Know your enemy. Never were those words more useful than when you apply them to protecting your marijuana grow room.
Our grow team looked at police drug task force websites and websites from narks, weed tips, drug tips, drug informant rewards hotlines, and other sources to see what they’re detecting and busting a marijuana grow room.
In some cases, we anonymously called police and asked them what we should look for to identify a marijuana grow op.
Here are the characteristics they said to look out for to identify a grow house…
- Grow houses aren’t usually in duplexes, condominiums, or shared apartment housing where the odor of growing cannabis may transfer to other units.
- A marijuana grow room sucks down lots of electricity so if someone’s air conditioning is running all the time, even in cool weather, be suspicious.
- If a room or rooms are for growing marijuana, look for a fan outlet or duct with hot, stinky air blowing out.
- Be on the lookout for the smell of air fresheners used to cover up the odor of a marijuana grow room.
- Look for the addition of a power generator to the outside of the house.
- Notice if the house is lived in or visited by young people, especially ones with long hair, hippie characteristics, or musical instruments.
- Notice if the house is lived in by young people of color. “Most male blacks and Hispanics are known to be heavily involved in the illegal drug trade,” one cop told us.
- Watch what people unload from their vehicles. If you see gardening supplies (especially dirt or bales of peat moss), and if the house occupants aren’t doing outdoor landscaping, they could be running a marijuana grow room.
- When neighbors put garbage cans on the curb, the cans and their contents are no longer private property. Familiarize yourself with what marijuana leaves and plants look like, and safely snoop in your neighbor’s trash to determine if there’s marijuana debris discarded there.
- Marijuana debris can include large root balls, stalks, stems, marijuana leaves, ashes. Also look for marijuana magazines like High Times and/or books about growing marijuana. Look for empty hydroponics fertilizer bottles or hydroponics supplies.
- If your neighbors keep to themselves, aren’t home much, and seem unfriendly, they might be pot growers.
- If your neighbors throw loud parties, call the police.
- If your neighbors have dangerous guard dogs and if the dogs are in any way a threat or a nuisance, call police, because people use guard dogs to protect their marijuana grow room.
- Fly a small surveillance drone over your neighbor’s home and yard to see if you discover cannabis plants.
- Invest in a FLIR drone or FLIR visual-assist device. They detect excess heat signatures that are often a sign of a marijuana grow room.
- Marijuana often smells like a skunk. If you smell a skunky or musky smell coming from a house, it could be a grow house.
- If you see frequent visitors to a house, especially visitors who don’t stay long, that’s suspicious.
- If people never open their windows, and/or if they cover their windows with plastic or foil, this could be an attempt to hide the bright grow lights found in a marijuana grow room.
- If nobody lives at a house but people come to visit every couple of days, stay for a few hours, then leave, it could be a marijuana grow house.
- If any vehicle that parks at the house has a pro-marijuana bumper sticker or a pot leaf bumper sticker, that’s a sure sign that there could be a marijuana grow room inside.
- If the neighborhood and/or house are run-down, and the house occupants appear to be poor, but they have expensive cars, jet skis, or other toys, they could be making their money by selling marijuana.
Yes, we realize it’s astounding that police say these things about the marijuana growing community, but they do.
Be aware that rippers are using FLIR devices like the one in The Silence of the Lambs movie to identify grow ops and go in and rob them.
Some of those robberies have turned violent.
Also remember that people who get busted and know you have a marijuana grow room may become an informant.
And that DARE officers encourage children to nark on their parents for using and growing marijuana.
Until cannabis is federally legal, and until all anti-marijuana dumb-asses disappear, a marijuana grow room has to be hidden away like a secret gold mine.
Now that you know what the police are saying, make sure you organize your lifestyle so as not to trigger the insane suspicions and stereotyping engaged in by police and snitches.