment used to grow the plants produces a lot of heat.

"If they've been going on for quite some time, there's a significant amount of water damage with the heat," Wearmouth said.

That means a substantial and toxic mould problem. The properties must be "remediated" before they are again habitable.

That can mean the entire home must be gutted to its bare bones; the drywall removed and the insulation stripped out.

Such an extensive process can cost around $150,000 depending on the size of home, says the executive vice-president of the Calgary Real Estate Board.

"They're scary, for one thing," Ron Esch said of residential grow operations. "They're scary in that there are a lot them out there, and if they are not remediated properly, they are a real problem. They're a risk, they're a real health risk for buyers."

Esch said the real estate industry is doing everything it can to ensure realtors know how to spot a home with a previous grow operation and deal with it correctly.

That's important information to be relayed to buyers, he said.

The concern, Esch said, is when mould has infested the home, but the remediation process isn't adequate.

Former grow houses are a frustration, he said: "Sometimes innocent people will buy these properties or landlords will end up with these properties that are totally devalued because of these kinds of (grow) operations."

Also at issue, Colley-Urquhart said, is there are no real remediation standards in Canada.

"I have been told by residents . . . that they would move into these houses, and then when they go to hang a picture on the wall, the hammer goes right through the drywall because it's all mouldy and wet."

Esch estimates there are between 25 and 30 former grow-op homes on Calgary's multiple listing service at any one time.

Plecas's research looked at all cases of known marijuana grows in Alberta between 1997 and 2004.

The number of grows was substantially fewer than in B.C., and Plecas credits Alberta with keeping a lid on the problem. He said law enforcement in Alberta has a good record of investigating the complaints that come their way.

Plecas said a substantial difference between the two provinces is that those caught growing marijuana in Alberta are more likely to go to prison -- and for longer periods -- than in B.C. However, he said he's recently seen Alberta judges tending toward lighter sentences.

High power consumption is an emblem of marijuana grow ops. And a former Calgary police officer who left the service in 2007 has developed a special meter to detect those stealing electricity.

Roger Morrison's technology has already led police to four marijuana grows in the Chestermere area. Last year, during a test on a neighbourhood of 603 homes, six of Morrison's meters found nine grow operations in just one hour.

From the outside, only three of those 13 homes had any visible signs they housed a grow op, he said.

"That was extremely surprising for me," Morrison said. "That was an extreme wake-up call for me and some of the guys in the unit that maybe we don't really know how vast this problem is."

Morrison's meter detects atypical consumption between the primary line and the transformers that feed 80 to 100 homes in a neighbourhood.

The technology immediately notifies the utility company when a primary line shows a home with excessive consumption.

Someone from the utility can then test the particular transformers and find out which residence is the culprit.

"If you turn your hot tub on, that's not going to trigger this," Morrison said. "If you weld for two hours, that's not going to trigger this. It has to be a consistent, large power draw."

He said Canada has become a haven for marijuana production: "There's no way the amount of marijuana that we're producing in Canada can be consumed by Canadians.

"A vast majority of it is getting shipped down to the States where the profits are so much larger."

Meanwhile, tracking power consumption that's not stolen has helped push out residential marijuana grows in some jurisdictions of British Columbia.

Three years ago, the Surrey fire service began an experiment.

"I just was so frustrated with the lack of response from the system -- (it) did not seem to be deterring -- that we invented something different to achieve the same result and that's getting (grow operations) out of our neighbourhoods," Surrey fire chief Len Garis said in a recent interview.

The department obtained power consumption data from BC Hydro on homes that were suspected of growing marijuana.

Safety investigations based on high power consumption found nearly 94 per cent of the homes had serious electrical problems -- in almost all cases, they housed a grow op.

In 2006, B.C. passed legislation requiring BC Hydro to provide the addresses of residences with unusually high power consumption.

The first set of data in Surrey revealed almost 1,000 homes that met the threshold and were the likely abodes of marijuana grow ops.

Notices are posted on the doors, warning of an inspection in 48 hours. And while that gives time for growers to move out their crop, the safety inspections prove an annoyance and disruption to the trade.

That has prodded many growers to simply leave Surrey, Garin said, noting complaints concerning grow ops dropped by 38 per cent last year.

"It seems to be so that they're just simply moving out, because it's all about the money," Garin said. "And if they're not able to produce a crop undisturbed, they're going to lose money, their investment."

The legislation, however, is facing several court challenges from B.C. residents whose homes were inspected.

Last fall, a report from Alberta's Crime Reduction and Safe Communities Task Force suggested the province look at legislation similar to that in B.C.

Alberta Justice will work on the recommendation in due course, said spokesman David Dear. He noted "there are legal issues involved around that kind of information, as well as there are privacy considerations."

The solicitor general of Alberta also noted in a recent interview that many grow ops are simply stealing power and bypassing the meters.

Fred Lindsay said by this fall the province will have two investigative teams that will act under civil law.

If they inspect a home and find something awry, Lindsay said, "they will then have the ability to lock that house down for 90 days."

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© The Calgary Herald 2008

Middle Class Relaxing With Marijuana

A variety of middle-class people are making a conscious but careful choice to use marijuana to enhance their leisure activities, a University of Alberta study shows.

A qualitative study of 41 Canadians surveyed in 2005-06 by U of A researchers showed that there is no such thing as a 'typical' marijuana user, but that people of all ages are selectively lighting up the drug as a way to enhance activities ranging from watching television and playing sports to having sex, painting or writing.

"For some of the participants, marijuana enhanced their ability to relax by taking their minds off daily stresses and pressures. Others found it helpful in focusing on the activity at hand," said Geraint Osborne, a professor of sociology at the University of Alberta's Augustana Campus in Camrose, and one of the study's authors.

The focus was on adult users who were employed, ranging in age from 21 to 61, including 25 men and 16 women from Alberta, Quebec, Ontario and Newfoundland whose use of the drug ranged from daily to once or twice a year. They were predominantly middle class and worked in the retail and service industries, in communications, as white-collar employees, or as health-care and social workers. As well, 68 per cent of the users held post-secondary degrees, while another 11 survey participants had earned their high school diplomas.

The study also found that the participants considered themselves responsible users of the drug, defined by moderate use in an appropriate social setting and not allowing it to cause harm to others.

The findings should open the way for further scientific exploration into widespread use of marijuana, and government policies should move towards decriminalization and eventual legalization of the drug, the study recommends.

"The Canadian government has never provided a valid reason for the criminalization of marijuana," said Osborne. "This study indicates that people who use marijuana are no more a criminal threat to society than are alcohol and cigarette users. Legalization and government regulation of the drug would free up resources that could be devoted to tackling other crime, and could undermine organized crime networks that depend on marijuana, while generating taxes to fund drug education programs, which are more effective in reducing substance abuse," Osborne added.

The study was published recently in the journal Substance Use and Misuse.
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source: Science Daily

For Some Users, Cannabis Can Be Fiercely Addictive.

For a minority of marijuana users, commonly estimated at 10 per cent, the use of pot can become uncontrollable, as with any other addictive drug. Addiction to marijuana is frequently submerged in the welter of polyaddictions common to active addicts. The withdrawal rigors of, say, alcohol or heroin tend to drown out the subtler, more psychological manifestations of cannabis withdrawal.

What has emerged in the past ten years is a profile of marijuana withdrawal, where none existed before. The syndrome is marked by irritability, restlessness, generalized anxiety, hostility, depression, difficulty sleeping, excessive sweating, loose stools, loss of appetite, and a general “blah” feeling. Many patients complain of feeling like they have a low-grade flu, and they describe a psychological state of existential uncertainty—“inner unrest,” as one researcher calls it.

The most common marijuana withdrawal symptom is low-grade anxiety. Anxiety of this sort has a firm biochemical substrate, produced by withdrawal, craving, and detoxification from almost all drugs of abuse. It is not the kind of anxiety that can be deflected by forcibly thinking “happy thoughts,” or staying busy all the time.

A peptide known as corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) is linked to this kind of anxiety. Neurologists at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, noting that anxiety is the universal keynote symptom of drug and alcohol withdrawal, started looking at the release of CRF in the amygdala. After documenting elevated CRF levels in rat brains during alcohol, heroin, and cocaine withdrawal, the researchers injected synthetic THC into 50 rats once a day for two weeks. (For better or worse, this is how many of the animal models simulate heavy, long-term pot use in humans). Then they gave the rats a THC agonist that bound to the THC receptors without activating them. The result: The rats exhibited withdrawal symptoms such as compulsive grooming and teeth chattering—the kinds of stress behaviors rats engage in when they are kicking the habit. In the end, when the scientists measured CRF levels in the amygdalas of the animals, they found three times as much CRF, compared to animal control groups.

While subtler and more drawn out, the process of kicking marijuana can now be demonstrated as a neurochemical fact. It appears that marijuana increases dopamine and serotonin levels through the intermediary activation of opiate and GABA receptors. Drugs like naloxone, which block heroin, might have a role to play in marijuana detoxification.

As Dr. DeChiara of the Italian research team suggested in Science, “this overlap in the effects of THC and opiates on the reward pathway may provide a biological basis for the controversial ‘gateway hypothesis,’ in which smoking marijuana is thought to cause some people to abuse harder drugs.” America's second favorite drug, De Chiara suggests, may prime the brain to seek substances like heroin. In rebuttal, marijuana experts Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar of Harvard Medical school have protested this resumed interest in the gateway theory, pointing out that if substances that boost dopamine in the reward pathways are gateways to heroin use, than we had better add chocolate, sex, and alcohol to the list.

In the end, what surprised many observers was simply that the idea of treatment for marijuana dependence seemed to appeal to such a large number of people. The Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto has reported that even brief interventions, in the form of support group sessions, can be useful for addicted pot smokers.

In 2005, an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that, for patients recently out of rehab, “Postdischarge cannabis use substantially and significantly increased the hazard of first use of any substance and strongly reduced the likelihood of stable remission from use of any substance.”
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source: Addiction Inbox