From 420 magazine...

April 23, 2014

Montreal - 13,000 Pot Plants Seized, 22 Arrested In Province-Wide SQ Raids
Police dismantled about 40 marijuana grow houses across Quebec Wednesday, in an early morning raid that saw cops seize 13,000 pot plants and arrest 22 people. About 500 Sûreté du Québec officers were enlisted for the operation, which targeted independent growers. The raids began at around 6 a.m. in a swath of residential areas throughout the province, including the Laurentians, Lanaudière, Eastern Townships, Quebec City, Mauricie, Saguenay and Outaouais regions. Police say the arrests came after a series of investigations connected to the SQ’s anti-marijuana “Cisaille” task force. The plants could have yielded upwards of 3,000 pounds of pot and fetched $6 million at wholesale prices, according to a former marijuana grower who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Gazette.

After news of a raid in Mascouche surfaced early Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Sûreté du Québec told The Gazette police will be hitting suspected grow houses all day and into the night. “All I can say is that our officers are targeting dozens of cities across the province,” said SQ Sgt. Audrey-Anne Bilodeau. “Anything more specific than that could put our officers’ safety at risk.” The SQ launched its Cisaille task force in 1999 and seize up to 700,000 pot plants each year. The officers are busiest during the marijuana field harvest in the fall, which is mainly concentrated in Quebec’s Mauricie and Eastern Townships regions. However, since hydroponic grow houses can run 12 months a year, there’s never truly a lack of supply for police to seize. The 22 arrested will face drug production and trafficking charges and some will be accused of stealing electricity to power their hydroponic greenhouses. More arrests could follow. The SQ will provide a more detailed summary of its raids Wednesday evening, Bilodeau said.

40 houses at once?
It would seem HC gave out all of their growing sites.
Maybe not, they could have been targeted for years ???
I am sure there will be lots on this story as it goes on.
Wonder how many actual Med Patients were caught in the middle?

Ouch

gb123 said:

40 houses at once?
It would seem HC gave out all of their growing sites.
Maybe not, they could have been targeted for years ???
I am sure there will be lots on this story as it goes on.
Wonder how many actual Med Patients were caught in the middle?

Click to expand...

The article mentions electricity theft and trafficking, I don't think these were HC patients with personal medical gardens.

There were 40 houses...they didn't say they all were stealing power.

True enough. There may have been the odd medical grower that unfortunately got swept up in this (hopefully not), but it does not sound like they were/are the focus of this operation. Based on the numbers of plants vs. houses vs. people busted, it's doubtful any of the busts involved small personal gardens.....that's an average of 325 plants per house they busted, and 650 plants per person arrested and charged.

300 plants 0n a 4 by 8 foot table under two 1000 watt lights will produce the same amount with LESS plants under the same lights. Just a bit more time!
Plant counts due to strain types that will only produce so much. Patients are concerned more about the amounts they can produce and store.
Scripts don't get raised fast enough and now the way things are going. They won't be upped anytime soon.
It'll get handled in court.

Why is it hard to believe a med patient grows that?
Grown side by each in 4 inch cubes at only 20" max they can produce anywhere from 900 to 1800 grams.
Scripts are much larger than that and are easily justified to keep patients medicated between grows. 8 to 15 weeks at a time.
Concentrates are where it's at for medicating.

All good points......I'm a medical grower myself, and so are a lot of my friends, and almost all of us employ smaller plant counts and larger plants in a perpetual cycle, a lot less work to keep 4 plants healthy vs. 300 is how I've always approached it. You're right though, a lot of med growers do run higher plant counts in sog/hydro style set-ups.....I guess I just don't think these are medical growers they are targeting......if that was their goal, they would just come out and say so and try and scare them into shutting down their personal grows. An investigation this size would have been expensive to run, and would have gone on long before the busts happen......it's illegal commercial growers they are targeting IMO, but as you mentioned there is a definite chance that medical growers could have been caught up in this. Hopefully not!

Plant count is for MMAR patients to discuss. How many lights were we talking here?

Where are the police predictions to how much the Tweed shipment was worth on the street? more or less than this 6 million? If these guys had a MMAR licenses they could have supplied Tweed before the end of March deadline. Now they are going to jail and are treated differently than Tweed. If they only had SKYPE and a few hundered bucks to spare they would have been millionaires living outside the prison walls.