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It’s one of the largest medical marijuana busts in the country. Niagara police raided a medical marijuana grow on Lakeshore in Niagara-on-the-lake and cut down and seized nearly 900 plants, worth $1.6 million dollars.

Outside and behind the greenhouse police found 843 large marijuana plants growing in the hoop houses and on the grounds. Growing marijuana outside is illegal.  11 people were arrested and the property was seized.

Hans Rannala lives next door and says this marijuana grow op has been here for a few years.

The government tried to shut these types of medical marijuana grows down, but they’ve challenged it in court.

“My hands were tied.  Enforcement’s hands were tired.  They couldn’t do anything until the grow op did something silly or stupid.”

The old rules wouldn’t allow town officials to check for bylaw infractions, but then they found out they were growing more than their licence allowed and that’s when police, fire officials and bylaw officers moved in.

Angus Footman is the head of Tweed marijuana. Tweed has a 350 000 square foot greenhouse in Niagara-on-the-lake which operates under the new tight regulations. The lakeshore greenhouse operates under the old rules.

“They operate under the old MMAR which has very little regulations, either for security or the way they produce medical cannabis.”

At Tweed every gram is monitored and recorded from seed to sale. Every movement on and around the property watched 24 hours a day.

Under the old medical marijuana rules a designated grower can produce pot for 2 people.

“And there’s no oversight by health Canada to verify the number of plants each grower has.”

The Lakeshore greenhouse had 4 separate legal grow licenses. Not one of the persons who had a licence was there at the time of the raid.

The fire department indicates that 11 people lived in the greenhouse and that has a number of fire code violations,  propane and combustibles, with no smoke or CO alarm.