Florida - Starting Tuesday, a new state law will bring harsher penalties for marijuana growers. Under the new Florida law, a "grow house" will be classified as a building containing 25 or more marijuana plants. Before, the threshold was 300 plants. The charge will remain a second-degree felony.
"Our laws were way out of date on that," Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum told the Tallahassee Democrat.
The law also allows law-enforcement agencies to dispose of grow-house equipment after taking pictures or recording video.
Tallahassee police say that in the past, they have had to store every single marijuana plant and piece of equipment until the people arrested went to trial.
"The storage is expensive, and we spend a lot of time packaging the material, time we could be investigating other criminal activity," said David McCranie, spokesman for the Tallahassee Police Department.
Also, it will be a third-degree felony for someone to own, lease or rent a place while knowing that it is being used for drug trafficking or making drugs.
News Hawk: PFlynn -
http://www.420magazine.com/
Source: Tallahassee Democrat (FL)
Copyright: 2008 Tallahassee Democrat
Contact:
ncorbett@tallahassee.com
Website:
New laws have tougher penalties for pot growers | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee Democrat