Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Over in Pinellas County, FL., lawmen decided that the easy way to bust dopers was to use some of the high-tech equipment (probably obtained from DoD) to set up a surreptitious surveillance camera on a pole across from a hydroponics shop. Anybody that shopped there, they reasoned, was bound to be growing dope. Let's face it; Pinellas is pretty well built-out, so indoor growing is the only real option -not. There's actually quite a bit of uninhabited space within easy distance of the area; a grow-op out there would be a heck of a lot easier to reach than the ones in Oregon's forests. Be that as it may...
They served 450 search warrants filed in Pinellas between Jan. 1, 2010, and Sept. 15, 2011, and came up with 39 busts for either growing or possession of the whacky weed. That's kind of scary - I've been thinking of trying my hand at babying wasabi, which does best in water-intensive environments, and presently wholesales for around $100/lb. It'd be a real drag to have cops bust into the place because they noticed me shopping at a hydroponics store.
"It's wrong, completely wrong, that a law enforcement agency will target what is, on its face, a legitimate business and target the customers of that business simply because they show up on camera going into a store where it's legal to shop," said attorney John Trevena of Largo, who is representing some of the defendants.
I might need to reconsider my potential business plan. In theory, I could follow the current dope model in Oregon, and just set up in remote forested areas with plenty of running water. The plants would be more easily tended at home, though. My plan was to do a test run in the back with some hydroponics, and expand into some acreage in the Coast Range if the approach worked out. I figured that a 5-acre parcel along the creek might be able to yield as much as a ton if managed right. But you need to go small before scaling up.
