Bud Men

And potency, incidentally, has nothing at all to do with state and federal statutes and sentencing guidelines; it's weight and/or number of plants that are the deciding factors. Under state law a person caught growing only small amounts can often get off with probation or pretrial diversion. (Federal statutes are more severe, however, calling for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison for growing 100 marijuana plants -- whether the yield is resin-rich, or unsmokable industrial hemp.)

"Potency is never a factor in the criminal arrest process," says Norman Kent, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who has defended several home growers. "I've never had a guy arrested because he grew better pot than somebody else. I agree, this is not the pot from when we were kids: This pot is purer, safer, more medicinal, less infected with fungus and bacteria. Most of the pot people got years ago was shipped over from South America and could have been mixed with the proverbial rat poison, and weed, and bacteria, and dead plant matter."

There may be room for debate about the truth and consequences of hyped-up potency, but local law enforcement officials have no doubt that indoor growing operations in Dade County have become increasingly sophisticated, both technologically and logistically.

"Some of the organizations we're concentrating on have got a lot of houses," says Metro-Dade Police Lt. Gary Wilcox. "We have constructed tables of organizations, and some of our targets are the people heading up these organizations."

Even legalization advocates acknowledge a dichotomy between the "personal" and the "commercial" indoor grower.

"I think that most people perceive that those who grew marijuana in the Sixties and Seventies could be described as your hippie-yippie-dippie, communal, peace-loving type person," says Allen St. Pierre. But that stereotype, he believes, is being replaced by a newer, sinister model: more "commercial" growers, often organized in groups -- and armed.

Fellow NORML honcho Dan Viets acknowledges that there is some violence among marijuana growers and traffickers, but he disagrees with his colleague about the prevalence of hardened growers these days. "I think that's always been part of the black-market situation," says Viets. "And it's the money, not the drug. Obviously, people don't get violent because they're smoking pot, they get violent because they're dealing in it."

Local defense lawyer Vincent Flynn, who is representing an indoor grower busted in Dade, argues that marijuana growers remain a mostly innocuous bunch whose only conscious criminal acts involve the drug itself.

"In my experience marijuana people have always been much gentler, more honest people [than cocaine traffickers]," says Flynn. "I've never seen any so-called big organizations of marijuana growers. If anything, the people who [smuggled] it in were more sophisticated. Grow houses, by definition, are self-contained. These are tight-knit groups, people who know each other from the high-school wrestling team or a fraternity."

Marijuana growers don't generally fit any particular ethnic or socioeconomic profile. Local raids during the past two years have uncovered hydroponics rigs in handsome ranch houses in southwest Dade, in duplexes in Little Havana, in bungalows in Liberty City. The vast majority of growers are male, but that's about the only way to narrow down the demographics. Lieutenant Wilcox of Metro-Dade says that what he's seen reflects the diversity of the county's population: a majority of Hispanic growers, with plenty of Anglos and blacks as well.

No hydroponic setup is illegal in and of itself. In addition to mail-order from companies that advertise in High Times (the monthly chronicle of pot culture) and various gardening publications, marijuana growers can buy everything they need from local retailers. A staffer at the Fort Lauderdale location of Gold Coast Hydroponic Greenhouse, the oldest of the store's three outlets in South Florida, says there's no special combination of lights, nutrient fluid, and cloning solution that is more appropriate for marijuana than anything else. "It all works for anything," says Dave, who declined to give his last name. "Hydroponics is not for any specific plant." He describes the policy for dealing with everyone who states or implies they are looking to purchase equipment for a marijuana grow: "They're asked to leave the store immediately. I don't know what the penalties would be [for telling someone how to grow pot], and I don't want to know. That's our bottom line, and it's a hard line. Otherwise, one of us will end up in jail, and they could close the store down."

Perhaps not surprisingly, Gold Coast's customers tend not to mention their crops at all. "In this business, 99.9 percent of the customers know what they want," Dave says. "They don't ask questions. The only real question I get is, 'How much?'"