Medical marijuana lets B.C. growers earn thousands on streets

A B.C. pot grower sayshe and many others are makingthousands of dollars every month growing licensed medical marijuanaand selling it for illegal distribution on the streets, and there is little police can do to stopit.

As he descends the steps of his Nelson home,Jack throws a switch and lights up 85 well-tended pot plants. Exhaust fans hum as he tends to his crop.

"This is a three weeks in bud. You can see they got a nice bud on them," says Jack, who CBC agreed to identify only by his first name.

"It's starting to smell nice. Another four weeks and these will be done," he says.

Jack says he hasbeena pot growerhis whole adult life and hes made a good living at it, comfortably raising a family .

He estimates he gets about $20,000 every two months from his basement operation. With six crops a year, thats about $120,000 a year.

Jack says he used to grow his pot illegally and sell it on the Prairies, but that was too risky, so he applied to Health Canada for a Personal Use Production licence.

He filled out a few forms and got a doctor to sign off on a medical condition. The whole process took a half hour he recalls.

"All I did with my doctor is send him medical reports from here. I did a Skype interview with my doctor and sent him a credit card number," he says.

It was so easy, in fact, that Jack got a second licencethis one in a relatives name.

"And why not?" he says, "Everyone is doing it. They are going about the same business. They are just getting a license."

Once the government sanctioned him, they even sent him a permit to transport pot.

But while hes growing the potlegally, Jack still sells his marijuana to the same middle men he always has andthat's howlarge amounts of medicinal marijuanaend up being sold illegally on the streets, police say.

Police handcuffed by licences

Const. Bill Long patrols the streets of Nelson, where marijuana is a huge part of the underground economy.

"Its a day-to-day thing,a day-to-day challenge for us to deal with," says Long.

Long and other officers say the medical marijuana rules have made their jobs almost impossible, as more and more illegal growers apply for licences.

Over 10,000 licencesto grow medical marijuana have been issued inB.C. alone, and more than 20,000 across Canada.

Health Canada is supposed to inspectthe legalgrow-ops, but Long says hes never seen that happen.

"The follow-up, as far as any door knocks or checks, seems to be lacking and we as police dont have the authority to do those checks and a lot of them are very aware of that," said Long.

And so people like Jack grow weed with virtual impunity. Some growers pool licences and grow hundreds of plants per crop.

RCMP Cpl. Dennis Blanch says organized crime now recruits people to apply for licences.

"Serious organized crime has found a venue that buffers them from law enforcement. They are actively recruiting people to make applications for marijuana licences. The only area we can catch them in is when they are trafficking in cannabis to non-licensed patients," says Blanch.

System out of control

Don Skogstad, a criminal lawyer who specializes in marijuana cases, says Canada's medical marijuana system has resulted in a stampede no one fully anticipated.

"There was a lot of criticism. It was kind of a hodgepodge. I mean how many medicines can you produce in your own home?" asks Skogstad.

"This idea of growing in your own neighbourhood. That was never well thought. Its secretive. Local governments dont know about it fire hazards, wiring hazards in many cases," he says.

The Conservative government has been told by police, municipal government and individual citizens who say the system has spun wildly out of control.

Itvowed again this week to scrap the personal production licences by next spring and go to a system of large, secure grow sites that are federally inspected and run by people with deep pockets.

• Find out more about the new rules

That would mean no more legal basements grow-ops, but Skogstad says the federal government is finding it hard to change the current system.

"They are way behind on approving the new system. They cant run out of supply. Its a constitutionally guarded medicine. So they cant have a hiatus where there is nothing available. They have not been able to approve big industrial growers so theyve had to continue with the old system," he says.

Skogstad says the federal government continues to issue licences that run into June of next year, well past the date they said the current system would end.

Longingfor the good old days

Meanwhile back in his basement, Jack says he actually misses the days when operations like his were illegalbecauselatelyso much so-called "legal weed" has spilled onto the street its driven down prices.

He used to get almost $3,000 a pound for his bud when he was growing illegally. Now its $1,700 poundand falling. Sometimes theres so much medical marijuana out there he says some growers cant unload their product.

"Its going down the tubes because of all these licences. Three years ago you couldnt have enough of this. Now I know people who have ten pounds from their last crop because they couldnt sell it. "

And so Jack pines for the good old days when what he did was illegal but he made a lot more money doing it.