Tag Archives: Michael Fahy

Home Grows Pose a Danger to Neighborhoods, Families

Parents Opposed to Pot asks Virginia and New York to amend their bills to ban homegrown marijuana.

Parents Opposed to Pot asks the states of New York and Virginia to amend their marijuana legalization bills to exclude home grows. Although both states are poised to legalize marijuana, there are two possible changes that could lessen the harms of marijuana legalization:  potency caps and eliminating home grows. Home grows are a major reason the black market does not go away but in fact grows stronger after legalization.

The New York bill, as it stands, allows six plants to be grown at home, and the Virginia bill allows for four. In Denver, a man tried to stop two teens from stealing the marijuana plants in his yard, killing one 14-year-old and paralyzing the other. 

Just last Saturday, March 27, six thieves broke into a home grow in Long Beach, California and two of them were shot by a man who lived at the home. When police executed a searched on the home, they seized “large quantities” of marijuana, firearms and cash.  Thieves consistently target home grows. 

However, law enforcement is generally restrained from doing a home search until after crimes are committed.  As people living in “legal marijuana” states have found, the appearance of drug sales in a home, a neighbor’s complaint of the stench of marijuana or careless overflow into the yards of others is not enough to mandate a search. Police ignore such complaints.

“After legalization, A home grower in my Pueblo, Colorado neighborhood was murdered by two men from out-of-state. They came to purchase marijuana and decided they would rather kill and steal the drugs. We also heard gunfire on our street after legalization,” says Aubree Adams, Assistant Director for Parents Opposed to Pot.

Eliminating home grows can lessen the crime associated with marijuana legalization states. 

New Yorkers should be especially concerned about the harms that will come in high-density living situations.  In the Bronx in 2015, Fire Captain Michael J. Fahy perished at a marijuana home grow. The fire appears to have started in a marijuana lab, a frequent occurrence in the first states to legalize. In Washington state and California, apartment residents lost their homes when their neighbors’ butane hash oil laboratories exploded, and in a few instances lost their lives. A Rancho Cordova explosion displaced 146 residents at once because of a butane hash oil explosion. Usually, the amateurs who make highly concentrated THC at home are trying to undercut the regulated marijuana market.

Home grows lead to more crime and there is no way to get around it.

Summary of Home Grow Dangers:

–Child access increases and it is impossible to keep away from children under age 21.

–Child & dog poisonings are occurring in the home, or at school when youth take the drug or edibles to school.

–Property crimes such as breaking and entering and personal injury/homicide crimes increase.

–Nuisance to neighbors is a problem (odor, people coming and going at all nights, drive by shootings).

–Squatter grows in rented units may make it harder to sell home after the growers leave.

–Landlords will be stuck with huge utility bills and drywall damage due to odor permeating drywall, requires expensive remediation.

–Hash oil manufacturing can cause explosions. At least two children died in hash oil explosions, one in Colorado and one in California.

–Every home grower is a potential drug dealer as they can turn into an illegal black market home-based seller.

— –Energy use is many times the normal household electricity consumption when growing indoors because of the extra lighting required.

Changing this aspect of the laws represents a chance to learn from other states. Colorado and Washington are now trying to put in THC potency caps on what is sold in cannabis shops. 

Parents Opposed to Pot is a 501c3 educational nonprofit based in northern Virginia. Contact at 773-322-7523 or visit the website, poppot.org, Facebook @poppotorg.

 

 

Deaths in Butane Hash Oil Labs Rise, Along with Lawsuits

Tracking Deaths from Hash Oil Labs Exposes the Growing Danger

People use marijuana to make butane hash oil , also called honey oil.  Hash oil labs using marijuana have replaced meth labs as the most dangerous drug labs of our time.   They are blowing up people and homes, particularly in California and in the West.

By April, 2015, the California Alliance of Drug-Endangered Children had tracked 41 marijuana lab deaths in that state between 2011 and April, 2015.  Three children had died by that time and several more were injured.   More recent information on the deaths in California  aren’t available at this time.

In California, they call it “honey oil” to disguise its connection to marijuana.  When fires are reported on the news, reporters often don’t mention the connection to marijuana.

To the 41 deaths in California, we can add:

1 two-month-old baby who slept adjacent to a room in Colorado where BHO was made.

2 in Washington, including Nan Campbell who died as a result of the massive Bellevue explosion in November 2013.  An elderly man in Spokane whose respiratory problems resulted after a neighbor made BHO died after two months in the hospital.

1 grandmother in Minnesota whose grandson used her home to make BHO

2 in New York, including Michael Fahy.  Fahy was the fire  captain who perished while putting out the fire in a marijuana grow lab in the Bronx.   The other death in New York was 19-year-old Anthony Gambale from Brooklyn.     He rallied to survive, but eventually died.

1 man in Gresham, Oregon, who died June 14, 2013, six weeks after the explosion

1 college student in Radford, Virginia

1 man in Hawaii, January, 2014

1 man in Rhode Island, explosion, on July 31, 2015.   He died three months later.

Above and top, explosion in New York  on September 27, 2016. Fire Captain Michael Fahy died after fighting the blaze. Fire fighters claim drug lab fires are more difficult to put out than ordinary house fires, because of the way debris shoots and explodes. Photos WABC-TV, via AP

2 allegedly died after the Rio Dell fire on November 9, 2016.  The burns covered 90% of their bodies.   At least 22 hash oil explosions have occurred in California since the vote to legalize marijuana on November 8, 2016.

Legal, legitimate Labs also Explode, Resulting Lawsuits

Advocates will say these deaths will stop if it’s regulated and  allowed only in state-licensed dispensaries.  However, fires have occurred in licensed dispensaries in California, Oregon, Washington, Michigan and New Mexico.    The lab that exploded in New Mexico was one the state’s largest marijuana companies.   One of the workers who suffered from extensive burns in the fire sued the dispensary.

A construction worker burned at the Oregon dispensary fire is now suing the medical marijuana owner.

Switching to propane won’t make it safer.   Propane caused the explosion at a legal dispensary/warehouse near Saugatuck, Michigan.

Michigan or Rhode Island could be the next state to legalize marijuana.  However,  Michigan has seen its share of hash oil explosions, most of them caused by medical marijuana patients.   The one in Grand Rapids occurred with a six-year-old child in the home.    Firefighters fighting this type of fire, such as the one in Muskegon, find them more dangerous than regular house fires.    Child abuse is always a concern at these labs, and two children were present during the recent fire in Niles Township, Michigan.

We believe the regulation of butane will be very difficult, just like all other regulation programs that try to regulate these labs:  https://www.facebook.com/lostcoastoutpost/videos.   In short, regulating marijuana dispensaries is a terrible task. It doesn’t work.