Corruption by The Criminal Element

More Health Canada Distortion of Facts - The Criminal Element

June17, 2011Minister Aglukkaq stated "Our Government is very concerned that the current Marihuana Medical Access Program is open to abuse and exploitation by criminal elements,". Of greatest concern was the predicted explosion of huge volumes of legally grown pot into the coffers of Hells Angels.

This is an extension of last years reasoning for the regulatory change limiting the size of any grow op to 4 licences. They were afraid criminal elements would infiltrate, corrupt, make the volume of legal grows explode uncontrollably.

This would be funny if it wasn’t just stupid given the size of the current disparity in production volumes viz.: Medical Marihuana is of pitiful insignificance compared to the street volume.

As of the start of 2010 there were 3500 licenses to grow outstanding:

Month	Possess	Gain	Personal-Use	Gain	Designated-Person	Gain	Marihuana Buyers
January 3, 2010	4884	91	2822	40	754	45	795
		2515		1198

For argument sake

Per Health Canada: Avg. use less than 5 g/day (a hefty dose) but we want to overestimate

1 gram/day = 1 oz. / month = allows 5 plants to be grown.  Using the 5 g/day dose the maximum estimated allowed growth per license is 25 plants

If every one of the licensed growers grew the maximum 25 plants allowed by license the result is a drop in the bucket.

The Maximum Annual Legal Production.

3500 legal growers x 5 oz/month x 12 months = 210,000 oz./annum =13,125 lb. = 6.5+ tons

By comparison, as long ago as 2005, Toronto and York Regional Police both estimated there may be 50,000 grow-ops across the country: as many as 20,000 in Ontario, 15,000 in the Vancouver area, with significant numbers in Quebec as well.

That was 6 years ago and that number has already exploded and no one knows how large illegal growth is in Canada. It’s all a wild ass guess by experts? The 50,000 number that was so alarming has grown exponentially as shown by the most recent disclosure by the database of the RCMP's Marijuana Grow Initiative.

According to the RCMP Web posting of its Grow Locations they were reporting 153 grow ops they have raided in the past year had an estimated yield of 120001 plants = 60 tons of pot. In addition during the three weeks from Sept 14 to Oct 7, 2011 Police in 4 cities (Campbellton, Cornwall, Toronto, Calgary) raided 50 grow ops with 43495 plants for an additional 21 tons of pot.

These most recent busts of 250 grow ops represent 84 tons of Illegal pot as compared to the Maximum Annual Legal Output of 6.5 tons. That represents less than 8% of the total seized pot from only half the country. If the national number of grow ops is anywhere near the predicted 50,000, the resulting National Illegal grow amount adds up to 16,800 tons against which the Marihuana Medical Maximum Annual Legal Output represents less than one tenth of one percent.

Conclusion: The threat of Criminal infiltration of the Personal and Designated Grow operations as posited by Health Canada is a complete crock of shit.

Health Canada has permitted, in fact encouraged, the Criminal takeover of the whole Medical Marihuana Market by its inaction and lack of enforcement and control over what has been developing over the past ten years.

Stephen’s now arranging to prosecute future growers so he can fill all those unneeded jail cells and justify the expense.