City police looking for a runaway juvenile stumbled onto a marijuana “grow operation,” seized more than 40 pot plants and arrested two apartment house neighbors. Mark W. Horner, 53, of the 100 block of South Street, faces counts of drug manufacturing, possession with intent to deliver, drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was jailed in lieu of $40,000 bond. Joseph M. Bravo, 49, of an apartment in the same building, was charged with drug paraphernalia and false identification to law enforcement. He was jailed in lieu of $20,000 bond.

The case began Friday evening when Officer Erin Kabler was asked by Adams Township police if he would check out a South Street apartment. A 17-year-old runaway was believed to be at the residence where Bravo and his son, Joseph J. Bravo, lived.

Kabler said in court papers he was unable to find a clearly marked address or entrance, and made his way up outside steps to the rear of the residence.

A man later identified as Joseph M. Bravo came to the door at Horner’s apartment.

“Who the —- are you? Do you have a ——- warrant?” Bravo allegedly demanded.

Kabler asked the man if he was Joseph Bravo, and the man said no and provided a false name.

Kabler said he saw a marijuana pipe and numerous liquor bottles on the kitchen table and countertop. He said he was placing the man under arrest for possession of the pot pipe in clear view of the doorway.

As the officer was handcuffing Bravo, he heard other people moving about inside the residence and called for backup.

Officers secured the residence and began to talk with Horner, who said he wouldn’t answer any questions.

According to court papers, police “observed several marijuana plants in one room with lighting, a humidifier and other items used in the cultivation of marijuana. The windows to this room had thick foam board covering them.

“These affiants also observed an area which had thick reflective foil along the wall and stretched across a corner of the room. Behind the foil were numerous marijuana plants of various stages of growth. These plants were under large lights,” the complaint stated.

Pot also was found in a glass tank, where it apparently was being dried. Heat lamps, aquariums, dryers and plant food were among items seized after a search warrant was issued at the Kernville apartment.

Police said they had discovered a similar operation at a former address of Mark Horner.

Johnstown police Capt. Andrew Frear didn’t have a street value for the seized marijuana. He said Monday that the investigation is continuing.

Both Horner and Bravo were arraigned by on-call District Judge Michael Musulin. Their preliminary hearings before District Judge Leonard Grecek – scheduled for Thursday – likely will be postponed, court officials said.

A 29-year-old Kalispell man was sentenced to one year and one day in prison with seven years of supervised release Wednesday during U.S. District Court proceedings in Missoula. Tyler Roe had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana after it was discovered that he, Michael Kassner and others had been operating a marijuana grow operation in Olney. The owner of the building in which it was located had transformed the interior into a growing facility.

A search on March 14, 2011, led to the seizure of approximately 718 marijuana plants.
Roe considered himself the “on-site manager” of the Black Pearl dispensary.
Roe lived on the premises along with Kassner, who also has pleaded guilty to federal charges. Roe said his job was to do construction work and take care of the plants
He was also ordered to pay a special assessment of $100.
The investigation that led to the charges was a cooperative effort between U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the Northwest Montana Drug Task Force.
Dispensary owner Ryan Blindheim has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana and money laundering.

Armie Hammer apparently has had a run in with the law back in 2011. It was recently uncovered that the actor, who starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in “J. Edgar”, had to spend one night in jail after getting arrested for marijuana possession in the west Texas town of Sierra Blanca. TMZ detailed that the 25-year-old was detained on November 30 after a drug-sniffing dog at a border patrol checkpoint discovered that he had three medicinal pot cookies and one brownie in his possession. He was released on a $1,000 bond, and faced no further punishment because he was carrying less than the 4 ounces required to prosecute for a felony.

Sierra Blanca is the same town where both Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg were arrested for similar offense. Nelson got into trouble there back in November 2010 for having six ounces of pot in his tour bus, and Dogg was busted with prescription bottles containing rolled marijuana cigarettes in January 2012.

Hammer is known for his portrayal of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss in “The Social Network”. He will next be seen starring opposite Julia Roberts and Lily Collins in Tarsem Singh-directed comedy film “Mirror, Mirror”.

Even with a federal warning that cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana is a violation of the Controlled Substances Act, the growing and sale of marijuana for medicinal purposes is moving forward in the District. WeGrow — the hydroponics superstore referred to nationally as the “Wal-Mart of Weed”— is set to open in the nation’s capital in March. The growing franchise sells all of the products and services one would need to grow marijuana or other indoor plants, but does not sell the plant itself.

In a press release, weGrow D.C. franchisee Alex Wong said he has secured a lease for the store at 1522 Rhode Island Ave. NE. The 2,500-square-foot store will feature a similar layout to weGrow’s West Coast retail stores and will provide a full array of products and services to medical marijuana cultivators and indoor gardening enthusiasts. The store is near the only Home Depot in D.C. and is blocks from the Rhode Island Avenue Metro stop.
Under the new D.C. law, D.C. doctors can write medical marijuana prescriptions for patients who suffer from conditions such as multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, cancer, glaucoma and other serious conditions. The law calls for 10 sites that will be authorized to grow the plant, five distribution centers where people can obtain medical marijuana with a D.C. doctor’s prescription. The lists for cultivation centers and dispensaries are due to be released in March with the full program under way by late spring.

It’s hard to deny medical marijuana — prescribed in the proper amounts to patients who truly need it and can be trusted to use it responsibly — is completely acceptable. Legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes, however, is a completely different matter. As the numbers of recreational users drastically increase, so will irresponsible use. Some legalization proponents might be tempted to compare marijuana to alcohol. This is an insufficient comparison at best.

The fact is that these substances are different as are their effects on people. Additionally, marijuana is considered a “gateway” drug, with the potential to lead users to other drugs such as cocaine.

Moreover, the secondhand smoke marijuana produces can have an intoxicating effect on others nearby, especially children. I don’t imagine most people would send their children to friends’ homes where the parents’ actions might inadvertently get the children high, regardless whether there are additional sober adults around to supervise them.

Also consider the increased number of impaired drivers that will be on the road. This is where a largely overlooked issue comes into play: Society is not politically, legally or socially prepared for legal recreational marijuana.

We will have to develop field tests to detect impaired drivers as well as additional laws pertaining to the use of marijuana in public places and around others (such as children or drivers). What about in the workplace? The list goes on.

Here is the bottom line: Would you want your neighbors high and making foolish choices, especially around your family?

Please make wise decisions. Legalized recreational marijuana is not a good idea.

Journal of the American Medical Association put a dent in the arguments against Marijuana smoking today, with release of a new report showing casual pot smokers might even have stronger lungs than non smokers. Researchers say that there is good evidence that occasional marijuana use can cause an increase in lung airflow rates and lung volume. Volume is measured as the total amount of air a person can blow out after taking the deepest breath they can.

The study, which was carried out by The University of California, San Francisco, and The University of Alabama at Birmingham, spans over more than two decades and involves more than 5000 men and women, in four American cities : Birmingham, Chicago, Oakland, Calif., and Minneapolis.

One of the study’s co-authors, Stefan Kertesz commented :

“At levels of marijuana exposure commonly seen in Americans, occasional marijuana use was associated with increases in lung air flow rates and increases in lung capacity … With marijuana use increasing and large numbers of people who have been and continue to be exposed, knowing whether it causes lasting damage to lung function is important for public-health messaging and medical use of marijuana.”

He continues that even at daily usage levels of one joint per day over seven years, people were not seeming to have any degradation of lung capacity or function.

The authors factored in for people who smoked tobacco and those that lived in more polluted areas with lesser air quality. The harm from cigarettes showed up clearly while those smoking a joint a day and not smoking tobacco did not show the degradation. Even one joint per week for twenty years did not appear to have significant effect.

Its not known exactly why tobacco appears to be so much more harmful than marijuana, especially considering the contents of the smoke are similar. It is known that THC, one of the main active cannabis oils in the herb, has anti inflammatory properties that may help to soothe the lungs. A part of the increased capacity was put down to the way pot smokers usually take deep breaths when they smoke, but one joint per day is hardly giving your lungs great exercise.

Obviously more research is needed, and it would be interesting to see results of lung tests in communities such as Jamaica and the Himalayas where smoking pot is endemic and done in larger daily volumes.

Authorities seized 130 marijuana plants on Jan. 5 from a home owned by a retired Metro Police officer, a Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman said. A High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas unit raided the rural home in the 1200 block of Trout Canyon Road near state Route 160, about 40 miles outside of the valley, said Sarah Pullen, a spokeswoman for the DEA, which oversees HIDTA.

According to Clark County assessor records, the home belongs to Tony Novack, 65. He retired in 2002 after 33 years of service, said Metro spokesman Bill Cassell. The house is a rental property that is up for sale, officials said. Novack is not considered a suspect in the case, Pullen said.

No charges have been filed, and the investigation is ongoing, Pullen said.

The alleged gunman who killed one police officer and wounded five others during a shootout in Ogden was believed to have a marijuana grow operation in his basement. Police were seen taking fluorescent lights and large PVC pipes out of Matthew Stewart’s house following the Wednesday night shooting on Jackson Avenue. Although police have special investigative techniques to detect possible indoor marijuana grows, there isn’t a lot the regular public can do to detect one in their neighborhood, according to law enforcers.

Unified police say extensive indoor marijuana growing operations are rare in their jurisdiction. They typically see 10 to 15 cases per year, with most of those operations resulting in the seizures of three to 10 plants per bust, according to Unified police detective Levi Hughes.

In those types of operations, the grower typically produces enough marijuana for his or her own use, a friend’s use, and a little to sell to subsidize the illicit operation.

About once a year, Unified police will come across a larger operation, like the one found in September in a Kearns warehouse where 150 marijuana plants were discovered.

Typically, large marijuana grow operations in Utah are found in the mountains of southern Utah, Hughes said, or other remote areas.

In August, officials found between 3,000 to 4,000 marijuana plants in a remote area outside of Porterville. It was believed to be the largest marijuana grow ever discovered in Morgan County.

Also in August, Sandy police busted a marijuana grow — ironically in a field near the police station.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office reports that in 2010, the outdoor marijuana growing season in Utah resulted in the seizure of 106,573 marijuana plants taken from 17 grow operations, an increase of 27 percent over the year before.

The illegal cultivation took $215 million of marijuana out of circulation and resulted in 24 arrests, a 140 percent increase over 2009.

Prosecutors note that drug traffickers are increasingly taking advantage of Utah’s vast public lands, tapping scarce water resources and trying to escape detection via the remote nature of the state’s rugged landscapes.

Such stealthy tactics also work to help disguise indoor operations that are supported by the use of lights and water to facilitate the plant’s growth.

Growers often target abandoned houses and pirate electricity from others to support cultivating the plants.

In 2010, Florida topped the nation with 818 grow houses broken up by police and federal agents, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. California was a close second with 791 indoor grow operations found by police.

The U.S. Department of Justice says from 2004 to 2008, a total of 450,986 marijuana plants were seized from indoor growing operations across the country. That compares to more than 7.5 million plants cultivated outdoors.

An initiative to legalize and regulate recreational marijuana use in Washington state is getting some major support. Supporters of the initiative have submitted more than 340,000 signatures, a move that could allow the proposal to appear on the 2012 ballot. I-502 would create a system of state-licensed growers, processors and stores, and impose a 25 percent excise tax at each stage. The proposal would allow those over the age of 21 to buy up to an ounce of marijuana.

“Initiative Measure No. 502 will replace Washington’s ineffective and unjust marijuana laws with a regulated public health approach that will redirect law enforcement resources to more pressing priorities, generate new tax revenues for critical social services, and take marijuana out of the hands of violent drug cartels,” says the group on its website.

The campaign for legalizing marijuana says it cost about $1 million to collect the signatures. The initiative has a number of high-profile sponsors including former Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay and travel guide Rick Steves.

Meanwhile, a new Elway poll shows that voters support legalizing marijuana 48 to 45. However, support is down from Elway’s last survey on the issue in July when support was at 54-43. Other polls, both statewide and nationwide, have shown rising enthusiasm for legalization. A KING-TV/Survey USA poll in November, asking about specific provisions in I-502, found 57 percent approval.