December 20, 2001

Toronto Star

by Bob Mitchell

Family With Children Occupied One Place Where Marijuana Seized

A couple with four young children was arrested yesterday in one of five early-morning raids on suspected pot-growing homes within a one-block area of an upscale Oakville neighbourhood.

Altogether, five people were taken into custody in the latest bust of home-grown pot labs in the western part of Greater Toronto.

"We've now dismantled 17 different residential marijuana-growing laboratories this year, but this is the first time we've encountered a family living in one of the homes," Halton Sergeant Val Hay said.  "Their children have been turned over to the Children's Aid Society." Police believe the family had been living for about a year in the Eighth Line home.  Three people were also arrested in a Grenville Dr.  home.

"But there were no indications that anybody lived in the other two homes on Eighth Line or in the Glenashton Dr.  home," Hay said.

Two of the Eighth Line houses raided were almost directly across from each other and the other was only a few houses down the street.  All five houses were being rented and two of the houses had been rented by the same person, police said.

In all five homes, hydro meters had been tampered with, so unusually high electricity use required for round-the-clock growing operations couldn't be detected.

Police seized $1.6 million worth of marijuana from the homes yesterday, bringing the total seized from houses this year to more than $7 million.

Last year, Halton police didn't find a single such operation in Oakville, Burlington or Halton Hills.

But Halton numbers pale in comparison to the escalation in Peel, where drug teams have so far seized more than $51 million worth of marijuana from 137 homes.

All last year, Peel drug cops seized an estimated $24 million worth of marijuana in 33 different raids, 23 of which were residential operations.

Marijuana-growing operations used to be based mostly in industrial units or on out-of-the-way farms, police say, but homes have become the location of choice for drug-producing individuals and gangs.

Police say the houses are often unkempt, and blinds are always drawn in order to hide bright lights that must be on 24 hours a day.  Each home is capable of producing as many as 3,000 plants a month, police say.

Five Oakville residents between the ages of 31 and 49 were charged yesterday with cultivation of a controlled substance, possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking, theft of electricity and occupant injuring a building.