Media Sensationalism Over a Few Plants

I get so disgusted with the media and the way the blow everything related to marijuana completely out of proportion. They sensationalize the most minor crap in order to have a catchy headline. Case and point this story in the Mobile Press-Register this morning.

"Pot Factory" Bust

By GEORGE R. ALTMAN
Staff Reporter

Mobile police seized more than 100 marijuana plants worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Monday morning raid of a home that a police spokeswoman called a "pot factory."

Scott Philips, 41, a single father and former youth sports coach, was arrested and charged with trafficking in marijuana, a class A felony, after the raid on Bit and Spur Road in west Mobile.

Police Chief Phillip Garrett said the plants were grown in a building behind Philips' home, in one of the most sophisticated operations Garrett has seen.

"Look at this," Garrett said, pointing to lights, fans and chemicals confiscated by police. "This is the fertilizer used in hydroponic growing. Heaters, coolers, everything you need to make the atmosphere correct."

A large diesel generator was found at the property, although Garrett did not know whether it powered the lights and fans.

Outside their headquarters Monday, police displayed the plants, marijuana that was dried and bagged, two guns, a pickup truck and trailer, and equipment to grow marijuana.

The 119 plants could produce about $1 million of marijuana every year, police said.

Philips is a former volunteer soccer and baseball coach at Christ United Methodist Church, located on Grelot Road, a church official said.

"This gentleman had a child that played in a couple of our sports," said Steve Ellisor, recreation minister at the church. "Background check was clean as a whistle."

Ellisor said he had "no indications whatsoever" of problems with Philips, who last coached a church team in May.
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First...100 plants is NOT a POT FACTORY. That is a very minor, for personal use, grow-op in my very experienced opinion. The novice grower would be doing real good to get one ounce of smokable bud off of each plant. Expert growers would be able to get more, but it is very unlikely that they would be able to get pounds off of each plant. Of course, yield all depends on genetics to begin with. Then care of plants and so forth. There is also the plant sex consideration. If half of these plants were male then they would be discarded so they wouldn't count towards product yield.

Second...Why all the hype about lights, fans and fertilizer? I mean, if the guy had been growing tomatoes or turnip greens out back using the same hydroponic set up the fertilizer, lights and fans would never be seen as something bad. Why do these things suddenly become ominous when they are used for pot plants? I mean bat shit is bat shit right? It doesn't suddenly become poisonous when used for pot plants. The lights won't suddenly electrocute you and they don't send out microwave beams to zap you when used for a pot plant instead of a tomato plant. Fans move air and that is all they do no matter how you use them.

Third...This guy obviously led a normal life, free of police encounters or complaints from neighbors. He went to church, coached community sports, was raising his son and so on so what exactly is the problem if he grows a little weed in his shed? Why is that a crime?

Now, thanks to the law, he will lose his home, his automobile, his firearms, his job and his son. He'll go to prison where taxpayers will be charged $12,000 a year just to house him, his son might wind up on some sort of social service or even as a ward of the state depending on what his family situation is, when the guy gets out of prison he will have a hard time finding gainful employment, be barred from receiving federal student financial aid, barred from public housing and barred from food assistance. All of this over an innocuous green plant that has never killed anyone and is safer that alcohol and tobacco, both of which are legal to procude and consume.

Fourth...There is no way 100 plants adds up to potential production worth $1 million a year. Even using cop/government math at $2000 per plant that only adds up to $200,000. With the million dollar figure the 'authorities' are placing a $10,000 value on each plant which is unheard of. Not even the very best bud grown in California or Vancouver BC is ever priced that outrageously.

The marijuana law has torn a family apart, allowed the government to STEAL a home and other property under the guise of asset forfiture, taken an obviously decent citizen with a job who provided care for his son out of the community and placed him on the taxpayer's tab for years to come, traumatized a pre-teen boy who watched while his father was carted off to jail....all over some plants that are a natural part of our earth. How can nature be against the law?

Who has been helped by the arrest and destruction of this man's life? Do you feel safer today?