Marijuana initiative | While a larger issue in cities, grow-ops aren’t found only in urban areas, says Alberta official
Have you spied a marijuana grow-op in your area of Alberta?
The provincial government wants ideas on how to better detect grow-ops and how to repair the houses once they have been abandoned.
Alberta justice minister Jonathon Denis has established an expert panel to find out how the province can better detect places that house marijuana grow operations.
“Before things get worse and worse and worse, we want to get information from our advisory panel and also from the public, for people’s input on how it’s affected them, how a lot of law enforcement officials think we can actually detect them and remediate them.”
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Denis said the number of grow-ops has been steadily increasing, especially in Calgary, where he believes the problem is the worst. There were at least 97 known grow-ops in Calgary in 2011.
It was while out door knocking in his own Calgary neighbourhood that an off duty police officer pointed out to Denis several houses that were likely grow-ops.
Denis hopes the panel will seek input from police agencies, municipalities, fire officials, health, safety and building investigators, utility, mortgage and real estate companies and community leagues.
“I believe it is the largest issue in Calgary, also a little less in Edmonton. It is still an issue in rural Alberta, but the concentration is in our two major cities.… It is an issue throughout all of Alberta.”
Denis hopes the panel, which will be consulting Albertans until May, also finds ways to notify potential buyers that property they are considering purchasing was once a grow-op, although there is no legal obligation in the province to do so. Such a requirement does exist in British Columbia.
Denis said he also wants to find ways to encourage private developers to fix up these properties and remove the drug house stigma.
While every grow-op is different, Denis said most of them are bought through mortgage fraud. A couple of payments are made and a couple of crops harvested before the location is abandoned.
“This is serious business. My goal is to look at new legislation next year as to how we can address this issue better.”
