Spotting Marijuana on Your Property
This video was recorded on Wednesday, November 9th 2016 at the monthly WPOA meeting.
[Start 0:00:00]
Dave: My name is Dave, and I’m a graduate of the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis, and there is such a place. It’s in Natick [laughter]. I’m pretty knowledgeable when it comes to cannabis. Basically, I am a medical marijuana patient myself. I do use medical marijuana.
Basically when you’re a landlord, one of the things you’re going to have to worry about is your tenants growing. The new law stipulates that anybody over 21 years old can grow six plants in their property. They’re also allowed to have 10 ounces on their premises or an ounce of weed outside of their premises, cannot smoke in public. So if they’re not smoking in public, where are they going to want to smoke?
Sandra: In my house.
Dave: In your house, okay.
Rich: In Sandra’s house [laughter].
Dave: Right. One of the things that you’ll know when somebody is growing marijuana in your house is you’re going to be able to smell it, not the burning kind, the fresh kind or the fresh plant. You’ll be able to smell it. It is unmistakable. It will almost smell like a skunk. It’s very smelly.
The other thing you should worry about if somebody is growing marijuana in your property is a lot of these people will jerry-rig electricity. The lights for growing marijuana take up a lot of electricity, and without a 220 service, you’re going to have issues, okay? You may have fire problems.
Also with somebody growing marijuana on your property, there’s ventilation problems.
Rich: Dave, before you get that, can be go back to the electricity for a second?
Dave: Sure, yeah.
Rich: That’s really interesting because I don't have any apartments that have a 220 in them.
Dave: Yeah.
Rich: So is this going to trip the breakers and that’s going to motivate them to suddenly become amateur electricians?
Dave: That’s exactly right.
Rich: Okay, so that’s not good.
Dave: Although the lighting that is now available today are LEDs, which use up a lot less electricity, so that maybe able to go into a 110 outlet, but not likely. Most of the grow lights that are out there now are running on a 220 or if they’re running on a 110, you’re only able to use one light not two and a lot of times, they want to use two, three, four and they push the electricity.
Rich: Okay, so you said six plants per person over 21.
Dave: That’s right.
Rich: So for us, that doesn’t necessarily mean people that are listed in our lease. That can just mean people who live in the apartment or claim to live in the apartment. Is that what the law – the law just says people, right?
Dave: Yes, it says people. One person is allowed six plants, so if you have four people living in your one apartment, they’re allowed to have six plants each.
Rich: Or eight people would be 48 plants. How much room do six plants take up?
Dave: You can grow six plants in a 7x7 area, something like that or even a 5x5 area. A lot them, they do grow tents. It’s like a little tent where you will grow inside of a tent. They sell these.
Rich: Very doable to grow a large amount of them even in like a regular two-bedroom apartment like a lot of us have?
Dave: Right.
Rich: Okay, got you. So you were talking about ventilation.
Dave: Right. Your question?
Male Audience 1: Can you grow any of those plants in water?
Dave: Yes, you can.
Rich: The question, let me just repeat it because it’s not really heard back in here. The question was can you grow the plants in water like hydroponically?
Dave: Yes, you can, and that’s another concern as a landlord. If you’re growing hydroponically, you’re using water, a lot of water. We have problems with flooding, rotting flooring, joists, what have you, water bill if your tenants aren’t paying for water.
Rich: Mold coming from the moisture, yeah.
Dave: Mold.
Female Audience 1: The law that was out there specifically had a paragraph in it for landlords that says that the tenant could not grow any plants at all in a landlord’s building.
Dave: I’m now aware of that.
Female Audience 1: If you read the whole 10 pages like I did, it applies to landlords and they cannot grow at all in your building. They cannot smoke in your building. They can only use it and they cannot smoke the substance themselves in your building.
Rich: All right, now did everybody hear that?
Audience: No [crosstalk 0:04:59].
Rich: Okay.
Female Audience: A 100 percent sure that -
[0:05:01]
Rich: Okay, we have breaking news.
Dave: It’s a very, very long law.
Rich: Yeah, it is a long law and it’s been in effect for like a few hours now.
Female Audience: Yeah, I mean you have to read the whole 10 pages and that’s the problem. People didn’t know what they voted for and it’s specifically for landlords, so you may want to take that paragraph. You may want to give a copy of that to your tenants and have them sign it and tell them that they are aware as of December 15, you will be enforcing that.
Rich: Okay, yeah so Doug is looking this up right now, and this sounds like this is the sort of thing that might make a good cannabis addendum to a lease or a rental agreement or something like that.
Sandra: Is it something that – it’s part of the law. I understand that, but is there a way to highlight that and put it out on our website because that is a major concern that a lot of landlords have about people growing the stuff in our buildings that bring molds and anything else.
Doug: Do you want to…this has blown up.
Rich: Yes, okay. So we’re going to stop taking questions because we have 4 minutes left on this topic. The reason we did not plan a lot of time on this topic is because we really don't know what all the implications are. It hasn’t been around for a long time.
Federally, marijuana is still illegal. There are only a handful of states that have something like just past year. Nobody knows the answers to the questions. We won’t know them for years because at the federal level, the things are illegal. Just because it’s legal here, it doesn’t mean we have all the answers right now.
What we are going to talk about is what is actually involved in growing the marijuana in the apartments so that you can make an informed decision as to whether or not this is something that you’re in favor of allowing in your apartments or something that is not. It doesn’t sound like there is a lot of reasons to allow it to allow it expect you can probably charge more rent. It’s just like having pets or something like that, you might be able to charge more rent or have fewer vacancies if you have something that stands you out in the market like that.
So that’s really our only focus tonight is basically about farming. Are we good on that right now?
Audience: Okay.
Rich: I can’t take any more questions right now.
Male Audience 2: I just want to clarify.
Rich: Okay.
Male Audience 2: Everything that this lady said about recreational pot is true, but everything this gentleman is saying about medical marijuana is also true, two separate laws.
Dave: That’s correct.
Rich: Excellent point, thank you.
Dave: That’s very correct.
Rich: Okay, so what we’re going to talk about is the logistics of what happens when pot grows in your apartment because I don't know. If I didn’t know any of the stuff that Dave told me, I might have been like, “Oh, you want to bring six house plants in? You’re going to pay me an extra $150 a month? Cool. How soon do you want to move in?” [laughter] Right [laughter]? Maybe I’m the only one who would say that, but anyway, so Dave, please tell us what’s involved in the ventilation.
Dave: Well, ventilation it's important that if they’re going to grow in the apartment that they vent it out to the outside because you can’t grow anything indoors unless it’s like a greenhouse, which is vented or what have you, because it gets very moist, very humid and without venting it, you’re going to have a mold issue, without a doubt. That’s something that you got to pay attention to.
One other thing that you want to pay attention, which they’re having a big problem out in Colorado is concentrates. What they’re doing is they’re taking marijuana and they’re making concentrates with it, and what they’re doing is they’re using different solvents like alcohol or one of the really bad ones is butane and they’re extracting all the medicine out of the plant with the solvents.
Now these solvents are very volatile and they’re doing it inside. One of the things you do is you heat up the solvent to evaporate it. If you have a flame or somebody is smoking a cigarette or something like that, you’re going to have an explosion and that’s what’s happening in Colorado is they’re getting a lot of explosions from people doing this. That’s something else to take a look at.
Rich: Right, got you. I have in my lease that you cannot bring it, as probably most of us do. You can’t have any combustibles or flammable substances. You can’t get combustible substances in the apartment so that would cover that.
Dave: One of the things though is one of the solvents they use is alcohol. You can buy alcohol at the local liquor store.
Rich: Sure, but still when they’re using it in that manner, it’s still very volatile.
Dave: Right.
Rich: And it could easily cause a fire or an explosion.
Dave: Absolutely.
Rich: Okay.
Dave: Yeah.
Rich: That doesn’t sound so good. What else do we need to know, Dave, in our last minute here?
Dave: Just be aware. Use your nose. Your nose is going to find it. Your nose will be able to smell it without a doubt. You got a quick question back there?
[0:10:00]
Male Audience 2: I just want to clarify something. When the medical marijuana law came up, there is a provision in that portion of the law that says, “In order to grow, you have to have permission from the state agriculture and your local board of health must come in and inspect the growing area.” That is still in effect.
Dave: It is not in effect because there are dispensaries now. Dispensaries, you’re not allowed to grow at home right now because we have dispensaries. Before the dispensaries opened in 2015, you are allowed to grow because they didn’t have a source for you to get your medicine.
Male Audience 2: Right. What I’m saying is to grow marijuana, do they consider that as under the tobacco area, it still falls under state agriculture and then the board of health must come in and inspect your growing area.
Dave: Right.
Male Audience 2: Even if it's one plant...
Dave: It’s run by the Department of Health. Yeah.
Rich: Okay, did anybody learn something?
Female Audience 2: No.
Rich: Was anybody aware of these concentrates and how to make them?
Male Audience 2: Yeah.
Rich: Probably not, okay. This is educational [laughter].
Male Audience 2: It would be nice if we have information on that to a certain degree.
Rich: It would be nice to have the information. Does anybody have the Internet? I’m sorry I’m a smart-ass. No, we’re going to definitely going to get that up and get that circulated to everybody as we have it.
Dave: I’ll be here if anybody has any questions [applause].
[End 0:11:41]
