Canada's marijuana farms drive US potty
October 4, 2005
Canada's marijuana dealers are converting suburban homes and abandoned warehouses into pot farms, creating a C$10 billion (R55 billion) market that is three times the nation's biggest legal crop, wheat.
Cities such as Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto might each have as many as 20 000 pot factories according to some estimates, said Rich Baylin, the former national co-ordinator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The "grow-op" business has created a rift with the US, where police say much of the weed is sold. Tom Riley, a spokesperson for the White House office for national drug control policy, said the increase in Canadian marijuana production risked harming all trade between the countries.
Baylin said that estimating the number of grow operations was "guessing the unknown". Police estimates are based solely on seizures, which have risen eightfold since 1993 to about 1.6 million plants this year.
- Bloomberg
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